I’m a T-Mobile business customer, and I purchased two phones from T-Mobile back in December of 2005 for myself and my husband. What should have been a simple request has turned into an epic.

My husband has a Motorola V3 VSW RAZR, is in Italy for 3 months, and needs to get local service for his work there ASAP.

When I signed up back in 2005, I asked about whether or not it was possible to get local service with this phone when traveling abroad (I used to have Sprint and their phones only work on Sprint). I was told that unlocking a phone with T-Mobile is no problem, and the only prerequisites were that I had been a customer in good standing for at least 90 days.

So, my husband left for Italy (almost two weeks ago at this point), and I called T-Mobile to get the unlock code. They told me that this takes a couple of days but that I should get a preliminary email of confirmation within 24 hours.

I didn’t receive this email so I called the next day and the person whom I spoke with told me that it had only been 23.5 hours (I wish I were kidding) and that I should call back in an hour, which I did. When I called again, I spoke to a supervisor who let me know that he would escalate my request, and that I should hear back from the unlock department within a couple of hours. He also kindly offered me a $50 service credit for the inconvenience, which I appreciated, but did not request in any way.

I did not receive the promised email within a couple of hours, though. Instead, I got an email from the unlock department the next day, referencing an incorrect IMEI (they had the last number as a “0″ instead of a “2″). I sent a couple of emails to customer service, but they responded back saying that this incorrect number would not affect anything (I still doubt this).

So, three days after that, I received an email saying that it was not possible to unlock my husband’s phone, a RAZR V3. So, I called back to say, “Hey, guys. I bought this phone from you on the premise that I could unlock it. You’ve got to take responsibility for this, and fix this for me.” Their response was that they cannot guarantee that they can unlock a phone, that they could put in another request to Motorola, (again the 24 hour email business), and nothing more. I told them to please do that. But, I also pointed out that this is not what I was told to me when I bought the phone, that they could not guarantee an unlock. And the supervisor that I spoke with even threw it up in my face that I had received a $50 service credit so that I must be “scheming” for something else! (Carrie Rep#137645) I asked to please speak with her manager and she told me that it would not be possible, but that she could have him call me. She said his name was Trevor (rep# 137690), and he never called me.

So Wednesday of this week, I received an email message with the unlock code for MY phone, not my husband’s phone, yet another bungled request (it referenced my IMEI number, not his). But, my husband and I both have the V3 RAZR so I’m having a hard time believing that it is possible to unlock my phone but not unlock his. So, I called again, they promised to put in a request AGAIN, and that I would receive a preliminary email within 24 hours, AGAIN.

I did not receive this email on Thursday or today, so I called again this morning, where I was told that there was no record of my call on Wednesday, that they would put in another request to the unlock department and that is all they can do. I told the supervisor, Alison (rep#7254286) that this has gone on too long, isn’t there something else that can be done, could I please speak to someone else, maybe her manager to escalate this? She responded that her manager was just going to tell me the same thing. She refused to give me any contact information for him and told me that he would call me (still hasn’t). She did give me a fax number where I could send my request (1-817-353-6545). She also noted that they weren’t going to do anything else for me because I had accepted the $50 service credit so that is where their obligation ends. Crazy. I was not asking for anything besides T-Mobile either unlocking my husband’s phone, or if that was impossible, providing him with an unlocked handset, since that is what we were promised.