T-Mobile users enraged as "Un-carrier" breaks promise to never raise prices | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile users enraged as "Un-carrier" breaks promise to never raise prices

arstechnica.com

62 pointsLinuxBender53 comments

The T-Mobile experience has gone majorly downhill since the departure of Legere. Now they feel like just any other carrier.

I think worse than other carriers. They are still positioning themselves as the underdog uncarrier, so it feels even less authentic. I don't see much of virtue-signaling from AT&T and Verizon.

Yeah I switched back to at&t after he left, within a few months I could tell it was headed downhill.

Why the hell are you looking for an “experience” to be provided by a phone company?

Why would someone make that promise in the first place though. Simply due to inflation you'd expect prices to go up.

The usual gotcha is you can keep the plan if you want, but slowly the plan becomes unusable. Imagine having a very cheap unlimited 2G-only plan in a world where even 3G networks have been shut down.

I have a $23.49/month unlimited AT&T hotspot plan that will die once the device it is locked to dies.

Right. I don't blame T-Mobile for raising prices per se, it's not really an unreasonable increase. But they were idiots to ever promise that they would never raise prices. It's not possible to uphold that deal and still make money.

they didn't really promise that they would never raise prices, they promised that if they did, they would cover your last bill (which people are also having a hard time for them to fulfill).

Because improvements in technology would decrease expenses at a rate faster than inflation.

Im guessing that was the idea.

To get customers now, even though you know you will break the promise in the future.

Perhaps if they expected a Moore's Law of some sort to apply to bandwidth costs? That is, they expected expense of maintaining a basic plan to drop over time far faster than inflation.

I've been a T-Mobile customer for 14 years, very happy customer, but I never, ever believed that "promise".

Doesn't matter if you believe it, they still advertised it and should be punished for breaking a promise like that.

I didn't mean to sound like I was defending it, I apologize for that.

That's a silly comment...

The whole point of things like this is to be believable. How can you guarantee anything from warrenties to insurance if you don't believe advertised promises?

Warranties and insurance don't guarantee anything. Companies that offer those things make their money by denying claims. Insurance companies deny claims when they think they can get away with it all the time.

tldr; there is no such thing as an absolute guarantee

The only thing you can probably get out of a “guarantee” is a piece of paper you can submit as evidence in a court of law. How much you value that depends a lot on what it says and who gave it to you.

Advertised promises come from people with the ethics of P.T. Barnum. Why believe them?

On an individual level, sure, be wary, but on a societal level, that's widely considered to be a bad thing, and something we should punish for. We shouldn't just say, "I expected them to lie", but also hope for that to change

Yeah I have no objection to punishing them, they clearly glossed over the details in their marketing, but they're hardly the first to do it. I'm not surprised that "we'll never raise prices" didn't turn out to be true, that's all I'm saying.

I didn't mean to sound like I was defending it, I apologize for that.

What would you say to the customers who did?

I didn't mean to sound like I was defending it, I apologize for that.

Live and learn. There's always a catch, or an out. Read the fine print.

Do you have a link to the fine print? I'd like to skim the agreement for a such a clause.

No. But I've lived long enough to know that it's there.

Is it?

FTA >T-Mobile contradicted that clear promise on a separate FAQ page, which said the only real guarantee was that T-Mobile would pay your final month's bill if the company raised the price and you decided to cancel

Same way that credit card companies and websites change their terms every now and then. It's not what you agreed to when you opened the account, but they just do it. Don't like it? Then cancel. They know that canceling credit cards is a pain, you have to go change all your recurring charges and automatic payments, and also closing and opening credit card accounts can ding your credit rating a bit. So most people just bend over and take it.

Still the best experience of the big three.

An MNVO for 20$ and an unlocked phone is the best experience.

That's a sweeping generalization and not true for a lot of users. I stay with T-Mobile so that I don't get deprioritized, but also because I get free global roaming, which I use a lot.

And also because I can add tablets and watches for only $10/month extra. Once you start adding secondary devices, the MVNOs get expensive very quickly.

The thing I don’t understand is why you should have to pay to add devices. Or even that data expires each month.

Just sell me a bucket of gigabytes and I’ll consume it via as many devices as I want, then pay for another bucket when I run out.

Network congestion should be managed by towers anyway, not by artificial limits on number of devices or expiring data.

FYI Google Fi has plans where you can get extra SIM cards that share the same data (data only, but all Google Fi calling is over data anyway, really; you can "call" from a computer).

I like the flexible plan because I'm almost always near wifi, and thus my bill is often just $35 or so, but the bill will never be over $80 even if I were to have my phone downloading 24/7. MVNO mostly on T-Mobile network. It seems that Google has a better MVNO deal than many others, less slowdowns.

Fi deprioritizes after 15 or 50 GB/month based on your plan, though. I mostly don't hit that, and even if I do, I've never really noticed it -- I'm in a low population density area.

See "Shareable data included for tablets and other devices" in https://fi.google.com/about/plans

I should’ve mentioned that I am currently on a T-Mobile data only 5GB/$20 plan, which is more than I currently need.

Fi looks interesting though, will look into it. Thanks for sharing.

Most people want unlimited for the convenience. You can very easily go to Fi or a budget carrier for more fine-grained plans like the ones you described.

EDIT: typo

I suspect number of devices is a good approximation for ability to pay & in general price discrimination is good for business

I wasted money a couple upgrade cycles buying tablets with the SIM slot for extra money thinking I may one day need it.

What's the point in spending the extra money per month instead of just using your phone as a hotspot. I'm genuinely curious about the use case. With watches, they now have GPS built in and I just don't want to feel like I'm talking to Zordon the few times I would be outside without my phone but with a watch

> What's the point in spending the extra money per month instead of just using your phone as a hotspot.

Hotspot data is limited, but $10/month gets you unlimited data on a tablet on TMob.

> use cases

Battery life, kids, and much larger data caps.

I'm on a similar 3rd party (?) carrier, Visible, through Verizon and obviously the dataplans are deprioritized. That being said, I've had 100% the same experience using them and Verizon throughout my state, and speeds stayed on par at the times I've tested. IIRC they do also offer an uptier that puts you as priority, but so far I haven't needed it.

Visible is wholly owned by Verizon.

My experience with T Mobile is them always trying to upsell me on more expensive phones.

I know exactly how much I want to spend.

$20 total, tax-inclusive, for three unlimited lines from T-Mobile is the best experience.

What plan is this?

2017 Kickstart v1 + 2020 unlimited free line (both from Sprint) + 2023 unlimited free line

I agree. It's insane when you look at the plans of the big 3 providers. First of all, always showing prices for 3-4 lines, which is ... weird.

Then you read and you see stuff like 'X on us'. I don't want that. Or '480p DVD quality' shown as a feature! So I can't even decide how to use my data? Or 'choose your perks, $10 each! (I thought perks where things that you get? Not thing that you have to pay for.).

Or you show 5 plans and half of them have taxes included, and the other ones don't? How am I supposed to compare?

Both Mint and Boost are "MNVOs" but are sub-companies of T-Mobile.

I do agree its a good experience, but they all are from the same corporate tree today. If T-Mobile's main business starts to get into trouble, you can expect a shakeup.

This is sadly true, but it's a low bar.

They made a promise like this? My bill has gone up a few times over the past 20 or so years with them.

T-Mobile is easily one of the worst, most unreliable, and most incompetent major corporations I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Not surprised in the least they're reneging on this (admittedly stupid) promise.

They'll never raise prices... 30 days at a time, just like the contract says they can. You're free to leave any time, provided you didn't fall for the trap of financing your phone on an agreement that gets bound to a stipulation that the month-to-month contract be kept active.

This is referring to the massive ad campaign they ran where they said they would not do what they're doing now. That's something courts will take into account.

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