By Casey Liss
How to Avoid Getting Paid

I’ve been evangelizing T-Mobile’s free 200MB data for life for a while now. I think it’s a really smart move on T-Mobile’s part, and I admire them for doing something outside the box.

Well, I did, anyway.

Around a month or two ago, the website used to manage your prepay account, T-Mobile’s Mobile Internet Management, changed. Instead of accepting passwords of up to 16 characters, it now accepts passwords that are 15 characters or less.

As a developer, I am already shaking my head in disgust, but the fun is only beginning.

When I attempted to log in with my 16 character password, I was forbidden, because my password was too long. “Okay”, I thought, “I’ll just reset my password using the ‘forgot password’ link.”

Nope.

When one “forgets” their password on T-Mobile’s MIM, T-Mobile simply e-mails the password back to the on-file e-mail address. In my case, the invalid, 16 character password.

Sigh.

For a couple months, this was simply an annoyance. I had been able to see how much of my data was used each month, but now I can’t. Instead, I’ll just rely on the “you’re running out!” messages and hope for the best.

Things, however, took a turn when I realized I’m going to be traveling and could really use some mobile data.

I called T-Mobile early last week and spoke to an extremely nice individual in Colorado. Things were off to a great start. I explained the situation to him, and he told me that the only way to reset my password was to have engineering do it manually.

ಠ_ಠ

That was annoying, but fine. I was told I’d have an answer in three business days, before my trip started. That was nearly a week ago.

Now, I’m in the position where I want to give T-Mobile money for extra data, but I can’t, because I can’t log in to do so. When you’re a struggling also-ran like T-Mobile, you need to do extreme things like offer free data to get new customers, and get them to pay you. However, all of those extremes are for naught if you can’t get the basics right.

So, now I’ll just give my money to Verizon, since I can’t give it to T-Mobile.

Well, I suppose I could call T-Mobile and read them my credit card information over the phone, but I’m not an animal.