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RIGGED prepaid phone help!

I

Indigopower

Lurker
Recently I needed to purchase a phone so I ventured into a T-Mobile store. I asked the lady who approached me for help on finding a basic phone. Without hesitation she explained they were running a promotion on an Artiso 4+ pre-paid phone. I said perfect! Im under the impression that im walking out the door with a brand new phone. Well at least I thought...

So we get to the counter and I'm given two options as far as plans go. I select the $40 plan. After a few minutes go by she hands me a piece of paper with order details and such. I notice she has already written my NEW cell number on this piece of paper. Mind you while all this is going on outside the window closest to us Forest Gump is walking back and forth. I wonder what he was so interested in??

What does the word (REFILL) mean? To me it means if i buy a soda and drink it all in order to get more soda i must get a (REFILLL). Why does my brand new phone well at least i thought it was brand new get a refill if it was never empty. Before i went into the store i knew what was going to happen....

So now i have my BRAND NEW REFILLED ARTISO 4+ PHONE with no receipt and im headed for the exit. Well, i got a counterfeit receipt.

I get home to get my phone activated and such and as soon as i plug it into charge it immediately turns on. On this big screen in front of my eyes a message pops up like a BILLBOARD on the interstate. In pretty TMOBILE letters i see a message that says 'ERASING NOW'.....WHY WOULD A BRAND NEW PHONE NEED TO ERASE ANYTHING????. OH AND THE PHONE HAD ONLY BEEN CHARGING FOR A MINUTE AND HAD 73%

I read the user guide to see what i would need to activate the phone. That was a waste of time because my (NEW) PHONE i thought was already activated. There are numerous amounts of preinstalled apps on my phone (THAT IM OK WITH) just shed some light P
(PEOPLE).

I CANT SIGN INTO MY TMOBILE APP BECAUSE IM NOT THE ACCOUNT HOLDER....but my phone was NEW right??

Did the Tmobile employee scam me for her own personal gain? Did she do this for a criminal organization? OR IS EVERYTHING OK???..

I need the people on my side to tell me everything is ok
 
So you did get a receipt. Good.
Take the phone back to the store and have them walk you through the process of activating your device properly.
To me, it sounds like you are new to this, and the t-mobile salesperson should have set you up before you left the store to begin with.
You aren't scammed, just uninformed to a new product.
 
Dannydet said:
So you did get a receipt. Good.
Take the phone back to the store and have them walk you through the process of activating your device properly.
To me, it sounds like you are new to this, and the t-mobile salesperson should have set you up before you left the store to begin with.
You aren't scammed, just uninformed to a new product.
Click to expand...


I'm not admitting to getting a receipt. Until I know what a formal receipt T Mobile distributes at the end of a prepaid phone purchase transaction in an ACTUAL store I can't say I did. The phone I purchased clearly belongs to someone else other than me.

I may be new, but I always need to KNOW why things are the way they are. I'm not uninformed. At all. I'm BRILLIANT and until my curiosty of everything is resolved I will continue to (investigate)
 
Dannydet said:
So you did get a receipt. Good.
Take the phone back to the store and have them walk you through the process of activating your device properly.
To me, it sounds like you are new to this, and the t-mobile salesperson should have set you up before you left the store to begin with.
You aren't scammed, just uninformed to a new product.
Click to expand...

I don't need an employee to walk me through anything. I could take this phone apart and put it back together if I really wanted to. That (employee) you speak of has ZERO chance of answering a single one of my questions UNLESS that employee is one of US. That (US) NEEDS to be validated. Be creative.
 
I really don't see any problems here, other than not being clear how the process works with pre-paid phones. Let me see if I can take this on issue at a time.
Indigopower said:
What does the word (REFILL) mean? To me it means if i buy a soda and drink it all in order to get more soda i must get a (REFILLL).
Click to expand...
With pre-paid phone you are pretty much paying a nominal fee for a low-end communication device and then "filling" it with minutes and data. You didn't specify which $40 plan you went with but looking at T-Mobile's website they give you an unlimited text and voice option with 10GB data for that price. This is basically a month to month contract and at the end of the month the phone needs to be "refilled". For other types of plans, it operates more like an escrow account where you deposit $40 and as you use the device, the fees are deducted from the escrowed amount until you either use all the funds or they expire (usually 90 days, but all carriers vary.) Think of it as buying a car and having to put gas in it soyou can drive it.

Indigopower said:
So now i have my BRAND NEW REFILLED ARTISO 4+ PHONE with no receipt and im headed for the exit. Well, i got a counterfeit receipt.
Click to expand...
How did you pay? Cash? Credit Card? Many times the contract paperwork is the only receipt you will receive.

Indigopower said:
I get home to get my phone activated and such and as soon as i plug it into charge it immediately turns on. On this big screen in front of my eyes a message pops up like a BILLBOARD on the interstate. In pretty TMOBILE letters i see a message that says 'ERASING NOW'.....WHY WOULD A BRAND NEW PHONE NEED TO ERASE ANYTHING????. OH AND THE PHONE HAD ONLY BEEN CHARGING FOR A MINUTE AND HAD 73%
Click to expand...

Many phones, if turned off, will immediately boot (turn on) when supplied with charging voltage. And, many phones for security will perform a factory reset on first boot or when you swap sim cards. The "erasing" message you saw was a factory reset wiping the user partition. It doesn't indicate that there was a previous owner. Finally, all Li-Ion battery powered devices -- which would be pretty much every cell phone made in the last 5 years -- ships with a charge on the battery. If a modern battery is allowed to completely discharge, it could be rendered inert. Even when the phone reports zero charge, there is really a 15% ~ 20% charge left on the battery to keep it from being damaged. That's just the way these things work.
Indigopower said:
I read the user guide to see what i would need to activate the phone. That was a waste of time because my (NEW) PHONE i thought was already activated. There are numerous amounts of preinstalled apps on my phone (THAT IM OK WITH) just shed some light P
(PEOPLE).
Click to expand...

The sim card needed to be activated on the T-Mobile network for your phone to work with the new number. I'm surprised they didn't do that at the time of purchase, but I get the impression that you didn't even turn the phone on in the store. You just walked out with a phone in a box and a sim card.
Indigopower said:
I CANT SIGN INTO MY TMOBILE APP BECAUSE IM NOT THE ACCOUNT HOLDER....but my phone was NEW right??
Click to expand...
If this was a new account (not a new number) you should have been told where to sign up. Normally you would use an email address as the user, or the account number, or possibly even the serial number of the phone. Now if you are told specifically that you are NOT the account holder for this phone number, it's quite possible that the clerk at the store didn't provision the number for you properly. I'm sure they recycle old numbers, especially on pre-paid devices, so you probably will need to go back to the store to get this straightened out, but I don't really see anything dishonest going on here.
 
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