T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock–guess what happened next
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Most companies I've dealt with in the past just leave these older plans alone to rot, and try to motivate people off of them with new plans, new features, faster speeds, phone deals, etc. Not just arbitrarily deciding to jack up prices because "technically we're allowed to."
So presumably AT&T did the next best thing for both you and themselves by silently(?) upgrading your plan to whatever was the new minimum of the new hardware while keeping true to the price lock to keep you as a customer.
There are ugly ways to cheat the system by replacing your stomach with a food sack and not chewing.
I don't want more data, I just want flexibility.
(If we really want to force a buffet analogy, it's like living in a dorm with a permanent buffet, but you're not allowed to bring buffet food into the lounge or back to your room.)
You paid for X amount of data, why does it matter if you are using it for a work VPN or browsing HN?
For the provider, the point of this design is that there's only a certain amount that people are willing to download on a phone or eat in a dining hall. For the consumer, they don't have to count their data or their servings as long as they follow a simple rule - they get predictable billing.
You see how that's bad, right?
My phone service, a utility, should not be micromanaging me.
We have a number of mobile services in the UK who explicitly offer routers with WiFi slots for replacing your home broadband with unlimited SIMs. I have used them in the past to replace the wired internet when there has been line maintenance that took out the broadband for a couple of days.
4G alone can get you a nice stable 100Mb/s.
You seem to be defending a shitty deal that happening in North America, without any clear reason.
My 60Gb can be consumed by YouTube, HN or tethering. It doesn't really matter to them.
Is this common in other countries?
I don't see any of the providers here in the UK with different amounts for tethering Vs data.
This whole thing though is like thinking you have wedding vows and not realizing there was fine print. It’s like “forsaking all others, till death do us part” but at the end of the vows it says “and if I break these vows I’ll pay you $75.”
Depending on the financial circumstances one party might receive much more than $75 while breaking the vows. ;)
Do you think it's fair when someone bought a house long time ago, and hence pay just a small fraction of the property taxes of what newcomers pay, but get the same services (roads, schools, utilities etc) that are paid by property taxes?
If your question is, is it fair people who bought before 2020 have an awesome interest rate and pay way less than newcomers, I'd say no, only because I'm angry I sold in 2019 and regret it!
So as a new buyer you're paying not only a higher price and higher interest rate, but also higher taxes than the people you bought it from.
In time it'll work itself out, assuming they stay long enough, as it still allows increases in a falling or stagnant market.
Both should probably be pegged to the inflation rate nationally each year, which would probably bring them up a few ticks, but otherwise seems reasonable to me. For owner occupied of course, -not- landlords.
Yes I agree...but not the CPI, it should be tied specifically to housing prices. You could even have the state hire appraises to figure out the value of each specific property and peg the rate of increase to that for each property owner.
If your little city blows up, and your property value in the market is now 3x what it was, why should you be punished and even forced out if you can't afford the new taxes? New buyers do the same math, and decide they can afford it.. Yes they're paying more, but voluntarily on a likely overpriced asset.
I'm not saying the original owners should just pay less and that's fair, screw the new buyers. I just think the increase should be capped realistically.
The rapid run-up of home values in the US has led other states to follow, but they generally have higher caps on increases and limit the treatment to your primary residence.
Of course any program if you look only at the beneficiaries is going to look good. We have embraced this attitude that broadly favors the sustaining the already established in their current condition in perpetuity, regardless of the cost to anyone else.
But really, this applies with anything that you purchase. If the sales tax inceases, you may be taxed more for an identical item that was purchased prior to the sales tax increase.
States and cities have a variety of ways to tax people. They don't need to rely on property tax.
this is not my experience - since property taxes are generally related to the desirability of the house and updated periodically (so often years after a price rise in area)
I of course am aware that property taxes change over time, but I don't think this kind of strongly observable see-sawing of the property taxes actually exists - so probably more data than just guessing would be useful.
Fortunately, regulation seems to help at least a little bit, but you kinda have to be prepared to wage some war - or eat your losses.
(Just lost a phone number that has been my primary for over 7 years; that's after losing another one that I held on to for 11 years... Not to mention all the smaller stuff, like how contracts/extra packages are structured once you go over the month's limit.)
The one I use literally just increases how much data is included with my plan, rather than increasing the price. I quite like it. (I don't think it's available outside of austria though)
As such, I am never going to switch to Telegram or Signal unless you let me have an account that's not tied to a number. I've lost shit in the past because of this, a phone number is only a temporary identifier.
Regulation = high barrier to entry in industry = monopoly/oligopoly = all telecoms are bastards.
So that Verizon could own the entire market along with a few also-rans? It was a choice between the lesser of two evils.
You don't fix a monopoly by creating more monopolies.
I am not familiar with the telecom market. But blocking mergers doesn’t necessarily increase competition. (For example, breaking up Walmart would reduce competitive pressure on Amazon.)
In addition to out-and-out opposition or agreement that sounds vaguely oppositional, a comment might call for a pedantic annotation, a tangential aside or book recommendation.
sudo !!You know what they say about things that aren't falsifiable, they're definitely correct!!
Ah, the ol' Hitchens's movie night: "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed with popcorn".
By creating actual competition. Sprint and T-Mobile separately would always be second tier to Verizon. Combined, their network actually competes.
Sprint was effectively on life support and the last CEO’s only job was to pump up subscriber numbers as high as possible to make a deal as attractive as possible. That’s why Sprint had so many “free” deals a year before the acquisition was announced.
The US government made a massive miscalculation on Dish network, when in reality it really should have been split amongst CableCos who are now stealing customers from the big 3 because they have already done the hard part of building infrastructure, while Dish can’t even get off the ground.
What the government did with Sprint was akin to allowing GM to be purchased by Ford. Whether or not that happens in bankruptcy court is almost irrelevant: a huge business in an oligopoly merging into another is generally bad news and the government should be on top of it.
(Let me also be clear to people who hated the automotive bailouts: they were easily the best possible outcome and hindsight shows they were great policy. The alternative was essentially the collapse of the American automotive industry, allowing the US to follow the fate of the British industry, and on top of that government made a profit on its investment of taxpayer dollars to carry it out)
No, just because those are around does not mean there wasn’t a better alternative in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does not mean the individual company stops making cars, let alone the entire industry collapsing. That’s pure FUD to justify the govt preventing a moribund industry from being purged of legacy companies coasting on their brand.
You look at companies like Lotus, MG, Land Rover, Jaguar, and even Volvo and you look at a future where their intellectual property assets essentially only exist to help geopolitical rivals. GM and Ford being sold to the Chinese would have been devastating to US industry.
There is no Volvo EV that is built in Sweden. There is no Lotus EV built in Britain. At the end of the gasoline production line run it’s just China producing all their future electric cars when they go fully electric in 5 years.
Don’t forget that automotive parts are a huge employer beyond the auto manufacturers themselves. If Geely buys Ford they’re moving parts supply to China. It’s a whole ecosystem and it’s strategically worth protecting.
Like I said, don’t forget how the government was paid back in full with interest for the bailouts. On top of that the governor gets to keep people employed rather than sending the jobs abroad. It was a no brainer obvious good policy, supported by both parties as well.
If you get too big to fail, why avoid failure? It’s about incentives.
How useful or efficient or competitive do you think taxpayer-funded Sprint would be today? What makes you think they would suddenly start being good with an influx of tax money when they weren’t good before free money injections?
The government depends on three carriers (ATT, Verizon, Sprint) for its own redundant critical communications (Continuity of government, military communications, etc).
The entire deal was structured in a way where where the wireless subscribers were shed onto T-Mobile and the important guts of Sprint were sold to Cogent for $0, who didn't have the capability or desire to take on the consumer facing business.
Ultimately what we need is much stronger anti-trust legislation against all kinds of companies that are too big, or aren’t in functioning competitive environments.
This is not at all surprising, and we've seen this happen over and over. Two big companies merge, promise prices won't go up so the merge gets approved, then within a few years, sure enough prices go up.
This should always be the default. The first rule of capitalism is that companies lie. Who’s going to stop them?
I got a defective phone with sprint: phone replaced under manufacturer's warranty immediately.
Same defective new phone scenario with T-Mobile: no replacement because you didn't buy additional insurance - even though you got the phone a month ago. Sorry can't help. I wish I could help you but I will be fired if I deviate from the rules. Thank you for your understanding. Avoid doing business with T-Mobile at all costs. They are horrible.
So, I'm happily with AT&T now.
I never thought I'd hear those words. The one time congress split up a company that I recall, it was AT&T because of all their awful practices, and for YEARS I have heard of their crazy fees and fines, and what have you.
Since "American residential Internet" has been the butt of jokes even in rural Europe for the past decade, I wonder how uniquely bad DT must have been for the US connections to compare favorably.
EDIT:
Or maybe it's the most developed nations being way past the peak of quality of life for its population (which I think is a pattern)?
Reminds me of my employer from over a decade ago; at some point they had the bright idea to try and convert our work stations in Poland into fat terminals, with all the data being stored on the servers in UK. Problem is, their pricey London office Internet connection had bandwidth that was something like 1/10 of what I could get on the cheapest residential connection I could find in Kraków. Way less than any of us was used to. And they weren't planning to upgrade. IIRC, the whole idea got postponed indefinitely after multiple reminders that the London office is already so bandwidth-constrained that we'd rather look for another job than be stuck working in the London office in the first place, much less accept our local machines being limited by a link to their servers.
I didn't either. T-Mobile is that bad.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck should I have to read fine print to realise it is a pig?
In Australia there are limits to what advertising can get away with, presumably US has similar.
They’re not owned by T-Mobile, but they’re just an MVNO.
Everyone can save by switching to an MVNO. The first trade off is that the big 3 carriers have essentially a tier list of customers based on what type of service they have for network priority. E.g., postpaid customers are highest priority, big carrier prepaid and big carrier-owned MVNOs are second, and unaffiliated MVNOs are placed based on the specifics of their agreements with the carrier. For example, Google Fi has high network priority because they undoubtedly pay more to use their networks than lower cost MVNOs.
The second trade off is that MVNOs handle customer service and a lot of the customer facing administration. This can vary but is often pretty barebones for lower cost MVNOs.
I think you are better off not saying that. If everyone were to switch to an MVNO then the large carriers MVNOs depend on would not offer as favorable rates to the MVNOs. Reminds me of when Apple licensed their OS and promptly got spanked.
One Postpaid carrier strength is family plans. The per-person cost for 4 people is very comparable to MVNOs and you get better service.
The next is phone financing and subsidies. If you’re the type of person who wants a new phone every 3 years, a postpaid carrier will have some of the more low-friction options for that.
Finally, MVNOs simply don’t offer high usage plans for heavy users. For example, my current postpaid plan gives me something like 50-80GB of monthly tethering allowance before throttling. There isn’t really an MVNO offering that at any price.
So, I think postpaid plans fit a higher income heavy user and/or a family pretty well.
What a joke. Price stays the same until we issue you a take it or leave it ultimatum at higher price.
So basically like any other price?
Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data is $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.
Outside USA, T-Mobile pSIM Wi-Fi call/text continues to work with any cellular provider's eSIM data on the 2nd line of iPhone.
By global standards, that is hilariously expensive. Here in the UK, I pay $13/mo for unlimited talk/text and 100GB of 5G data. I can get truly unlimited data for less than $22/mo.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheap-mobile-finder/sim-on...
1: https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/164526.Vodafone-Mobile/sig...
2: https://www.nperf.com/en/map/US/-/85.T-Mobile-inc-Sprint/sig...
The worst part though is TMobile’s predatory billing practices. They lie through their teeth about fees and prices when you sign up and it’s absolutely impossible to understand what the hell is going on with their billing.
Fuck TMobile.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/20/mark-cuban-bought-an-america...
https://thehustle.co/aairpass-american-airlines-250k-lifetim...
Anyhow, the Mark Cuban article says almost nothing about how the airline treated him, it’s just a light human interest story about an unusual and quirky thing a famous person did.
My $25 prepaid plan comes with 16 GB of data, I don't even bother to use wifi on short trips. I used to manage my parents' plan, sometimes they barely use one GB a month.
The only special gag now is that the average consumer now has "device installment payments" that become immediately due in full when you terminate your side of the deal, and we now tie subsidies to "promo credits" on those payments.
If they raise my price I’d be upset but it’s still cheaper by far than any modern plans. Someday my kid will need a phone and I’ll get him a separate account so I don’t get conned into changing my plan!
The MVNO I stuck with even has a slick way to port between networks!
The radio layer is where deprioritization happens, not through deep packet inspection (as would be the case for video throttling). Having a strong signal with good RF conditions deprioritization won't be noticed as much, also won't be noticed if the sector isn't busy. If it is busy and you are near cell edge, that's when speeds will fall off (as the radio layer will schedule less time and resources for your device, and the worse conditions means it can't send as much data with those resources allocated).
Tmobile is the only big 3 carrier where all branded plans have the same priority
If they wanted to give a 5 or 10 year guarantee, they could have. They chose to say lifetime. The wireless market hasn't fundamentally changed in the last 15 years (starting in the iphone 3g era), so they don't have any excuses about being caught off guard.
If your guess was they immediately raised the price of the services on my plan and billed me $220 instead, you’d be right!
p.s. this is noname local provider that you have never heard of.
Small print: except, if we do, you'll get back your payment.
Smaller print: except, we might give you a set of stickers instead.
Even smaller print: except if we run out of them, then you'll get nothing.