T-Mobile down due to flooding?
We’re just going off some tips right now, but it sounds like T-Mobile might be experiencing some issues with their website and call centers. The problems seem to stem from significant flooding at their central data center in Bothell, WA. Western Washington has been experiencing something close to a torrential downpour, so it’s no surprise to see that local businesses are affected. What isn’t clear, however, is just how widespread the outage is and whether it’s affecting customers outside of the Western Washington area. T-Mobile CS is acknowledging the issue, but won’t (or can’t) give any info on the specifics. We’ll have to wait a bit to see how this pans out, but for now…are any of you experiencing issues with T-Mobile call centers? Maybe this would be a good time for ole’ T-Mobile to pull the trigger on some 3G action, right?
Yeah, last night I had difficulties trying to get on to my web browser and I couldn’t go on to t-mobile.com
Permalink | Reply
From what I am understanding from all the choas going on is that its only the internal tmobile systems being effected such as their billing system and web server. The network elements are housed all though out the states and the flooding in WA shouldn’t effect customers that much unless the are where the flooding is or if they want to go on tmobile.com or veiw or change any of their billing info. But should be interesting, to see what effect this might have on next months bill. If the billing system is down due to flooded how are my calls being recorded or billed? I am hoping for free calling until billing server gets fix how awsome would that be.
Permalink | Reply
I can confirm .. was online last night with the # transfer center around 6:30p CST and the system went down in the in the middle of my port. So now I have no ATT service, and T-Mo can’t my my line up.
As of 8a this morning they are still down and estimate it could be a day or tow before they are back up.
Nice business continuity planning T-Mo!
Permalink | Reply
BTW Matthew depending on the pop or imap email configs you are usin on bis it can take upto 15 minutes for emails to be dilivered to blackberry so about 20 minutes really isn’t that way off
Permalink | Reply
Whenever I try to check my minutes etc with #646# it doesn’t work.
I live in Renton, WA and the flooding is really, really bad.
Any roads that go down hill are probably flooded at the bottom.
Permalink | Reply
T-Mobile.com is back up and running.
Permalink | Reply
@jdh: right… I’ve had that experience with my external IMAP account. I was testing with my blackberry.net address though. That one has always been
Permalink | Reply
is this the reason why I only have GPRS service right now. or is that something else?
Permalink | Reply
Here in Corpus Christi, TX. Cant log into tmobile.com. BIS service down on BB Pearl. Calls and texts work. #BAL, etc. don’t work.
Permalink | Reply
Apparently it is affecting account activity and billing. I can access the tmo web site, but not My T-Mo to pay the bill.
Permalink | Reply
Yet another reason why this POS will never float, pun intended. Regardless of how much rain everyone is saying they received up there, it’s absolutely no excuse. There are a lot of people at TMO that are being paid a lot of money to assess risks just like these and put in place the redundant systems and processes to make sure the customers aren’t inconvenienced.
Yet another failure by corporate America in pursuit of the almighty dollar while simultaneously not giving a rat’s a$$ about the customers that pay the bills that keep their companies going. I have absolutely no compassion for crap like this.
Permalink | Reply
I just got off the phone with customer service and they said that customers will not be charged late fees or marked as late if your billing due date falls within the outage period.
I would like to know who is in charge of DR for T-mobile! They are failing miserably.
Permalink | Reply
Julio….
There are people who’s lives are in danger. I’m sorry that this is affecting service for you, but it takes a certain amount of people to run their buildings, people who might have lost a home from 80mph winds, flooding, or mudslides.
As far as the almighty dollar, that goes both ways. Do T-Mo customers all want to pay $5 more every single month to pay for a redundant system in another city…No! they don’t!
In the meantime service is working at an acceptable capacity, but if your email is not working at this time, i apologize to you and your small percent that is inconvenienced.
What would be more of an inconvenience would be your home filled with water while you waited on the roof to be rescued.
Permalink | Reply
I just got off the phone with a rep. He explained that they are moving everything to an unaffected facility and while they do that they have put a freeze on all account access to ensure data integrity. I doubt that, they probably can retain read-only access and simply disable data commits if that’s their goal.
However, he assured that things should be back up by early afternoon today.
Permalink | Reply
People have died in this rain. 20 miles of I-5 are closed because of this rain. The person in the basement apartment below me is shopvac-ing water out of their living room. The fact that we can’t get to T-mobile’s website to pay our bills seems a bit minor, don’t you think?
Permalink | Reply
tmo now has a backup activations center/1800 number in place. fear not, you can activate your crappy nokia 6010 today!!
Permalink | Reply
Ok, talked to T-Mobile. Apparently all eggs were in one basket. All UMA and customer account information is unaccessable. I spoke with a buddy at Seattle Wireless about it and his roommate is a t-mobile engineer, basically they had everything in a single datacenter in the natural disaster friendly pacific northwest.
Bottom Line: T-Mobile wil be down at least a week or more. No account information and no UMA. Also lots of other issues. Yes T-Mobile did not even take precautions and has everything at a little place with no flood protection or generators right now. Way to go t-mobile!
Permalink | Reply
I live in GA and I have a pearl. I can’t check my balance, get in touch with anyone in customer care. It sucks cuz my parents are giving me an early Christmas gift and buying me the 8320 and changing my plan.now can’t call into customer care and do either.
Permalink | Reply
@CS — well said!!
Permalink | Reply
During this act of god… it would be nice if everyone would remember the phenominal customer service in which T-Mobile provides its customer base with on a daily basis. Keep in mind if there are billing errors or calls not rated or rate plans that can not be changed, I have faith that T-Mobile will make it right, just as they always do. After all our service is working and we are able to make and receive calls, if you are one of the unfortunate ones who can not, there has been worse situations, that have occured. Like hurricane Katrina, in whch T-Mobile helped out immensely and provided communication for the people without a home or the California fires, where they sat up mobile communications for other companies having downed telephone lines. T-Mobile jumped in to help support needy communities. It disturbs me when America is so quick to point out fault before acknowledging the good. Was there any blogs about the support T-Mobile provided in the situations listed above?
Permalink | Reply
Well, reports of UMA still working are probably troll comments. I still have no UMA here in Las Vegas.
I agree with comments of corporate greed possibly being part of the problem, but I also agree that human life is more important than material loss. We cannot control the weather, and this storm was outrageous, possibly in the 50 year or 100 year category.
10 inches of rain in 24 hours and sustained winds of 80 mph is hurricane territory friends. Were this storm to have hit a country like, say, Honduras, we’d be hearing about 10’s maybe 100’s of thousands of people washed out of their homes instead of a few dozen or hundred.
Just be thankful of where you live people, and concentrate on life’s greater concerns, like, hmm, global warming?
Permalink | Reply
Hey, there is one thing I would like to say to Julio…Tmobile is one of the only companies that has 24 hour customer service, 7 days a week. If it bothers you that it happens to be down for two days, NEVER get service with the other guys who don’t even work Sat/Sun. You would surely HATE them for inconveniencing you.
Permalink | Reply
Hi,
I work for a TMO dealer and it really sucks right now. Everything is down without any eta when it will be working again.
Permalink | Reply
Your opinion is just sad. With what is happening at this time, the only inconvenience you could possibly be having is not being able to check your minutes (and you should have good sense to know how to manage those. The minute messenger is a privilege not a right), call and complain because you mismanaged your account or to add or purchase something. The BB email was a random issue before this even happened. The servers that are down are the servers for the call centers to properly communicate not the tower servers that provide you service.
Permalink | Reply
This has to be a t-mobile employee saying how much t-mobile does for society. While most of the people at t-mobile support are nice (i will give them that) they usually have the ‘hand tied behind the back’ syndrome.
To have no disaster recovery for a provider that claims they run at par or better than Sprint, ATT, etc, is greatly misleading to the public.
The area where the flooding was has been know to flood often, this is why several companies in the area have moved stuff to higher ground in Tuckwilla and Seattle.
This could and should have been prevented. This also shows why so many of us have UMA issues, etc. They do not have their servers setup with any kind of disaster recovery or failover in mind.
They should have customer databeses and UMA(GAN) servers setup with some type of geographical distribution and failover. Even my website is load balanced, and no it would not cost a lot for them to do the same.
They would have to invest a fraction of what they spend on ad banners or on free flights for new customers. Give us a break t-mobile and admit we have all been sold a bunch of goods. How many of us are still having uma/gsm handoff issues? I rest my case. Stop worrying about new users and fix stuff. My local tower has been ’sheduled for enhancements within 120 days’ for a couple of years. No money to fix stuff but giving away free flights to sign up more people for an overloaded system.
Also, it is sad that people have lost lives and also lost livelyhood. I am with everyone on that and it is a sad and terrible thing to see. That is not the issue though, what is the issue is all of us having problems that are 100% avoidable. We are not asking t-mobile or anyone to do anything unsafe. We want honest answers on why they had no backup. This is an area known for weather issues. I lived up there for a while and I know the people will pitch in and all will be right. But someone at t-mobile should have made a backup plan. After 9/11, most real companies have a disaster recovery plan that prevents and works arround even acts of terrorism and acts of God.
Funny how the first stuff back up was the website and the order system.
Wake up t-mobile, this is getting old real fast.
Permalink | Reply