Thanks for Nothing, T-Mobile

It took a friend's invitation to join Dodgeball for me to realize that text messaging on my blackberry had gone horribly, horribly wrong!  I have had a dodgeball account for a year or so....and password forgetfulness had set in.  All of my attempts to find my password failed.  I finally gave them my mobile number and the system tried to send me a text message with my password....I never received it. 

After an excruciating phone call with T-Mobile, where they asked me for my company's Tax ID No. (like I have that lying around- even during tax season, that is a ridiculous piece of information for me to carry around).  I  went into my files, found my W2, and gave it to them- wrong number, he said.  So how am I supposed to keep track of information like this?  What if I worked for a company with a complicated ownership structure- who can keep ticker symbols  straight, much less tax ID numbers at some companies.  The rep even had the gall to explain to me what a tax ID number is.   

After they were "unable to verify my account" the rep said we could proceed with troubleshooting, though he was not "200% sure they could fix my problem without verifying what phone you are using."  Leaving out the idea that I would have settled for 100% sure (is that 50% as sure as they are about their own names?), I was disappointed to hear that we could continue only if they could call me on a landline.  Yeah, right- who has a landline anymore?  So 5 years ago (that's about the last time I had a landline).  Game over on that call.

I ended up remembering that the IM client on my phone was doing weird things, (even though I never, ever use it) and so I went into the application permissions settings and denied all of its privileges.  One system reset later, and I have text messaging again (though I suspect this is not the elegant solution to this problem).