Comment by henrikg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by henrikg | Hacker News Reader

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I've had TMO in the past, and the Google plan is attractive to me for a couple of reasons

* T-Mobile customer service is inconsistent in messaging on the phone, via Facebook, stores

* As a H1B visa holder I am, according to TMO, not able to get a postpaid plan

* Prepaid plan does not work outside of the US

* Prepaid plan has issues receiving short codes from Uber/Bank of America and possibly others - I've spent 8+ hours trying to get it resolved and just ended up giving up.

* I currently use Cricket, due to the 20GB max, but the network is so incredibly slow that it's almost pointless. In NYC I often get at most 100kb/s downstream, when on LTE; that's just no good.

* Spam calls to my Cricket number, and they are unable to do anything about the multiple calls I receive a day

* I use Google Voice already, and it's incredible - except for international texting which they have crappy support for.

* Google Voice has issues with short codes, kinda like TMO prepaid.

Assuming the latter two has been solved with Project Fi + I can get proper network speeds + they filter out spam + automatic transcripts of voicemails (latter two being Google Voice features), then I'm a fan. Can't wait to get it for my Nexus 6.

TMO prepaid and TMO MVNOs now have full short code access.

-citation: I confounded and run a U.S. MVNO.

> * As a H1B visa holder I am, according to TMO, not able to get a postpaid plan

What? I'm on a TN and I have a postpaid plan and device payment plan. Your visa status doesn't really affect your phone plan eligibility.

Visa status does not affect your eligibility for payment plans.

However, H1B holders are people having recently arrived to the US, and therefore with 0 credit history. This is what impacts the capability to get a postpaid plan, but after a few months to build it up there should be no problem.

Personally, I find it ridiculous. Having money in the bank as well as a good salary, and not being able to sign up for a 30$ monthly plan; or applying for a credit card and getting either rejected or one with a 200$ credit limit.

I can confirm that Visa status is immaterial for payment plans.

AT&T will let you sign up for a post-paid without a credit history. I didn't want to provide a SSN (even though I have one), so they let me pay an $800 deposit fee - was worth it to avoid the personal information exposure.

The credit card thing is strange - I got a $20,000 one with wells fargo the month after I moved down to the united states in 1996 - on a $50,000 salary working desktop support. I was quite honestly a little shocked - but just went with it.

Credit cards have tightened up a lot post-2007, both rejecting a lot more applicants, and offering much lower initial limits.

Yeah, exactly, visa status has nothing to do with it. It's all credit history, and it shouldn't be very hard to start credit history. My first card was from my CU, preapproved up to $5k since I was a new resident. If that's not an option, there's secured cards all over the marketplace that can jumpstart credit histories.

I think the text issues are due to Google Voice and not T-Mo (I have the GVoice+T-Mo unlimited data combo, and I think I only have short code issues with the GVoice number).

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