I made an order of five smartphones over the phone from T-mobile on May 29th, and received them on June 5th, and then ported phone numbers from Verizon to T-mobile on June 7th. When I made an order on May 29th, a CSR of T-mobile told me that I needed to activate those phones when I actually received them, and then I also needed to request phone number porting or transfer when I activated them. However, when I made a phone call to T-mobile in order to activate them on June 7th, I found that they were already activated on May 30th with T-mobile assigned temporary numbers. Problem is, I needed to pay the bill for the period of May 30th to June 6th, during which those phones were on a UPS truck.
Is this normal? I mean, when customers made orders online or over the phone, do service providers like T-mobile activate them first and then charge customers for the shipping period of around a week? It's just around $60, but it made feel bad. Why do customers need to pay even when they don't have the phones yet?