T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock—guess what happened next

DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.world – 327 points –
T-Mobile users thought they had a lifetime price lock—guess what happened next
arstechnica.com
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T-Mobile also published an FAQ that answered the question, "What happens if you do raise the price of my T-Mobile One service?" It explained that the only guarantee is T-Mobile will pay your final month's bill if the price goes up and you decide to cancel.

Jesus fuck, how do they get away with that?

"where are you going to go, our competitors? manic laughter"

I would suggest an mvno but they are being eaten alive too so

US Mobile has been really good for me

Been rocking Tello for 25 dollars a month for 35 gigabytes of data.

Damn. I get 150GB for $15 here in Europe.

Tell me you don't live in Germany without telling me you don't live in Germany :D

A moment of silence for our German brothers and sisters. 🫡

Could have the same but decided to go for 35GB for ~7$ prepaid. If I like the carrier I may change to their 80GB 7$ subscription but I m not sure yet

I work from home and never call anyone so on Tello I pay $6/mo for 100 minutes + 1GB of data that pretty much functions as a 2FA delivery system.

I have the same plan, but use it for places that insist on getting your phone number, that don't need my phone number. So they get my second number that gets used a few times a year.

2FA by SMS you mean? TOTP codes are generated offline

Tello is my second line provider, they are quite good. I'm worried that tmo will squeeze them out, or end their agreement or something. Tmo is already doing shenanigans to lycra mobile, afaik, and they ate up metropcs, mint, and ultra.

I trust tello. I don't trust tmo.

That would be a nightmare scenario where T-Mobile would start to squeeze MVNO's for around the same price of someone paying for t-mobile after buying them. Honestly I don't know if I would even have a mobile connection at that point anymore as I am quite poor! There are really no good alternatives out there for cheap service especially for my area and my terrible terrible smartphones that aren't supported on any other networks. Especially! After AT&T decided to force manufacturers to pay for "HD Voice" which was just rebranded volte using the same bands that they had before most of them deciding not to for the cheaper brands of android smartphones out there.

USM repurposed an old subscription email system for their 2FA, and if you had opted-out of the advertising before, well you don't get 2FA codes then. I spent a few days figuring this out with support. They removed 2FA from my account and explained the situation. A year later, I re-enabled 2FA, because SURELY they'd have fixed it by now, right? This was ~3 and 2 years ago, respectively.

I'm still locked out of the account because they never fixed it. If that's how they handle their systems, I want no fucking part of it. Can't pay me enough to put a number I care about under their control.

That's understandable. I only use an app to generate the codes

Mvno's are pretty sweet. I use Visible and pay for $25/mo for unlimited 5g

Well they published the FAQ which was available to consumers BEFORE they signed the initial contract, so, that was the deal they took

Yeah but it's just blatant false advertising when the FAQ or ToS directly contradicts the public advertising.

It also wasn't in the ToS/T&C. The FAQ is not a legal document, and I wouldn't expect to need to read it if I read the T&C.

Mmm EULA-Roofies

Hell. With the way life is going I'd settle for just regular roofies. I'm trying to adopt napping as a hobby. Seems like I'm happiest when I'm not awake

That's capitolism, baybeeeee!!!! Regulation free, the way it was meant to be!!! Where huge corporate interests dominate not only politics, but also the legal system, and healthcare systems! Where the only punishment is a fine so big the average citizen would consider it lifelong crippling debt, but the average corporation would look at it as a fraction of doing business. Because they have more money than anyone would ever need. That makes them better than you, and you know it.

I'd now like to quote one of philosophys greatest minds.

"In case you can't tell, I was being SARCASTIC!!!" ~Homer Simpson.

I'm not sure it was false advertising, the product was called "UnContract" "Mobile One" not "eternity price lock forever plan", the customer can choose to not pay any more if they cancel their contract before they pay again after the current contract period ends (all contracts everywhere for everything in history are like this), if the details were in the faq that they could read before signing the deal, then that's the deal they signed. It's deceptive, maybe fraudulent, but I'm not sure it's false advertising.

From the article:

"New rule: Only YOU should have the power to change what you pay," T-Mobile said in a January 2017 announcement of its "Un-contract" promise for T-Mobile One plans. "Now, T-Mobile One customers keep their price until THEY decide to change it. T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan."

Explain how that is not a blatant lie.

tmoblie lawyer: we cannot force a price change midway through a current contract, which we refer to as "the plan". therefore we are not forcing the customer to pay a higher price at any time for their plan, though when one contract period ends, we may change the price, and the consumer can then decide whether they are willing to pay any higher price than their previous plans price, going forward.

that faq laying out the possibility of a price hike, and the expectation of compensation, means every word and punctuation can, and is being "lawyered"

Except the possibility to keep the current price is no longer available, therefore, the consumer does not have the option to continue paying the same price, ergo TMobile forced the customer to change the price they pay, either to a higher amount for the same contact or to 0 for no contact. The original advertisement stated that TMobile would never change the price a customer pays, but it directly forcing this change by not offering the same contact.

As you said. it's not false, but it is deceptive.

People should be reading the small print though, or in this case an FAQ.

There's a place for more strict regulations on advertising here though. You shouldn't be able to make out a product is one thing in the headline, then tell us it isn't further down the page.

agreed is sneaky and underhanded as seeks to deceive the customer

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there already precident set in the 90s that EULAs do not have any holding in a court of law as a contract if the terms are labeled to be unrealistic? I swear someone sued microsoft because they did something in their EULA for Windows 95, and when it went to court, the judge said "yeah, fuck this...."

And the thing about precidents is, once they're established, courts generally tend to follow that precident, else it would mean that two similiar cases with similiar backgrounds were judged differently.

Contracts aren't invalidated because conflicting info is available somewhere else.

What they signed in the contract is the deal they took, nothing more.