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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

I am very impressed that my Cricket bill is what they say it would be -- inclusive of taxes even. They say $25, $25 is what my card is actually charged, total! I almost couldn't believe it until it happened over and over again.

So it's not actually industry-wide... and hopefully even serves as a differentiator?

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Most prepaid vendors afaik seem to offer a tax-included price - two examples are Visible and Mint.

Why are prepaid carriers so much better then traditional ones, it seems? I've been on Metro for years, service is identical to T-Mobile at a fraction of the cost with no hidden fees.

Competition. You can switch to anyone else easily when it's prepaid with no contract durations getting in the way, so they have to behave well to keep your business. I've been on AT&T prepaid for years at 30/month with only sales tax on top of that.

They are not perfect though - roaming tends to not be available and they can get deprioritized more than the post-paid plans, sometimes painfully so; I was once outside an Ikea trying to notify them to bring out my order and the deprioritization was so bad that I had to walk into the store and use its wifi to notify them to bring out the order. Most prepaid companies are now owned by the primary carriers in the US afaict: Metro by T-Mobile, Visible etc. by Verizon, and Cricket by AT&T, for e.g.

The weirdest thing is that Metro is literally 100% owned by T-Mobile. And Cricket by AT&T. Just different business models.

Market segmentation.

Mint doesn't include fees in the advertised price.

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