T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans

arstechnica.com

179 pointsmfiguiere118 comments

How is this even remotely legal?

I'm genuinely asking. They must have consulted with lawyers and believe it is legal.

But even if their TOS say they reserve the right to change anyone's plan at any time... that seems like one of those clauses that judges always strike down.

This is just flat-out providing a different service than you contracted for. This is like if I order a $200 SSD from Amazon and instead they ship me a $300 SSD and charge me $300, and there are no returns if I don't cancel the order before it's fulfilled.

I don't understand how this is legal. So I genuinely want to know:

1) Is this actually legal? If so, why haven't laws been passed against this kind of corporate bait-and-switch behavior?

2) Is it illegal but just doesn't get enforced? If so, why not?

3) It is illegal, and there will probably be a class action suit, but T-Mobile has calculated they'll still make more profit including a settlement? In which case, why aren't settlements more punitive?

> I don't understand how this is legal.

It's presumably laid out in the contract that their users sign. IANAL but I understand contract law gives wide latitude for parties to make agreements to do things which are generally legal.

One could imagine a legal regime that prohibited price or service changes in otherwise-legal contracts. Of course, that also might not be ideal. For example: a vendor used by the provider suddenly changes the capabilities of a piece of equipment such that the original service sold by the provider can no longer be provided at any price. What everybody wants in that scenario is for you to be seamlessly moved to the closest reasonable alternative, not for your service to automatically terminate. Similarly, most people will gripe about a $10/mo change in price, but against the likely alternative of automatic cancellation, the increased fee is what _most_ people will prefer.

And again, 100% of them will have agreed to this exception-handling clause when they signed up.

> This is like if I order a $200 SSD from Amazon and instead they ship me a $300 SSD and charge me $300, and there are no returns if I don't cancel the order before it's fulfilled.

There is a material difference in changing prices (say) 5 years after a contract was signed and ordering a specific item at a specific price a week or two earlier. IANAL but I believe the ordering of goods via the Internet is in fact covered by different laws in a way that services are not. Which again, makes some sense given that service contracts frequently have a term of "forever," during which time everything about the world can change. (Pretty sure my current phone contract was signed over 10 years ago. I'm glad they changed my plan to let me use LTE, for example.)

But contact law also strikes down contact provisions all the time.

Generally speaking, contracts between two parties who know what they're doing, with lawyers, are pretty iron-clad.

But TOS with consumers are not. Unreasonable/abusive TOS clauses are struck down quite frequently. Things like consumer protection laws supersede anything in a TOS.

And consumer protection laws are precisely the kind of thing meant to stop companies from playing bait-and-switch with consumers like this.

Absolutely agree re: abusive TOS clauses. My question is this: if you were on a panel evaluating whether it's more abusive to a) migrate customers to a plan that's $10 more or b) end their service because the vendor no longer offers that service, which would you vote for?

Note that consumer panels will have less ability to force a vendor to set prices or provide specific services, so there will not be the third option of c) force the vendor to continue providing the service at the contracted price.

That's why in Europe abusive and surprising (to an informed party) terms and condiations are invalid. Quite aome legal disputes around those so.

Curious -- how do services raise prices? Is the presumption that a carrier has to give notice, then the user has to opt in or their service automatically terminates?

> in Europe abusive and surprising (to an informed party) terms and condiations

It can't be surprising to any informed party that prices change. Especially right now, it cannot be argued in good faith that a price increase was surprising to anyone.

Does the user have to opt in each time the service changes (for ex if 2G service gets dropped)? Who decides what changes require a user's approval?

In the EU they send a letter informing of price change and give you the right of cancellation except for rate rises in line with the retail price index or inflation which are included in the contract. Truly fixed price contracts are advertised as such, I have one for my broadband, can only be withdrawn by the vendor.

A lot of these older plans were marketed as no contract plans. That was tmobiles whole thing for a while. No more contracts. Obviously there still is via terms and such but it’s a pretty gray area I’m sure lawyers would be willing to argue in court. They also claimed prices would never go up (on your plan).

"No contract" in the telco world means no minimum length clauses (as opposed to something like a "12 month contract" plan, where you legally agree to stay on the plan for at least one year), it doesn't literally mean there isn't a contract.

Right but in the same way I can end the contract and walk away at any time, I would imagine it's totally kosher for T-Mobile to do the same. It's not like either party is locked in.

Sure, but "end the contract" doesn't mean "upgrade to a higher paying plan without consent".

I mean I can change to a more or less expensive plan by giving the carrier notice, I assume its fair for the carrier to do the same to me no? If you want to guarantee a price plan, sign a term contract.

Feels like customers want to have their cake and eat it: lock the carrier in, but have no obligations of their own.

> I can change to a more or less expensive plan by giving the carrier notice, I assume its fair for the carrier to do the same to me no?

No.

Would you feel the same if the landlord of your month-to-month rental upgraded you to a more expensive house?

Sure they can increase the rent, and you can move somewhere else, but there is baseline a expectation that the house you rented will not change.

> Would you feel the same if the landlord of your month-to-month rental upgraded you to a more expensive house?

I mean, if they renovated my unit or even the common areas, and told me I could stay at a higher rent I'd think that was just fine. It happened to me at least once already, come to think of it.

But yeah, they raised the rent on people without term commitments effective immediately, and anyone on a term contract could keep their old rate until it expired.

Again if you don't like the risk of this changing out from under you, sign a term contract, right?

I'm not saying they raise the rent on your current place (which is perfectly fine), I'm saying they move/upgrade you to a more expensive address that you've never seen before.

I mean we know this but do you think the average consumer knows this? They’re still locking people in two two year plans by use of the whole “free phone” or “upgrade” offers.

Can you share cases where TOS with consumers was struck down? Thanks very much.

If the user has changed phones (even keeping the same number) or has for instance begun using 5G (which wasn't available 5 years ago...tmo started rolling it out at the tail end of 2019), they're using a materially different product than they were originally contracted for, and have likely agreed to new terms. Not saying that isn't scammy or scummy, but just like you've changed the product you're using, they can change the product they're selling.

Older plans (pre-2022) should be under the "Un-Contract": https://www.t-mobile.com/news/press/uncontract-carrier-freed...

Notably "By contrast, the Un-contract is all give, no take. You can keep your existing Simple Choice plan and we won’t raise your rates. As part of this commitment, customers on existing Simple Choice promotional plans − like the Un-carrier’s ultra-popular 4 lines for $100 with up to 10 GB of 4G LTE data − can keep them for as long as they’re T-Mobile customers."

Seems like a shut-and-close case for a class action lawsuit. Whoever made the decision to push ahead with this seems to have missed some internal due diligence - or there's some tiny legal footnotes I'm missing.

T-Mobile forces customers into arbitration unless you've opted out. Probably straightforward to arbitrate based on terms, but I recommend filing an FCC complaint. Regulators light a fire.

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

Go to Phone > Billing (or go directly from here) https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/3600012...

Phone Issues: Advertised Rate

Text box content:

    T-Mobile is forcing me to upgrade my mobile plan even though I signed up with 
    their  advertised Price-Lock https://www.t-mobile.com/support/account/price- 
    lock

    There is no option to opt-out as of $today's_date. This is a violation of 
    my contract, and they are relying on the fact that most consumers do not have 
    enough knowledge/time to call in and argue with customer representatives for 
    hours. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-will-migrate- 
    customers-higher-cost-plans

    T-Mobile is also forcing customers who want to opt out and keep to their 
    current contracted plan to listen to an unsolicited sales pitch -- this may 
    violate telephone advertisement and spamming laws.

    While the company claims that customers can opt out, multiple customers have.    
    reported that phone reps refuse to allow opt-out when they call, which is in 
    general disingenuous behaviors. I believe that the FCC should force T-Mobile 
    to provide this option through email or an online menu.

FTC complaint can be made here: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

> T-Mobile forces customers into arbitration unless you've opted out. Probably straightforward to arbitrate based on terms, but I recommend filing an FCC complaint. Regulators light a fire

File an arbitration claim [1]. Complain to the FCC, and copy the FTC [2] as well as your state consumer affairs regulator [3]. (Ideally, send letters via mail.)

[1] https://apps.adr.org/SimpleFile/faces/SimpleFile.jsf

[2] https://www.ftc.gov/media/71268

[3] https://www.usa.gov/state-consumer

> There is no option to opt-out as of $today's_date

There actually is:

> Customers can opt out by contacting support after October 17th

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/174uelk/megathread...

I wonder if this is part of their anticipated legal defense. Oh, you can opt out! No problem! The fact that 90% of customers won't know that fact isn't our fault...

Arbitration is turning into a horror movie for many of these large companies. They thought it was a way to cut the cost of consumer litigation and get disputes settled in an environment that tends to be more corporate friendly. But that only worked when there were just a few claims against the company at a time. Once they started engaging in behavior that caused larger numbers of customers to want to sue, the arbitration fees, which are paid by the corporation, started adding up rapidly and made the entire thing far less attractive than a class action lawsuit and whatever small number of customers that opt out of the class.

I will guess that a class action is off the table because they imposed a mandatory binding arbitration clause (yup, https://www.t-mobile.com/responsibility/legal/terms-and-cond...). And forced binding arbitration is legal because the Supreme Court seems to be owned by corporations and billionaires.

I suppose we could file complaints with the FTC and the FCC, but I suspect it will not help. After all, they probably got thousands of complaints about Comcast, but that didn't prevent Comcast from taking over the media world.

T-Mobile used to be one of the better ones. But it was probably inevitable that they would succumb to the enshittification process that is devouring the corporate world.

Aren't the contracts now technically month-for-month, with the "contract" being the device payment agreement?

As they themselves weasel out of it: they're not "raising prices", they're "moving you to a newer plan with more benefits at a different cost".

T-Mobile also just changes plan details on the fly.

Eg, one day my account stopped being able to log in to Canada to use the Canadian data on my account.

Only changing plans fixed it

They promise not to increase the rate on your current plan and get around this by just changing the plan you're on vs increasing the rate of your current plan.

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/account/price-lock

> Price Lock is our guarantee that we won’t raise the price of your qualifying rate plan for new accounts. You can rest assured that T-Mobile won’t raise the price of your regular monthly rate plan price for current unlimited talk, text, and data on our network on Go5G Plus, Go5G Next, Go5G, Base Essentials, Essential Savings, Essentials, Magenta, MAX, 55+, Military, First Responder, Unlimited and Lite Home Internet, and Business Unlimited plans as long as you’re a T-Mobile customer and keep your plan. And customers don’t have to do anything to get in on this – everyone who activates after April 28, 2022, with an eligible plan gets Price Lock.

I'd be shocked if this wasn't planned out from the time they launched the plan.

Opt-out instructions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/174uelk/megathread...

Edit:

I called T-Mobile and they said they can't use the code until the 17th, and they'd send out a text message informing of the upcoming changes with the ability to opt out. Sounds really shady.

They lied to you. I opted out yesterday.

How did you ask them to do it?

I called and asked them to apply SOC code: grnoptout

They may play dumb so you may have to escalate.

Glad you managed to get it added on. I think I'll just switch to Google Fi if I have to start playing mind games.

Of course, the person you talked to may have lied to you and humored you to get you off the phone.

No I see it on my account. https://i.imgur.com/wWzlMfP.jpg

T-mobile has become super untrustworthy. Their support team now regularly lies in order to close the ticket.

Really disappointing as they used to be great years ago.

> "We are not raising the price of any of our plans; we are moving you to a newer plan with more benefits at a different cost."

This shouldn't be legal?

I'm not sure they can even show "more benefits".

Almost 25 years ago, Fucked Company did such a beautiful job of aggregating countless parallel stories as the dot-com bubble started to burst. It made it so easy to see what was going on in aggregate.

There’s an opportunity for the same sort of thing now, but tracking all the desperate scrambling for revenue as the “we’ll make money after the next 10x users, promise” loses its ground as a business model.

And when they started getting filtered out, they created a "luckedcompany" clone with a slightly different logo and string replaced any "fuck" into" luck" before presenting to the user.

I had thought lucked company was for positive announcements?

When PBS did a story on the site, they kept calling it something like "The Dot Com Deadpool" and would blur out "fucked" on the screen shots in the report. It was a source of sensible chuckles.

Even the memes from then still apply.

---

LOL @ priced out renters!

It's a new paradigm, and everybody who doesn't buy, now, will be priced out forever. Anybody who does buy will be rewarded with a lifetime of riches, as their property will continue its 20-30% yearly price appreciation.

Renters, and anybody born in a future generation, will not be able to afford a $10,000,000 starter home in 15 years. They will live in tent cities, and Hondas.

This asset bubble is different than all of the previous and other asset bubbles - it will never slow down, or pop. The gains are permanent.

Yep, and they have spin off boards from FC but they are all a shell of itself. It's interesting how it goes around again.

RoboForm auto-upgraded my "perpetual" license that I bought over 10 years ago and now it's in "read-only" mode (doesn't allow auto-fill or adding new passwords) unless I pay them a MONTHLY subscription AND it synced all my passwords to their server without my consent.

If you're on T-Mobile, you might want to consider Google Fi. According to this data prioritization guide, Google Fi gets the same quality of service as standard-tier T-Mobile plans (lower QCI values are better, and both are on QCI 6):

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

> QCI 6 is applied to all of T-Mobile's postpaid and prepaid plans (except for Essentials) and Google Fi which also has QCI 6 as well. This means if you want the absolute best from T-Mobile, you want to get a plan directly from them. Even their cheap $10 prepaid 1GB Connect plan has priority data.

Google Fi also gives you unlimited 5G / LTE data when roaming outside the US as well. For their unlimited plus plan, it looks to be on par with the T-Mobile magenta plan in terms of price.

https://fi.google.com/about/plans

Trusting something as important as my phone number to an organization as fickle as Google seems insane.

Agreed. Ten bucks says they'll sell off Fi within the next 10 years. See Google Domains sell off to Squarespace as a recent example.

And there is no telling who'll buy it... probably a company like Comcast / Xfinity which is already universally hated.

Why would they do that? Owning the connection between user and internet seems pertinent to Google's interests. Then, even a phone vendor like Apple can't block you from accessing core customer data like location, device id, etc.

Good point. Customer service is non-existent with Google as well.

Now that I think about it, my phone number has been on Google for more than 10 years with Google Voice.

It is amazing to me that the government continues to allow these mergers when time and time again it shows that the consumer end up paying more, not less.

It's because government is run by people from/with close ties to the businesses and take massive bribes that we quaintly call "campaign contributions" from them.

Any excuse to allow the mergers will be found because of that.

In a word, it's plutocracy.

Exactly this. Our leaders are directly compensated for supporting monopolies.

Absolutely. Didn't mean for my reply to make it seem like I was too naive to understand WHY it happens. Just amazed that it keeps happening and has happened for decades.

Next election you're going to be voting around one or two big potential issues like abortion or gun rights. As long as we keep focusing on these things the corporate class can buy whatever regulations they want.

Because when the company is talking to regulators, the conversation isn't about the benefits to the consumer, the conversation is how to word it so the consumer doesn't realize they're being fucked.

I continue to be amazed at how much abuse my fellow Americans take from their telcos.

I pay 13 EUR/4 wks (yes, German mobile operators are a bit slippery, too) for 3 GB + unlimited domestic talk and text. If I wanted to waste more time on my mobile, 20 GB would run around 30/4 wks.

Of course, this is with a paid-for handset. I’ve never had a contract over here.

What is the most economical, yet reliable way to receive (and occasionally send) SMSes on a US number while abroad, preferably with a way to transfer an existing US cell number in?

It's especially surprising when you consider that cheaper plans exist, probably using the same network you're on, and that changing carriers can be extremely simple.

I switched from T-Mobile 3 months ago (when they announced changes to the autopay discount) to Mint. My bill went from $60/mo to $180/yr (breaks down to $15/mo, and I think claiming something is $15/mo when it's actually $180/yr should be illegal, but that's an argument for another day). It's "only" a 5GB plan in comparison to whatever I had before, but my highest month so far has been 1.06GB.

Transferring took 15 minutes. It's the same network.

Sure, many people don't switch out of ignorance, but I know people for whom the reason is simply laziness (because I told them about the cheaper plans).

I switched to Mint for a year and had serious issues with deprioritization. I would get “E” service in the middle of a busy city, forcing me to repeatedly reboot my phone. Perhaps it was just a Pixel 7 issue?

Nope, Mint has a lesser priority on its network than the network operator’s own customers. It means that city is oversubscribed for available capacity and either that the carrier network isn’t being granted the necessary permits to build more capacity, and/or that the carrier network isn’t building sufficient capacity for MVNO demand.

E service? I don't think prioritization would switch you to Edge network.

T-mobile bought mint though, so I expect you’ll have a few years before having to move on.

Google Voice, which is free.

my brand relies on being able to use imessage

my brand being me

I wish there was some other way. It’s all one huge monopoly and nowhere else to go. So people have no choice other than bending over and getting f’d.

Some say to go with MVNO but I haven’t found one that would check all the boxes for me. The main networks tend to keep the “premium” features to 1st party customers and MVNO get either lower speed, less data or something.

I wish there was one MVNO that is 1. No BS, 2. Merges 2 or 3 major carriers under one. It could even be the same price..

in austria you get 40GB for 10€/month and for 20€ you get an unlimited data only sim.

> I continue to be amazed at how much abuse my fellow Americans take from their telcos.

> I pay 13 EUR/4 wks (yes, German mobile operators are a bit slippery, too) for 3 GB + unlimited domestic talk and text.

Many providers are on par with this in the US. Mint Mobile has 5gb and unlimited talk/text for $15/mo yearly. With PPP adjustment that might be slightly cheaper than your plan.

Now let's talk about how Germans are being abused with their gas prices.

Meanwhile, in India:

"After paying $12 for Reliance Jio’s new device, customers pay about $1.50 a month for unlimited voice calls and 14 gigabytes of data, a lower rate than services from rival carriers." (Source: https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/jio-bharat-phone-india-...)

Sigh.

I am tired of T-Mobile! Constantly getting breached and increasing prices while offering less! And being arrogant to call themselves "uncarrier." Yeah, you're not a carrier, but a scam!

Yeah so I signed up for T-Mobile Home Internet back in May under the $35/mo for life offer so long as I enrolled in autopay. So I did and the autopay goalppsts were moved to only allow checking/debit cards which is not going to happen. Cancelled autopay out of spite and switched to paper bills. This one is probably in violation of some fraudulent advertising law.

I say this because I also bought an Ooma Hub many years ago for my parents to replace their landline which was advertised as free for life. The company pretty quickly realized that things like 911 incur some fees so all future units included some $10-15/yr in fees, mine does not under the original agreement. This leads me to believe they did the math and figured $12 or so per year lost for a small % of customers is cheap insurance to avoid litigation costs for breaching the original agreement.

The one I might litigate over is T-Mobile has a scam shield service, that's fine except my Google Voice number shows up under my mom's name whenever I call T-Mobile customers, she's never been associated with this number. I just want the record removed. The company that mines the information for this is called FirstOrion and is not complying with repeated deletion requests filled out here https://privacy.firstorion.com/

Final straw for me.

Just called and canceled after 15+ years—shockingly, they were loath to actually provide the unlock code to port my number out. Switched to an MVNO on the same network that’s >50% cheaper.

13 years here, what MVNO did you pick? I'm looking at visible and US cellular.

9 years (and 2-3 lines) here, moving to Mint. Should have done this a long time ago...

I've got bad news for you.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/business/t-mobile-to-acquire-m...

I've been using Mint mobile for over a year and never had a problem with them, even during "peak" times. I expect the $30 a month I pay for unlimited everything is about to drastically change.

Be aware of data prioritization with MVNOs.

Mint uses the T-Mobile network but is one tier below T-mobile subscribers:

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

Lower QCI values are better.

QCI 7 is applied to T-Mobile’s Essentials plan as well as all MVNOs (besides Google Fi) such as Mint, Metro By T-Mobile, US Mobile GSM LTE, and Tello.

Do voice calls work (it is a "phone", after all)? Will my texts and emails get through with less than 5 minute latency? Will it jump to wifi when I'm at work or home? If so, that's fine.

I'm not trying to serve websites with my phone, I'm merely communicating.

And I have run out of energy for fighting an increasingly hostile service provider to bring my $130 bill (which used to be less than half that) back down to earth when it could be $15.

I went to Verizon (but they're not an MVNO), T-Mobile is cheap but Verizon is one of those legacy carriers that won't pull quick tricks on you. From time to time, Verizon will try to compete with T-Mobile and offer low priced tiers. Once you get into those, you can grandfather in and wait while the dust settles so you can decide who to move to for the next-generation network.

AT&T and Verizon had really sweet deals at the beggining of the year to pull alway some of TMO's customers but now that TMO raised their prices, ATT and VZW also unsweetened their plans.

TL;DR - T-Mobile grandfathers but you'll have to call T-Force every time to fight for it. AT&T & Verizon don't hassle their customers.

Verizon literally started charging a fee for people on grandfathered unlimited data plans. They pull tricks all the time.

Some of these price increases sound reasonable ($2-$3): https://tmo.report/2023/07/exclusive-verizon-is-once-again-i....

It’s better than promising free for life and then pulling the plug altogether on the service.

> Verizon is one of those legacy carriers that won't pull quick tricks on you

As a Verizon customer, we will have to agree to disagree on this.

No idea where you're located, but my family has been on US Cellular for about 30 years. In Iowa, they've consistently had the best service available in rural areas.

Anecdote incoming so take it with a grain of salt.

Visible is great, but struggles with moving service between phones. I was told it would take at least a week to move from iPhone to iPhone (both eSIM!).

In my experience, US Mobile (not to be confused with US Cellular) is every bit as good as Visible, but has better customer support.

In my country, as you can't just switch customer's plans at will, the telcos structured them as limited-time offers that have no commitment or penalties on top of a regulated base pricing which is like 2-4x the going rate.

After a year the offer ends and you can keep your current plan at the expensive base rate or you can move to a new plan/offer to get the discounted market rate.

That way they can justify increasing rates over inflation and changing contracts at will.

Before T-Mobile merge with Sprint, there were $25/month postpaid plans from both T-Mobile and Sprint.

Slightly OT: Has anybody had any luck with an MVNO, like Visible or Mint Mobile? I want to ditch Verizon because $98/mo for spouse and me to use 2GB between us both is just the height of insanity in 2023.

I’ve used Visible for a couple of years now and they’re fine - I’m currently on their lower tier plan and it works well enough. I do route my phone’s traffic through a Wireguard endpoint on my home network, though, which stops the usual video throttling.

Try it for a month before porting if you can - in the end it is still an inexpensive mvno and customer service is one of the places they cut costs.

I've been happily using Ting Mobile for about 8 years, and my bill is always under $45 for two lines, 2GB, 1000 SMS, and 100 minutes (it's lower when we use less). It seems that the plan I'm on isn't available for new customers, but it looks like the new plans might actually be even cheaper.

Was happy with Ting mobile for years, spending about $30/month total for 2 lines. Had to leave Ting as they don't support eSIMs and recently moved to Consumer Cellular, which I'm quite happy with - about 4GB of data for 2 phones for $35/month total.

Happy with Tello: https://tello.com/

Been using Mint Mobile for a year and love it. Have had absolutely 0 issues with them even during peak times. Switched from a T-Mobile paying $70 a month for unlimited everything to $30 a month with Mint for pretty much the same service.

Damn you Ryan Reynolds for selling out.

I'm pretty happy with Mint Mobile. They are a T-Mobile MVNO (and were acquired by T-Mobile earlier this year) but I don't usually feel like I'm sacrificing anything. I pay $35/mo for unlimited talk and text, and 15GB of data. I haven't run out of data yet even though I stream music while driving. eSIMs are fully supported. When I travel abroad I install a secondary eSIM via Airalo.

Occasionally I'll flip to a different MVNO because they usually have new-customer bargains. When I started on Mint I was paying $15/month for 3 months.

The thing about MVNOs is that they have practically zero customer support - but apparently even that's been slashed at full-fare postpaid providers, so maybe I'm not missing much. Verizon used to have legendary customer service, but apparently no longer.

The annoying thing about this is that it really depends on your location. I heard wonderful things about Mint so I tried it out a while back. It was awful. But I live in NYC and (my working theory is) data prioritization matters somewhere this dense. Mint traffic gets lower priority than T-Mobile proper so I was getting an awful experience.

But if you live elsewhere your experience might be totally different. If you live in a different NYC borough to me your experience might be totally different!

A lot of MVNOs offer eSIMs at least. An easy way to do a test drive.

One of the best things I did to make myself somewhat immune to this stuff: 1. Decouple my phone number from my carrier by transferring my number to a low cost VOIP provider such as voip.ms, jmp.chat.. 2. Switch to a prepaid plan and pay for a whole year for a good deal. Pay as you go plans are also a good option.

I pay less than $20 a month for a few phone numbers and 5GB data per month. It is also a more private solution since the carrier does not know who I am. I can switch providers with relatively low friction.

I'm on a grandfathered ATT plan. I'll bet you ATT is going to try this soon if TMo gets away with it.

Does anyone use the prepaid plans from Mint or Visible, etc? What are the downsides?

Mint users will be deprioritized if the network is congested, hasn’t been a problem for me but in some areas or during large events it could be

Is that all the time or only after they've used so much bandwidth?

All the time, if T-mobile’s network is busy the bandwidth is allocated to T-mobile customers instead of MVNOs

How to opt out, call customer service, ask them to apply SOC code: grnoptout to your account. If they don't know what that means ask for a manager to apply the SOC code.

Well, at least they give thw opportunity to keep the old one , even with a minor hassle.

As an Italian the big carriers are infamous for unilaterally adding to the bill without any recourse

They also send their previous customer's accounts in debt collection even if they have paid in full when closing the account. Happened with me. Got a debt collector's letter a few years later. I had the proof of payment but still ended up paying again to prevent damage to my credit. Later on found on reddit that they have done this with many people, some of whom didn't have means to pay again, so ended up taking a credit hit.

I have a genuine question in that case. I am no longer a customer so will I be able to take them to small claim court and provide a proof of payment and collect my money again?

Or will the mandatory arbitration will still hold?

Given the history of data breaches, my first thought is that this could have been a scam. For anyone else in this position (esp. if you’re fairly certain it’s not a scam), here is some info on what you can do: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/fake-abusive-debt-collecto...

Edit: namely, this part:

> your debt collection rights, including your right to get information about the original creditor if you ask for it within 30 days of getting validation information from the collector

T-Mobile won't be prepared to process opt-outs until October 17th, so calling before then is unlikely to be an effective use of time. Consider waiting five days. Otherwise, the unprepared call center support representative will not know the magic code to bind your account with.

Maybe every T-Mobile customer should switch to Mint Mobile or other low cost carriers en masse. They will lower their prices right after the mass exodus.

However they are counting on the misleading practice that most people are busy and won't ask questions.

Lot's of nonsense gets pushed like this.

T-Mobile acquired Mint Mobile in March 2023.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1163743380/t-mobile-buys-mint...

Even before the acquisition, Mint Mobile was just a T-Mobile MVNO. While Mint Mobile has less expensive plans than T-Mobile, and switching would reduce T-Mobile's profit margin, the quality of Mint Mobile's service is also lower:

> Mint runs on T-Mobile networks so will get the same coverage except it does not get domestic roaming (on AT&T, Verizon, US Cellular, and other small regional carriers such as ACS/GCI in Alaska) that T-Mobile post-paid or pre-paid does. Mint is “deprioritized” (on QCI 7) meaning it will get slower speeds than most T-Mobile plans (that are on QCI 6). How much slower depends on the exact second how many people are on the same tower & band compared to the capacity of the tower/band, but with speeds usually between 20-90% of T-Mobile Magenta/Pre-Paid customers at the same time & location.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mintmobile/comments/wm1ynh/mint_mob...

The U.S. wireless carrier industry is in desperate need of more competition. Price increases (such as this one and T-Mobile's earlier removal of the autopay discount for credit card purchases) are exactly what happen when corporate consolidation (T-Mobile merging with Sprint) reduces the number of high-end carriers from 4 to 3.

If I have to go through the trouble to opt-out of this, then I might as well go through the trouble of contacting and joining another carrier (Mint, Google Fi, Pulse, whatever). This nonsense helped me realize I'm already paying too much with T-Mobile.

In my case, they make up for the higher prices by delivering inferior service. It was terrible and I am one city away from their HQ. It was so bad I broke my lease to return to AT&T—-and the joke’s on me. It’s worse.

Whew, nothing about the Connect[1] plans!

[1]: https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect

What a great way to convince me to never consider T-Mobile!

I hope you like the only competitor network.

This partial monopoly is why they can do this. All of those 'virtual operators' are given deprioritized service but somehow still count as competition when their business is evaluated. Yet another instance of regulatory capture at work.

AT&T is ruthless but Verizon lets a bunch of mvno operators on qci 8.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

This sucks.

What sucks even more is that T-Mobile is STILL the least evil of the only three nationwide wireless carriers in the U.S.

Verizon just did this to us

I blame Ryan Reynolds.

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