T-Mobile killed our account!
UPDATE: After taking the suggestion from "desterpot" to use the T-Mobile for business site I explained the problem. This person may have been corporate level...but she understood the problem and got IT/tech support on it. Within a few hours they knew they could give us back the phone number and this was accomplished this evening. Tech support said that the error occurred at the first T-mobile store where the associate had the acct open and was probably distracted or another associate used the computer with my brother's info up and opened a new acct on it. The phone number assigned at that time is not even familiar to us because even if they assigned it he didn't have a sim card for it and the phone number never worked, he could not dial out either. This is their story today. What we wanted was the number restored and that was accomplished. We still have account issues which I'll deal with Monday when I'm back in my brother's location. The person from the T-Mobile for Business site is supposed to touch base with me tomorrow to be sure we've progressed toward resolution. Thank you all for your suggestions!
Took my brother into a store for help with his voice mail (it was speaking to him in a foreign language). After about 40 minutes they said it was fixed and we went home. I dropped him off (he's a senior and disabled veteran) and assumed all was good. Found out today that the phone hasn't worked since....No network access! I hauled him over to t-mobile store (a different one) and found out that his account was closed! He's had that phone number over 30 years! The best they could do was give us a new account with a new phone number! The old number is "on hold" but we could not get it back....I'm still hoping. The guy at the store today was wonderful, at least my brother can make calls but how do we escalate this! He wants his number back at a minimum!