Advanced full EIP payoff causes double-charge

concerneduser
concerneduser Jan 17, 2017 11:15 PM
  • Member Since: Mar 11, 2016

    I’ve completely paid off in advance the EIP on 2 phones, and this caused 1 month’s worth of their EIPs to get double-charged to my current bill. There are similar community discussions, but either the OPs didn’t specify whether they’re making a partial or full payment or the answers seem to apply only to cases of partial payment.

     

    Here’s an example of partial payment. Assume Client’s bill occurs at the beginning of every month and is $100, which includes $15 monthly EIP. It’s Jan. 20 and he has $60 EIP balance remaining (4 months’ worth), so if he pays bills normally ($100/mo.) from Feb. 1st to May 1st (inclusive), his EIP balance becomes zero, and his bills from June 1st and on should be $85/mo.

     

    Instead, he decides to make an advanced partial EIP payment of $30 on Jan. 20th, or two months’ worth. He expects to be billed $100/mo. on Feb. 1st and March 1st and $85/mo. from Apr. 1st and onwards, because he’s brought forward his EIP zero-balance date by two months.

     

    But what actually happens is his Feb. 1st bill becomes $100 - $30 = $70. He’s temporarily saved $30. But because it went to the device’s total EIP balance and not February’s balance (not even February’s slice of the total EIP balance), that $30 temporary savings gets debited to March’s bill, making it $100 + $30 = $130. In March, the client is paying for two months’ EIPs—February’s $15 (which is included in that $30 debit) and March’s own $15—and whatever other fees left of February’s from that $30 debit, all this in addition to the rest of March’s service fee. The mid-January advanced partial EIP payment effectively belongs to no one month’s bill, but after March’s bill, 4 EIP payments’ worth have been made: 2 in the advanced payment, 0 in February’s adjusted bill, and 2 in March’s adjusted bill. The total EIP is paid off by the end of March 1st, and because April’s bill is $85 as expected, the EIP zero balance date was indeed brought forward to the expected date. Because the sum of February and March’s bills is $200 in the scenario the client expected ($100 Feb. bill + $100 Mar. bill) and $200 in the scenario that actually happened ($70 Feb. bill + $130 Mar. bill), this artificial inflation of March’s bill results in no overcharge when summing February’s and March’s bills.

     

    An overcharge happens if this client instead makes an advanced “full” EIP payment on Jan. 20th. Because he expects the EIP to be completely paid off, he expects every bill from Feb. 1st and onwards to be $85 each. He pays the full EIP balance of $60 on Jan. 20th. What actually happens is his Feb. 1st bill becomes $100 - $60 = $40. The temporary $60 savings is debited to March’s bill. March’s bill is $85 (because there is no more EIP balance and therefore no more $15/mo. EIP charge) plus the $60 temporary savings from February's bill that was debited to March's bill: $85 + $60 = $145. Summing February’s $40 bill and March’s $145 bill yields $185. But the sum the client expected is $85 (Feb.) + $85 (Mar.) = $170. Client ends up overpaying $15, or 1 month’s EIP. The problem is the system blindly added to March’s bill that $60 temporary savings of February’s bill which includes a redundant EIP portion, the last of which was already paid off on Jan. 20th. This problem cannot be resolved by bringing forward the EIP zero-balance date by one month because there is nothing to bring forward—the EIP balance had already been zeroed on Jan 20th. The problem scales up with the total price and quantity of devices.

     

    I’ve spent 2 hours on live chat but the rep was dismissive and was asking where I got certain numbers relevant to my bill that I’ve and he’s provided moments prior. The itemization on my bill is also erroneous, because these double charges were distributed across the already paid off devices’ EIP items. They weren’t consolidated into an item that remotely indicates an adjustment/debit from the prior month. I want the double-charged amount of one month’s worth of EIP on the two devices I’ve paid off in advance credited back. I wouldn’t have paid to get on the hook to pay more.

    • 4997 Views
    • 5 Replies
    • Latest reply on Mar 14, 2016 7:42 AM by tmo_mike_c

      All replies

      • tmo_mike_c

        Re: Advanced full EIP payoff causes double-charge

        tmo_mike_c Mar 13, 2016 9:06 AM (in response to concerneduser)
        • Member Since: Jun 25, 2012

        Hey there concerneduser and thanks for using our forum.

         

        When paying the EIP off early, the bill should show a Final Charge and a payment that would zero each other out. There shouldn't be 2 charges for the EIP. If you need someone to look at your account further, you could give our T-Force team a shot at this. Their an awesome group of T-Mobile experts that have the tools to look at your account and provide more help. You can reach team through the social medial links below. They are available 24/7 and you can even link them to this thread so they know the details.

          • concerneduser

            Re: Advanced full EIP payoff causes double-charge

            concerneduser Mar 13, 2016 4:51 PM (in response to tmo_mike_c)
            • Member Since: Mar 11, 2016

            tmo_mike_c wrote:

             

            When paying the EIP off early, the bill should show a Final Charge and a payment that would zero each other out. There shouldn't be 2 charges for the EIP.

             

            I’ve already explained this in the final example of my opening post, just without labeling those charges as “Final Charge.” To simplify, let’s call a month’s worth of the EIP: $Y. Like I said in that example, I completely paid off my EIP in advance with some lump sum (call it $X) before my previous month’s bill, which reduced that bill by $X. Because it reduced the previous month’s bill by $X and T-Mobile’s system thinks I’ve yet to pay $X toward that bill (since it all went to the total EIP balance), $X gets debited to my current month’s bill. The problem is that the previous month’s bill should already have been lowered by $Y (because the total EIP balance had been completely paid off/zeroed beforehand), but the bill wasn’t lowered. The only way for T-Mobile to make up for that would be to debit “$X - $Y” instead of “$X” to my current month’s bill, but it still debited “$X”. Debiting “$X” would work only if the customer made an advanced partial EIP payment and still had at least 1 more month of EIP installment to go, in which case T-Mobile can make up for it by pulling forward the EIP zero-balance date by one month, using the long run to avoid the double count of $Y.

             

            These charges do appear per each of the already-paid off devices on my current bill as “Final Charge,” which is a misnomer. They come with the caption: “Final charge may not reflect payments and/or credits listed above.” The problem is there is no credit of $Y or any other credit whatsoever. I never said my current bill has two explicitly-printed-out items charging me for the same thing per phone. The double charge is the fact that there is one “Final Charge” item per phone without any $Y credit on my current bill when I’ve already paid them off prior to the previous bill. There’s nothing on my bill that zeroes anything else out.

              • tmo_mike_c

                Re: Advanced full EIP payoff causes double-charge

                tmo_mike_c Mar 13, 2016 5:51 PM (in response to concerneduser)
                • Member Since: Jun 25, 2012

                It's hard to tell exactly what happened with the previous month's bill without being able to look at your account. We'd need to have Customer Care or our T-Force team go over the account with you so we can hash this all out. I would suggest calling Care or messaging our T-Force team so they can see exactly what happened.

                  • concerneduser

                    Re: Advanced full EIP payoff causes double-charge

                    concerneduser Mar 13, 2016 11:27 PM (in response to tmo_mike_c)
                    • Member Since: Mar 11, 2016

                    I followed your Google+ link 4+ hours ago, posted a comment, linking this thread to the latest post, but it only shows up when I'm logged into Google+ even though I marked my comment as public. Is T-Force blocking the comments or filtering it all as spam? There is one guy spamming the comments as late as 12 hours ago on many of the later posts, and those are the latest comments I'm able to see. I've tried everything: live chat, this forum, social media T-Force. The T-Force overview says it follows this forum. Can you contact them and link this thread? Or get anyone who can see my account details? My T-Mobile phone number is part of my forum account info.