You also have to thank T-Mobile. That's the only sane carrier in the US who lets you buy plans without bundled phone loans, i.e. if you don't need to borrow $500 for a phone you just get a plan without loan payments rolled in.
In short, they try to neuter the no-contract option in any way they can. I am actively regretting it right now, and the only upside is that I'm looking for a different carrier, and I don't have to worry about early-cancellation fees.
What do you mean, you can't sign up for a contract? They're actively turning down more money for the same service?
shrug That's what they told me-- my account would be flagged and I wouldn't be allowed to sign up for a contract with them ever again once I went the no-contract route. It didn't make any sense to me at the time, and still doesn't, except for cynically suspecting that it was a scare-tactic to chase me back to a contract option.
I'm curious if anybody knows of any legitimate reasons why this would be their policy.
That said, when there are hundreds of people who could take your call, don't be afraid to just hang up and roll the dice on someone else. 50% of reps are below average. if you're pretty sure you're a standard deviation or two off center, just call back.
However, another friend of mine did the same thing, then decided he wanted to go back on contract. He called them asking for it and, when they declined, said he wanted to cancel and go for another provider. They routed him off to the retention department who apparently do have the authority to get him back on the contract plan and did so with minimal fuss. Of course, YMMV, but it worked out just fine for him. In the meantime, I'm still saving money over two years by going non-contract.
Furthermore, if you walk into the store, they also have an extended payment plan for your phone, thus you can get a Contract Free plan, which will save you $20 a month, for example Even More Plus 500 (Unlimited Data, Unlimited Text, Nights, Weekends, and 500 minutes) for $59.99 (equiv contract plan is $79.99) a month. Then they have an extended payment plan for your phone where you can pay $20 a month with 0% interest and no fees until your phone is paid off, thus giving the best of both worlds, no contract, no big upfront costs for phone, and once your phone is paid off you don't have that added cost per month. Really excellent and saves you around $400 - $1000 versus a contract.
I called them up and said they had better refund it. They said it was standard policy where there was no contract. I pointed out that I brought my phone to them, the account was profitable from the moment it was opened, and that it would make for a more than usually compelling internet consumer tantrum. I got a crawling apology and a month of free service to substantiate it.
I pay $70 at the beginning of each month. I get unlimited data and have never hit the 600/mo. minute limit, if I did the next rung of the plan is $75 or $77. It's reasonable and more importantly, predictable.
Almost nobody I talked to had any idea what was going on or what they were talking about. I was billed for all kinds of crazy stuff I never signed up for, and I have been billed an activation fee of ~$120 for three months running. I'm also being billed for phone insurance I've cancelled at least four times.
I want to state that every phone rep I've talked to has been unfailingly polite, which is marginally nicer but doesn't fix any of my problems. Bad but obsequious customer service is still bad customer service.
I've since been told not to bother with T-Mobile's phone system; apparently walking into a T-Mobile store is a much less stressful and faster way of dealing with them. I plan on trying that, if I ever feel the need to contact them again.
I keep hearing that T-Mobile is #2 in customer satisfaction, and I wonder how. Looking at changing providers, I worry that other providers are actually that much worse. That, or that my experience is dragging down the average that's keeping T-Mobile out of the #1 spot. :)
(1) Cool phone! (2) Sure, here you go.
I'm paying about $20/month less than I did on my AT&T/iPhone plan. It's nice.
Also what happens if I find out tmobile doesn't work well in my area? Is there a return policy?
If you don't like it, then just throw out the sim card and don't refill your account. ;)
Can you elaborate on this, specifically what extra fees or services they charged you for?
With contract, I had (iirc) 200 SMSes a month; going no-contract I have to pay $10/mo. for the smallest text plan they offer. I don't get a lot of texts, the few freebies were plenty for the little bit I used.
Looking back at my data plan, I now realize they've grandfathered in my data plan on my line at the previous rate ($25/mo) rather than the new rate ($30/mo) which they told me that they would not be able to do-- still a screwup, but one in my favor this time. :) I just hadn't looked at that part of the bill, so that's one that I thought had gone up, but hadn't
Additionally, there's the phone insurance I'm still being billed for-- it's $4 a month now, but I'm so sick of fighting with them that I'll try one more time, but I'll probably just keep paying it until I go with someone else.
The SMS problem i worked around with sms->email services. and can't wait to have a solid SIP client on the phone so i can also ditch the call problem :)
They apparently have legendarily bad customer service though.
On the subject, does anyone know if there are any high end sprint targeted phones that are exploitable to the point of being able to change whatever UMTS/WCDMA uses for identifying numbers that you might be able to convince a hardware specific MVNO like this to enroll a phone that wasn't their own?