Is T-Mobile blocking Twitter?

*Original Photo by FlemishDreams. Mash up by Jon Ray.

As of late, I’ve become a Twitter-holic and have averaged around 20-30 Twitter messages a day via SMS on my T-mobile phone. The last music video I produced this past weekend, I live Tweeted the entire process and received an onslaught of referrals to my blog from Twitter. Actually, Twitter is probably one of the biggest referrers of unique readers to this blog. About 24 hours ago, I began getting this message whenever I tried to send an SMS update to Twitter:

Service is temporarily down. Please, try again later.

I didn’t think much of this message until I saw this post over at TechCrunch. It links out to several other blogs and forums that claim T-Mobile is preventing its customers from using the Twitter service. One customer sent out an email to T-Mobile after their customer service representative told her “T-Mobile does not support third party message services and sometimes you may be able to use them because of a bug in your system…t-mobile system caught up with the bug and that you shouldn’t expect to be able to use the Twitter service any longer from T-Mobile.”

I couldn’t even get an answer from T-Mobile’s customer service department, because they had no idea what Twitter was and why it might have been blocked. In a lackluster attempt to answer my questions, the representative did a quick search engine search to see if she could find any further information. She then read me this quote, which is from an email that was supposedly sent out by Marianne Maestas, of the Executive Customer Relations department at T-Mobile:

…Twitter is not an authorized third-party service provider, and therefore you are not able to utilize service from this provider any longer…. T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation.

I chuckled, as I had already read that over at GetSatisfaction and while, it had not been officially confirmed, I found it funny (and sad) that this T-Mobile representative decided to quote it to me in answer of my question, when she had no idea if it was a legitimate email from her boss. I recorded the phone call, but decided not to post it because I didn’t ask her permission before hand.

Needless to say, I am furious! I was just getting into the whole Twitter thing and now my micro blog world is coming tumbling down because T-Mobile has decided that they can control the content that I receive and send on my phone. I can’t help but wonder who on T-Mobile’s executive staff thought that this would go unnoticed? Why would anyone over there think that blocking content on my phone was a good idea?

Anyhow, I’m curious to see where this leads and how T-Mobile is going to compensate its loyal customers (6 years) for this HUGE inconvenience. I’ve been looking long and hard at the iPhone, perhaps this is enough reason for me to take the plunge and switch to AT&T. Are you having issues with your T-Mobile phone accessing Twitter? How has your customer service experience differed from mine? Has anyone from T-Mobile contacted you with further information? Share it in the comments section.

T-Mobile I’m Mad at YOU!

UPDATE: Twitter is now reporting this:

We’ve been tracking a missed connection between T-Mobile and Twitter for the past few days. If you’re a T-Mobile customer using Twitter in the United States over our shortcode 40404, you may see intermittent failures (both with sending and receiving updates). We’re working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience!

Update (12/15 3p): We’re still working on this and believe it to be a technical issue happening between T-Mobile and the folks who help run our text messaging. At this time we do not believe it to be a policy issue (as has been speculated). We’re hoping for a resolution soon and will let you know when we know more.

So, perhaps T-Mobile isn’t really blocking Twitter, even though it sounds like they feel they could if they wanted to. Regardless, I think T-Mobile could have been a little more helpful on the customer service side of this thing and tried to figure out what was happening and give me the above message, instead of me having to search for it. No one likes having Terms of Service legal jargon thrown in their face as a reply to a legitimate concern from a long term customer. Tsk. Tsk. T-Mobile. Tsk. Tsk. Let’s hope you guys get your act together, because if Justine gets any more convincing, I might join the iPhone army.

UPDATE: Twitter seems to be working again with my T-Mobile phone. Hurray!

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