T-Mobile is giving postpaid customers a free share of stock
recode.net
recode.net
So T-Mobile shares are currently going for $43~. I could earn over $4k each year from referrals?
Edit: looks like you need to know the persons name and number of who you are referring. No Adwords campaign after all.
This is kinda neat, and if any friends of mine express independently express interest in switching to T-Mobile, I suppose I'll bring this up and make a little cash (I'm a current customer), but don't think this is going to be a huge deal. I'm sure T-Mobile knows this, and are counting on the nice PR of this announcement as much as its actual effectiveness in signing up new subscribers.
Personally, 3 years ago I switched my whole family from AT&T to T-Mobile because of AT&T's constant price gouging and the extra $100/yr they wanted to collect in additional "Administrative Fees" that they added to my account and claimed it wasn't a materially adverse change to the contract. I'm not paying less than I was with AT&T because I usually buy new phones every time I pay one off (with some exceptions), but I'm much happier with a company that doesn't gouge me, is more transparent (they've raised rates on unlimited data, but they didn't beat around the bush about why they did it), and with better customer service (I have a T-Mobile @Work account, to be fair, so I get better service than normal personal accounts).
What do you mean? Did you unfriend 20 people in exchange for Burger King giving you a burger? Or, did you unfriend 20 people because they were trying to get you to go buy a burger?
It depends on how you do it. Some referral (and affiliate) programs explicitly forbid you from advertising your referral code or affiliate link (Uber is an example, they'll shut your account down if they find you advertising your referral code on the internet). Others allow to advertise on AdWords/Facebook/Whatever, the problem is that many people don't have the ability to quickly calculate a cost/referral to make advertising work. You could gamble on spending and assume someone uses your link, but you might end up wasting your spend.
Lately I've been seeing people actually handing out Lyft business cards with codes outside conventions, was wondering if those were actual employees or just really motivated referrers.
[1] my reading of the fine print.
Loyal3 also does small IPOs. This was supposed to be a service for startups, sort of the next step after Kickstarter. But nobody seems to be using it. Loyal3's IPO sales have been small pieces of big IPOs, such as GoPro and Square. The problem is getting enough attention that people buy stock in your unknown company.
Then again, with the cell phones I grew up on it was a miracle that they worked at all. So I don't get terribly upset when I don't have coverage on some forest road in the Cascade mountains. To me, Tmo is like owning an electric car. "But what about those drives to L. A. that one would think from talking to me I do every other week, but is really only twice a year?" Rent a car, keep the gas car you already own, whatever, there are mitigations. Absolutely, positively have to have coverage on every square inch of the planet? Rent a sat phone, buy an InReach or SPOT. Or go with Verizon and put up with higher prices and poor customer service every single day for functionality you'll use twice a year. It's just what one is willing to trade. I'll trade coverage for a company that doesn't piss me off every time I have to deal with them, as coverage is a minor consideration for me, and I'd rather do without a phone than deal with Verizon. For others, coverage is important enough to put up with other pain points.
OTOH, it does kind of suck that smack in the middle of Seattle's SODO area I don't have coverage in the building in which I work. OTOOH, Tmo has WiFi calling so it's not that big of a deal.
(EDIT: actually read TFA. "Other carriers want to screw you, Legere says with his typical brashness, while T-Mobile is offering dinner and a movie." Coverage be damned, I'd almost give them money just to get a choice quote from Legere once in a while.)
"T-Mobile customers saw an LTE signal 81 percent of the the time in the fourth quarter of last year, just a bit less than what AT&T delivered. Yes, both still lag behind Verizon (87 percent), but it’s a level of saturation that lets them claim nationwide reliability."
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/t-mobiles-finally-good-enough-t...
They're within striking distance these days.
Can't argue that in the main that's true, unfortunately due to construction where I am downtown my T-Mobile service has dropped off considerably and it's useless where I spend my weekends. They've also shifted customer policy recently and don't try as hard to retain customers - in my case refusing to refund a couple of months of excess billing that was their fault. Previous mistakes were corrected with apologies that bordered on the obsequious.
Needless to say I won't be a TMO customer much longer. But I'll take a free share of stock on the way out.
So it's like $43 bucks for free.
Since you did not hold this stock for more than 1 year, you will be taxed at regular income so if we assume a 30% tax, then you will be left with $30.18.
[1] As the nandhp points out below, T-Mobile is issuing these shares exclusively through LOYAL3 and selling your share within 1 year will be fee-free.
> It costs nothing to get your shares or set up an account with T-Mobile’s brokerage partner, LOYAL3, and there are absolutely no fees to get or sell your share this year – and no fee to maintain your account as long as you’re an active customer.
https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/un-carrier-11.h...
There's more details in the prospectus:
> No charge for sales of Shares within 12 months after receipt. Beginning 12 months after you receive your last Stock Up Reward, LOYAL3 may impose a sales charge of up to $5.00 per transaction
https://d1mfhr91ibccjl.cloudfront.net/docs/statler/prospectu...
Taxes, of course, are inescapable.
Could this be a similar measure to defend against a majority voter controlling the company?
An interesting theory, it would depend on whether said stock has any voting rights or not. Just because I have a share in a company doesn't mean I have any say, that all depends on the class of stock I have. Of course, TMUS has been under constant pressure from their majority owner (DT) and there's been constant rumors of sale (though DT seems to be happy with TMUS at this point, and said rumors have died down) - so I wouldn't be surprised if this was hedging a bet against DT (though I couldn't say how effective this could be).
It can't get more "old inflexible heavy carrier"-y than that. Bandwidth caps. Trying to push Netflix and Google Video out of the network for promoting their on in-house service (net neutrality? Telekom hates it.)
They have problems on the American market, lost a lot of money there, so they try hard to create a "different" image.
> Bandwidth caps. Trying to push Netflix and Google Video out of the network for promoting their on in-house service
T-Mobile US actually gives you "free" low-quality Netflix and YouTube video streaming, without counting that against a subscribers data limit. http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html
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T-Mobile US isn't the only example of this. "Virgin Mobile USA" is just a brand name slapped on prepaid Sprint phones. Besides licensing the brand, there has been no affiliation between Virgin Group UK and Sprint "Virgin Mobile USA" for many years now.
It's nice getting the free data, but this is shoehorning in the 'nice' parts of breaking net neutrality before the other shoe drops.
I agree that this weaker version of zero-rating is against Net Neutrality tenets.
That and one of the highest data bundles (12GB) in the Netherlands, 300 minutes of EU calling etc for ~28€ makes for an incredible good experience.
For me, their different image has succeeded.
Postpaid contracts tend to offer a large variety of services and options. The bill is a direct result of the usage during that billing period, including fees/costs for excessive usage.
Prepaid contracts tend to offer a minimal amount of services that are paid up-front. If customer usage exceeds what they paid for, the service is cut off. The carrier has no duty to provide service beyond what the contract states, and indeed the point is to remove that liability from the customer as well.
Postpaid is not better for the consumer, and prepaid is not better than the company.
Postpaid billing generally has a much larger range of services and features that are billed depending on usage, not contract.
Edit: All you downvoting me - I've been a T-Mobile customer since there's T-Mobile in California, i.e. way more than a decade, but many of my friends are switching away as all this time, they've had the worst coverage, and don't care to improve it! They even decline CellSpot for lousy reasons!