T-Mobile Offer not Available in all areas, clearly

Tomorrow I'll be ending my summer vacation in Vermont and heading back to Maryland for Year 24 of my High School History teaching career.  As far as T-Mobile is concerned, that means I'll be ending my stay in No Man's Land and returning to Civilization.

My T-Mobile plan provides virtually no service here, and on the rare ocassions I can connect, T-Mobile counts it against my "roaming" allowance.  Yep, here in Vermont I am "roaming," as if I was in Europe or on Safari.  But most of the time, I'm just not connected at all.  When I try to use my contacts, I'm told they are "Not Registered with Network."  I can usually check my text messages, but I'm rarely allowed to reply.  For most of the summer I had a weak connection with my parents' WiFi but in the last few days I've received regular "Authentication Errors" and it doesn't matter how many times I type in the password, it's "Incorrect"- never mind that it's the same one I use to access the WiFi from my laptop.

Barre is the second-largest city in Vermont- but while I'm shopping for my parents I can't make or receive calls to find out if they need to add anything to the shopping list.  Once I noted that I had a missed call from home and had to ask to use the land line at the grocery store to call home (good luck finding a payphone in 2018.)

(By the way, feel free to check out T Mobile's Nationwide Coverage map online- according to it, my service should be every bit as good in Vermont as it is in Suburban Maryland.  Which means- the map is a joke. Pretty, but a joke.)

Tomorrow I'll be back in Maryland and my T-Mobile phone will work just fine, I'm sure.  But I can't help wondering why a company which advertises itself as the Best Way to Stay Connected to Family can't get it's act together in certain areas of the United States.  I'll be contacting them to ask why this is when I have some free time- and I'm in Maryland, and I can make a phone call that doesn't include a "Call May Drop" warning even when it DOES connect.