Arizona Mom orders +5000 SIM cards from T-Mobile, gets suspended AFTER receiving them all

[Invincible Sugar]

Summary

A 24 year old Arizona woman ordered 5,190 SIM cards from T-Mobile through her grandfathered Sprint account, using a free SIM offer with free overnight air shipping. T-Mobile actually fulfilled all her orders, sending each individually with its own expensive UPS overnight label, then suspended her account after the orders arrived for suspected fraud. After a conversation over the phone with the executive care team she successfully reinstated her account, and was even granted permission to order more SIMs if she wanted, as there technically isn't a limit on how many one customer can order.

 

 

Quotes

Quote

Over the course of a week or so, the user ordered constantly during the day. They kept the Sprint website open while working at their job, and ordered every few minutes. The packages began arriving. 

 

My thoughts

It's insane that a major, modern company like T-Mobile doesn't have the software to detect unusual or suspicious orders. A company of this size should absolutely have the technology to detect and cancel absurd orders, and waiting until after +5k SIMs arrive at your door to take action is laughable.

 

It's also crazy to me that T-Mobile didn't ban the account based on how many she ordered, but by how quickly. The ONLY reason her activity was spotted was due to her fast back to back orders which looked like bot activity to T-Mobile servers. Even after her account was restored she was granted explicit permission to continue ordering if she wanted to, at a slower pace.

 

Although not mentioned in this article a verified T-Mobile retail employee shared in the T-Mobile Discord server that all T-Mobile stores received an internal notice about this incident as well, accessible via their legacy Sprint iConnect service. The internal documentation essentially stated that T-Mobile appreciates this customer pointing out a flaw, and that it's being fixed so customers will now be limited to ordering SIMs for the number of lines they actually have, per day.

 

Sources

https://tmo.report/2022/04/sprint-customer-gets-suspended-after-ordering-5100-t-mobile-sim-cards/

[TempestCatto]

This is like that guy that bought one of those American Airlines tickets that you can use for whenever/wherever and it got revoked because it costed the company so much money. This is why you need a team of lawyers to write out all the legal-ese in fine print.

[da na]

The hell? 

 

But why?

[Invincible Sugar]

1 minute ago, Mel0nMan said:

The hell? 

 

But why?

Although T-Mobile SIMs should be free upon request, in reality many stores charge $10 or won't allow you to take a free SIM without also activating at that time.

 

So... while 5,190 is more than anyone could use in a lifetime it certainly makes sense to stock up when free SIMs are easily available.

 

I also understand this Discord user is forwarding these for free to users of the T-Mobile Discord server for that very reason, becoming the server SIM distributor.

[darknessblade]

Please tell me she only did this to get a certain Phone number

 

 

Like the Test number they Dial to test phones

[Heliian]

Well isn't that a waste of everyone's time and resources.

 

What are you going to do with all the sims now?  

 

 

[Invincible Sugar]

1 minute ago, Heliian said:

Well isn't that a waste of everyone's time and resources.

 

What are you going to do with all the sims now?  

 

 

SIMs actually contain a processor, 8 bit iirc. With their own ram, rom, and firmware. Theoretically with this many you could build a working computer!

[da na]

2 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

Please tell me she only did this to get a certain Phone number

 

 

Like the Test number they Dial to test phones

Sounds like something I'd do if I had enough money to buy 5,190 sims not gonna lie

[Invincible Sugar]

Just now, Caroline said:

Why? aren't the cards tied to one customer therefore a single number? or are these prepaid cards with random numbers?

No, these would not be activated. Otherwise if a malicious actor stole the package they would have access to your 2FA. Standard practice with all 3 major US carriers is to send SIMs unactivated and unattached to the account.

[da na]

Just now, Invincible Sugar said:

SIMs actually contain a processor, 8 bit iirc. With their own ram, rom, and firmware. Theoretically with this many you could build a working computer!

"This is my computer built with 1,000 SIM cards, 1,200 feet of wire, and too much of my free time! Here, look, it runs Commodore 64 games at 8 FPS!"

[bmx6454]

5 minutes ago, Heliian said:

Well isn't that a waste of everyone's time and resources.

 

What are you going to do with all the sims now?  

 

 

build the tiniest-biggest house of cards.

either way, pretty sure this will be the most random news i read today.

[darknessblade]

8 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Sounds like something I'd do if I had enough money to buy 5,190 sims not gonna lie

Usually these are Prepaid cards with only 1-2 dollars worth off minutes/SMS's

 

They send them for free hoping you stick with them as a user.

---

It might have been her account was set to a corporate account instead, allowing her to order cards EN-MASSE

[da na]

Just now, darknessblade said:

Usually these are Prepaid cards with only 1-2 dollars worth off minutes/SMS's

 

They send them for free hoping you stick with them as a user.

---

It might have been her account was set to a corporate account instead, allowing her to order cards EN-MASSE

"What's in your handbag?"
"Oh, SIM cards so I can swap it out when I use my 150 MB"

[darknessblade]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

"What's in your handbag?"
"Oh, SIM cards so I can swap it out when I use my 150 MB"

150MB. its more like 10MB. 1-2$ Is enough for at most 30 minutes of calling, or 50 SMS

[Invincible Sugar]

14 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

"This is my computer built with 1,000 SIM cards, 1,200 feet of wire, and too much of my free time! Here, look, it runs Commodore 64 games at 8 FPS!"

Make it 3000 SIMs and maybe we can pull 30 FPS!

[Invincible Sugar]

6 minutes ago, darknessblade said:

Usually these are Prepaid cards with only 1-2 dollars worth off minutes/SMS's

 

They send them for free hoping you stick with them as a user.

---

It might have been her account was set to a corporate account instead, allowing her to order cards EN-MASSE

These are intended for postpaid service and do not come with any service out of the kit.

[poochyena]

30 minutes ago, Invincible Sugar said:

It's insane that a major, modern company like T-Mobile doesn't have the software to detect unusual or suspicious orders. A company of this size should absolutely have the technology to detect and cancel absurd orders, and waiting until after +5k SIMs arrive at your door to take action is laughable.

uhh, or even a human employee with even the tiny bit of reason and authority to say "this is weird, I shouldn't fulfill this order". someone is fulfilling the orders, its not just magic that these get shipped out.

[Forbidden Wafer]

This is stupid. Did really nobody check? A free sim for each member of the average household (3-4 people) is the logical limit to put per address per year. Otherwise, the customer should go to a freaking store and get one.

 

[Invincible Sugar]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

uhh, or even a human employee with even the tiny bit of reason and authority to say "this is weird, I shouldn't fulfill this order". someone is fulfilling the orders, its not just magic that these get shipped out.

Exactly! I'm in that T-Mobile Discord server, I witnessed the conversations over weeks as this has built up and observations from the way they were packed confirms these are not being sent out by an automated system a human being is picking and packing these which also blows my mind that no one would say anything when this is the 85th package they've sent today to the same address.

 

T-Mobile is not Amazon, they don't have thousands of people packing these things. I would be surprised if there's more than a few dozen people sending all of these packages.

[Invincible Sugar]

3 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

This is stupid. Did really nobody check? A free sim for each member of the average household (3-4 people) is the logical limit to put per address.

 

Apparently not. My guess is that the people picking and packing these packages just don't get paid enough to care, I don't see how you could possibly send 20 or more packages to the same address back to back with the same contents and not say something...

[Invincible Sugar]

Additional photos not in article linked as source, courtesy of T-Mobile discord server:

 

 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

4 minutes ago, Invincible Sugar said:

Additional photos not in article linked as source, courtesy of T-Mobile discord server:

 

 

 

Why would they ship SIM cards in boxes with UN3091 markings... odd.  

[Needfuldoer]

19 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Why would they ship SIM cards in boxes with UN3091 markings... odd.  

They probably order those pre-printed boxes by the shipping container, and just use them for everything. Order a new phone with a battery? You get that box. Order several SIM kits? They come in that box.

 

The extra postage must be offset by the labor savings. (No time wasted on "which box is the most efficient", the process is streamlined down to "use that box".)

[WereCat]

She wanted to play The Sims but accidentally ordered SIM cards 

[Invincible Sugar]

28 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Why would they ship SIM cards in boxes with UN3091 markings... odd.  

As someone else stated The battery warning label is printed on the box and probably as standard practice all of their boxes have it since most things are going to be sending would need that. I don't think it actually violates any rules to include it when it's not necessary...

 

Also, it was originally speculated that they were arriving in boxes in addition to envelopes because so many were ordered that they ran out of envelopes but it turns out that's not the case, although this isn't mentioned in the article it was discussed in the Discord server that most of the boxes contained and unaddressed envelope along with air cushions. Why? We don't know, apparently Sprint / T-Mobile just likes wasting packaging materials since these were the exact same envelopes pictured just in a box with the label on the box instead of the envelope.