FCC gets 1,600 complaints; users blast "deceptive advertising aimed at seniors."
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T-Mobile users enraged as “Un-carrier” breaks promise to never raise prices
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/s, hopefully? Because what you said isn't what the advertising implied.
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Added the /s.
EDIT: I intended this to be silly, not insulting, but I obviously failed. I understand why people can't tell sarcasm on an online post, I just mistakenly assumed people knew enough about my post history to know I wouldn't side with an immoral corporation over consumers. It's hard to keep track of where everyone stands on things. Thanks for the grace!
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I've seen other claims that this was targetted at seniors but don't see any reason why they think that. It affected lots of other plans.
"Price Lock" feels like a lie though. Their terms read more like take it or leave it.
"Price Lock" feels like a lie though. Their terms read more like take it or leave it.
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I'm on an old Simple Choice promo plan (2 lines, unlimited talk/text/data, $100/mo), with a third line added through a This One's On Us promo. Still not sure how I managed to evade these price increases. I've been paying the same price for at least the last 10 years.
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Save even more with the same carrier with a pre-paid service. I pay $9/line/month + $2 / GB shared in a pool using US Mobile (MVNO on Verizon network).
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I appreciate you adding it regardless. Sarcasm detection has become harder on the modern Internet due to people saying all sorts of insane shit whole-cloth. That isn't your fault, but it does mean people have lower tolerance for this than they used to.
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Nah. There were plans for 55+ included in this, but it definitely was not exclusive to them. T-Mobile gave the Price Lock Guarantee pretty broadly across all their plans for quite a while.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Praefectus
Especially since T-Mobile has honored this in the past. I had a plan that was 15-20 years old, and the price hadn't changed in that time. When I added data, the rep had to give me a new plan, because my old one no longer existed to add data to it.
Essentially, they had me on a fixed, orphaned recurring charge, but had no idea where that charge came from.
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I am shocked - shocked! - that a telecommunications company is acting shady, duplicitous, and refusing to honor past agreements.
Well not that shocked.
Well not that shocked.
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The fact that the people interviewed for the article are sticking with t-mobile shows why they did this. By being allowed to buy one of their biggest competitors in the Sprint merger, they don't have competition to keep their prices lower.
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I dread the day that T-Mobile finishes acquiring US Cellular. We've had really good service with them, and reading about T-Mobile's price "changes" makes me a bit upset. We'll need to pay extra special attention to their contract verbiage.
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AmanoJyaku
Ars Praefectus
Preventing identity fraud, and determining credit risk. The credit risk issue can easily be circumvented by paying for your stuff up front.
The identity fraud would be useful, if T-Mobile could be trusted to secure data.
Just say "no".
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And those "$15 a month iPhone" plans are consumer loans.
You can sometimes put down an advance deposit to get out of a credit check to establish service, which I recommend you do just to avoid giving them your SSN. Same thing with power or gas.
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A service with fixed price in perpetuity is a ridiculous offer. Don't know what the company was thinking. Nor anyone who believed the offer.
I'm in Europe, and apologize for my ignorance of American law.
My own broadband price will increase next month for the first time since I subscribed over ten years ago. The hike is 1.90€. And the law stipulates that every price increase entitles the subscriber to cancel their subscription penalty free.
I'm in Europe, and apologize for my ignorance of American law.
My own broadband price will increase next month for the first time since I subscribed over ten years ago. The hike is 1.90€. And the law stipulates that every price increase entitles the subscriber to cancel their subscription penalty free.
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Do everything possible to keep it. newer plans do away with so many features, like voicemail to transcript, and put it on their "Premium options" to milk every penny from you.
I regret so much having to change to the "magenta" plan.
Regardless, all this sounds like that Portlandia sketch.
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That particular plan is, but the price bump affected anyone on a "Magenta____" plan. I'm on a Magenta military plan and we got a 2 dollar per line price bump. I would leave to send a message but I have a large family plan and after some research I'm struggling to find anything that's not more expensive with what I'm currently paying without having to make compromises. Between that and the hassle of coordinating moving everyone over (we're spread out over three states)...t-mobile kinda has us by the short hairs.
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For those looking to change, Visible has worked well for me for a couple of years. For $25/month it provides unlimited talk, text, and data. It is a Verizon subsidiary and uses their cell resources.
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"Following agency policy, the FCC declined to say if it is investigating the price increases."
Or in other words, following FCC policy the FCC declined to admit that it sucks at its primary job function.
Which translates to, "We haven't received our bribe offer from T-Mobile yet."
Or in other words, following FCC policy the FCC declined to admit that it sucks at its primary job function.
Which translates to, "We haven't received our bribe offer from T-Mobile yet."
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I had a feeling when John Legere left this shit would happen. He's the one who implemented the all fees included bill with no surprises and the price lock. Their customer numbers grew like crazy after that. He seemed to get what people wanted. Now they're just like the other carriers unfortunately.
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Switched our three lines from T-Mobile to T-Mobile-owned Mint (MVNO that uses T-Mobile's network)... figure I've probably got only a year or two before the enshitification fully takes hold there, too. But I'll take the 60% price cut while it lasts.
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Seems you simply haven't been paying attention. Here's just three such notable examples:
L.L. Bean just made a drastic cut to its legendary return policy
In a letter to customers, L.L. Bean announced it will change its lifetime "satisfaction guaranteed" warranty to cover one year only.
REI changes famous return policy, limiting lifetime warranty to one year
In his two and a half years working at REI, the craziest things Steve Smith ever saw returned were food wrappers.
Costco's generous return policy is ripe for abuse — here's what could happen if shoppers take it too far
Costco is known for having a very generous returns policy. Members can return almost any product at any time if they are not satisfied with it. It is up to the discretion of a store manager to make a decision on whether to process a return, which can be confusing for some shoppers.
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I am also absolutely livid about this, particularly about the part where they refuse to refund me, and was given the same runaround from the idiots at T-Mobile::
I got excuses almost exactly like this one “it was noted that notification of cancellation from your end came after the cancellation had already been processed, which does not meet the terms and conditions set forth for the Un-contract promise,"
I also filed an FCC complaint and a CC chargeback. The worst part of this mess is that once you cancel your account you can’t get into your dashboard on the website anymore and can’t pull any prior bills or documentation. They don’t tell you about any of this until you port your numbers out and suddenly you’re unable to login. It’s almost like they don’t want to provide you with any possible documentation that you could use to enforce your contractual rights…
It’s clear they are using every trick in the book to hide behind bureaucratic process technicalities in avoiding refunding their customers. These people are scum
I got excuses almost exactly like this one “it was noted that notification of cancellation from your end came after the cancellation had already been processed, which does not meet the terms and conditions set forth for the Un-contract promise,"
I also filed an FCC complaint and a CC chargeback. The worst part of this mess is that once you cancel your account you can’t get into your dashboard on the website anymore and can’t pull any prior bills or documentation. They don’t tell you about any of this until you port your numbers out and suddenly you’re unable to login. It’s almost like they don’t want to provide you with any possible documentation that you could use to enforce your contractual rights…
It’s clear they are using every trick in the book to hide behind bureaucratic process technicalities in avoiding refunding their customers. These people are scum
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Wait… so T-Mobile can change their prices immediately without 60 days notice, but to get their uncontract promise you have to give them 60 days? 
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These aren't the price hikes you think they are. Our merger lowered prices across the board.
Desperate Jedi hand wave
Desperate Jedi hand wave
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A highly upvoted comment from the Legere leaving/T-mobile sprint merger thread:
Lol. Seemed like everyone at the time was excited to see the number of cellular carriers shrink from 4 to 3. It’s amazing how easily brainwashed people are by corporate propaganda that was singing the praises of the merger at the time. Most Ars commenters were quick to lose sight of the consequences.
I’ll never understand it though. T-mobile was expanding rapidly even without spending billions on another company, we finally had some great price competition. And then sprint wants to sell clearly because they didn’t want to compete. It’s not that they were unprofitable. It’s that margins were too low for masayoshi son, who owned sprint at the time. Just ridiculous people fell for the hype.
Lol. Seemed like everyone at the time was excited to see the number of cellular carriers shrink from 4 to 3. It’s amazing how easily brainwashed people are by corporate propaganda that was singing the praises of the merger at the time. Most Ars commenters were quick to lose sight of the consequences.
I’ll never understand it though. T-mobile was expanding rapidly even without spending billions on another company, we finally had some great price competition. And then sprint wants to sell clearly because they didn’t want to compete. It’s not that they were unprofitable. It’s that margins were too low for masayoshi son, who owned sprint at the time. Just ridiculous people fell for the hype.
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To be entirely fair, Sprint was pretty much done for anyway. There was a popular school of thought that it would be better for T-Mo to gain their assets and put them on equal footing to AT&T and Verizon than to have them go to bankruptcy auction and have AT&T and Verizon snap up some portion of their assets - or worse, to have AT&T or Verizon snap them up entirely.
I'm still not sure that point of view was entirely wrong, but the problem with putting the company on equal footing to AT&T and Verizon is that they take it as license to behave like AT&T and Verizon. Power corrupts.
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