Many of you may be aware of the recent issue of T-Mobile blocking access to Twitter, but I believe that most people (especially T-Mobile customers) are currently unaware of the extent of this issue. After a lot of research, and a shitload of digging, I have learned that T-Mobile does not block access to Twitter… they block access to all “3rd party” SMS shortcodes. What are SMS shortcodes, you say? Well, let me educate you.

SMS shotcodes are special telephone numbers designed to be easier to remember, and are generally 5 to 8 numbers in length. Shortcodes are widely used for publicly available services such as television voting (ala American Idol), charity donations, and mobile services. These shortcodes are used for popular web services as well, such as Twitter, Gmail alerts, and Google Calendar event alerts.

Let me explain how this all came to light for me. About a month ago I attempted to setup Google Calendar alerts. Upon requesting the verification code, and never receiving it, I headed to the google help docs to solve the issue on my own. What I was about to discover, was that this issue had nothing to do with Google, but rather my wireless provider. What, you say, that can’t be??!? Nay, I say, err, rather, yay, it does. *cough* Anyway, here’s where it gets interesting.

After several, several calls to the T-Mobile customer support centers, and plethora of departments, multiple representatives and an ungodly amount of time (Three and a half hours) on the phone with nearly every department available in T-Mobile’s customer support arsenal, I have learned the following.

  • T-Mobile does in fact block SMS shortcodes.
  • Supposedly shortcodes are only blocked for Pre-paid accounts, but those on the flexpay accounts with contracts, as well as regular customers with contracts have also reported having shortcodes blocked for their phones as well.
  • T-Mobile customer support is to inform customers that they are unable to block shortcodes, and in fact, are incapable of doing so.
  • T-Mobile is the *ONLY* major wireless provider that blocks SMS shortcodes.
  • T-Mobile does NOT block SMS shortcodes for INTERNAL use.
  • T-Mobile customer support will use the afore-mentioned shortcodes to state that they do not block shortcodes, due to the fact that you can access their internal shortcodes.
  • Only the Advanced Technical Support seems able to inform customers that they do block “3rd party” shortcodes; upon doing so they are also overwhelmingly ecstatic to inform you that “You have no recourse other than to cancel your account, and pay the $200.00 early termination fee that would be assessed at termination”.
  • T-Mobile has way too many technical support departments.

What can we do then, you ask? I’ll tell you what, the same thing we geeks always do when faced an oppressive cooperate entity threatening our very way of life. Send a very scathing letter to the offending cooperation, and bring the issue to the attention of the rest of the community. I know there are many other T-Mobile customers that were unable to get as much information concerning the issue, and even more that were forced to just accept the BS given to them by the all knowing customer service representatives.

In case any of you other disenfranchised T-Mobile customers are wondering, you can submit a complaint via email by going to this URL and submitting a complaint to the “Products and Services” topic, and “text Messaging” sub-topic. Just as an example, following is my own personal letter to their customer support.

As a new T-Mobile customer, I must say I was quite excited to sign-up with T-Mobile, and purchased a new T-Mobile Shadow, and the unlimited texting plan. The service(s) explained to me by the sales representative, and the information gathered from your website prior to signing up seemed as though it would be a great deal for the cost.

It has since come to my attention (after being on the phone for several hours with your customer service representatives) that T-Mobile has made the erroneous decision to block what they refer to as “3rd party” SMS shortcodes. After multiple calls to technical support, and several other departments including the flexpay account department, the billing department, the PDA and smartphone department, and several other non-discriminant departments, I have received several different answers, from several different representatives, concerning this matter.

I was finally informed by your escalated technical support that T-Mobile in fact does NOT allow SMS shortcodes from outside their own company, and that I had no recourse other than to cancel my account, and pay the $200.00 early termination fee that would be assessed at termination. This response from a representative of your own company is quite disheartening and does not, in anyway, leave me with a positive impression of the company I was once so enthused to be a customer of.

While the very unsympathetic representative was technically correct in that T-Mobile has no legal obligation to support shortcodes, it is quite unscrupulous of T-Mobile to in fact disallow SMS shortcodes, and instruct all but the escalated technical support to inform your customers that they are in fact supported.

After a lot of digging, and a lot of research, I have come to the conclusion that I am in no way the only T-Mobile customer that is having this issue. I have also learned that T-Mobile is, in fact, currently the ONLY major courier that DOES block SMS shortcodes from outside their own company. As per several customers that have been with T-Mobile for quite some time, it has been made public that T-Mobile did in fact support SMS shortcodes once upon a time; making this decision to block said services a recent one.

Fearing a $200.00 early-termination, I’m sure you will be ecstatic to hear that I (like many other customers) will be remaining with T-Mobile for the duration of my current contract. All though I have become a disenfranchised customer, along side many others, primarily due to your voracious policy of limiting the abilities of your customers to embrace new technologies, and a tendency of your customer support to either be ill-informed of your internal policies, or outright instructed to provide disinformation to your customers.

I hope that T-Mobile can show that it is in fact a customer oriented company, and alter it’s current policy to block such services that customers of ever other major wireless provider are allowed access to without additional charges or nightmarish and lengthy calls to technical support.

I would like to once again be able to enthusiastically encourage those I know to also join up with T-Mobile, but am currently unable to do so, due to your current policies, and attitude towards your customers when it comes to the transparency of said policies.

Thank you for your time,
Dustin Hansen – T-Mobile Customer