this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans and tells them it’s not a price hike::T-Mobile: "We are not raising the price... we are moving you to a newer plan."

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[–] [email protected] 112 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, no - that guy is (was, literally) the Verizon spokesman.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm on mint, and just waiting for T-Mobile to come after us. Nothing this beautiful can last.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Thanks for not saying "look it up". We can't seem to keep anything nice. We were just about to leave for Mint. Do you like it?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have mint: The connection sucks, you get deprioritized against other traffic so bandwidth is usually garbage. It's fine if you just need text and phone calls though.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is that what’s going on? So often since I switched to Mint I’ll have full bars and can’t do anything online.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I have mint too and haven't had much trouble with bandwidth. But to be fair I don't use my phone for very much while not on wifi, mostly just streaming music and Google maps.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I think this experience might be region-dependant. I'm in a major city on Mint and I routinely see 900Mbps+ down and never have any issues with streaming. I think the lowest speed test I ever saw was around 200Mbps.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mint got sold when Ryan Reynolds needed more money to buy that soccer team

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I switched from T-Mobile to mint not long ago and only two things changed, how much and who I pay, but like he said they'll come for us soon enough now that they bought mint.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago (7 children)

T-mobile: hello sir we are calling about your plan and a way you can save money

Me: that isn't true

T-mobile: umm we can save you money by changing your plan

Me: that statement is false. No company in the history of humanity has spent money to tell their customers how to do less business with them. They are paying you to call me and you expect me to believe that they are paying you money so they can get less money from me in the future? Makes no sense.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When I worked for ATT, I saw a customer with a legacy unlimited data account. This was after they brought back unlimited data after years of overcharging people for data "overages".

I absolutely could not convince this person to change to the new plan that was a third of the price.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They probably had true unlimited, not the 10gb then throttling "unlimited" that's offered now. AT&T has like 3 different levels of unlimited plan...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AT&T has like 3 different levels of unlimited plan

"Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited. Unlimited has limits. As a matter of fact, there are unlimited limits!" - Telecoms

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I had a call last week where T Mobile SWORE to me up and down that I ran out of data on my 5 GB of LTE, then unlimited 3G speed plan. Which went down like this:

“right, and I’m out of LTE speed data, that’s fine, but you’ve throttled me to UNDER 10 Kbps, that’s emphatically not 3G speeds, I can’t even complete a speedtest”

“Sir it’s showing me that you’re out of data”

“Out of LTE data, but I still have unlimited 3G, thats the plan I bought”

“Sir you’ve hit the limit on your unlimited plan”

“If you are ceasing usable service at a certain limit, what part of this plan is unlimited?”

“Your data is unlimited sir, but you’ve hit your data limit for the month”

This kinda shit is straight up fraud, and clearly designed to con people who don’t know any better out of their money. I read the fine print, all of it, and their full corporate policy. I’m also technical, and I can see I have an RSSI to the tower of higher than -40, my signal is great. They advertised, and I paid for far more. That’s beside the fact that “unlimited” data literally doesn’t exist, there is a line speed to every uplink, you can’t physically download more than that a month. The government needs to get off their ass and prosecute these motherfuckers.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To be fair, I would likely behave just like that customer out of pure fear of losing a plan I like and never being able to get it back because it's deprecated.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My previous ISP once called me to tell me that i couldn't reach the speed of my current plan from my house, and offered me to take a cheaper package without reducing my speed.

My current ISP sent me a mail at the beginning of this year informing me they were quadrupling my speed at no extra charge. And they did, I went from 50 up/down to 200.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

What ISP do you have? Is it a local ISP?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My ISP lowered their (already very competitive) prices for no good reason, so some do exist

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reason is retention. For a company that sells a service where they pay a single overhead (like maintaining a structure) it always makes more sense to lose a little money and retain a customer if prices are going down elsewhere.

That is to say if your internet plan is $80 and they have intel that a local competitor has started selling a similar plan for $60, it makes more sense to spend 3 minutes talking to an existing customer about lowering their bill to $60 rather than let that customer discover a cheaper plan and switch to someone else. If they let that customer switch they lose the whole $80 whereas if they just lower that customer's price they only lose $20.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

T-Mobile has lowered my prices while increasing my service in the past. The fact that they don't dick me around is one of the reasons I've stayed. If they're going to start this shit, then I'm going to leave.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

You can tell that this is just a cash grab, as opposed to a technical or administrative motivation, by the mere fact that Simple/Select Choice plans will be migrated to Magenta, while Magenta plans will be migrated to Go5G. So Magenta isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

Also, of course, by the fact that you can opt out of the "upgrade."

I switched to T-Mobile a few years ago and, coming from AT&T, it had been hands-down a positive experience. More features, unlimited data, better customer service, better speeds, all for less than what I was paying AT&T. I even have a line or two that was added for free, no strings attached.

But then there were the many data breaches and the announcement they would add a surcharge for credit card payment. And now this.

Looks like I came on board just in time to witness the enshitification

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be honest, I'm surprised they kept the 'uncarrier' image for so long. This was bound to happen, especially after the sprint merger was approved. I really feel T-Mobile pushed the big two to make changes to compete and now all I fear all three will go back to the old ways.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

They were awesome, but as it common at these compnaies when the CEO driving a lot of these changes left, they brought in some grey-hair bean counter who has been slowly rolling shitty-change onto shitty change. I really loved them when I switched form Verizon around ~2015 but I'm now starting to look at other optoins. Google Fi is currently the top of my list but we'll see.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So dumb, they claim they are moving you to a new plan with more features. Here are the “features” of the new plan ONE Plus to Go5g:

*$5 more per line x 5 lines = $25 more each month

*Lose Kickback which I use on 2 lines = $20 more each month

*10GB Hotspot instead of 5GB in Canada/Mexico, something I’ve used once since I’ve been on T-Mobile

*720p HD streaming video, down from my 4K unlimited streaming passes

Fortunately, I was easily able to opt out thanks to the heads up from these posts.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Literally pissing on the customer and telling them it's raining.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

~~Literally~~ Figuratively pissing on the customer and telling them it's raining.

FTFY

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

I genuinely don't understand why so many people go with the network brand. AFAIK all of the US networks have MVNO's that operate on their networks at much lower cost. Some of those virtual operators are even owned by the big guys, e.g. Cricket on ATT. My coworkers pay literally hundreds of dollars more per month than is necessary, and what, they get a few Mbps faster data rates? Is that really worth it?

Edit: TIL a lot of people have had a hard time with MVNO's. My experience has been excellent and consistent, but that apparently doesn't generalize.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In more populated areas it makes sense since Brand customers have prioritized traffic over MVNOs. So if you want any service at all, then…

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I have both T-Mobile and Visible on my phone and I've had to switch to Visible in more congested areas because T-Mobile will crawl.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I've never had any issues with the Tmobile prepaid plan in either NYC nor north NJ, although I'm not sure if the prepaid plans have the same lowered priority as Mint, for example.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Because those are way lower down the priority list when it comes to network congestion. If you are in a populated area your service will suffer.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Got to love a good bit of a corporate gaslighting

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It's called rent seeking. Just capitalism working as intended.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


T-Mobile is moving people to newer, more expensive plans starting with the November bill cycle unless customers call the company to opt out, according to multiple reports.

The forced migration surfaced on Reddit two days ago and was confirmed by The Mobile Report, which published portions of leaked documents indicating how the plan changes will be implemented.

T-Mobile also confirmed the change to CNET, telling the news site that "there will be an increase of approximately $10 per line with the migration."

T-Mobile's current plans range from $60 to $100 a month for a single line or $5 more if you don't enroll in the AutoPay discount.

T-Mobile recently started requiring a debit card or linked bank account to get the AutoPay discount, which may be concerning to users because of the company's history of data breaches and leaks.

T-Mobile was once a smaller wireless company fighting behemoths AT&T and Verizon but is now one of three major national carriers after acquiring Sprint in 2020.


The original article contains 838 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There was a minute where TMo was the good guy in wireless.

Now, for me at least, Xfinity is the one to have.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I seriously don't understand why it's legal for companies to just, tell you that you need to pay more for things. Aren't cellphone plans a contract? How can one party change a contract without the consent of the other party?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I remember they had a plan for around $55 where they promised no price increases ever. So instead what they do is create a "new" plan periodically. I went up to "magenta Max" because I wanted some of the features and now they're doing "Go 5G". They try to advertise "upgrade every year" but they've BEEN doing that since the "jump" program when I first signed up for them years ago.

Basically they create a new plan with minor changes to the specific details and claim it's not a price change. They hadn't been automatically changing people until this though.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Our bill went from 80 to 110. We are looking at the bigger networks....and it looks like it's significantly less than what we are paying.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Rent seeking bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I saw what they did to my family members and immediately complained. They let me keep my old prepaid contract, which lets me use 1 MiB of data per day for free at no monthly cost due to what I assume is a billing system oversight. It works well with Opera Mini on a feature phone, the battery also lasts a week because I mostly use my smartphone for entertainment. The new contract would bill me $0.50 for every day I went online (capped at 150 MiB).

I don't really have a choice, all providers in this country are greedy AF

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How could you keep data use below 1 MiB? That's a significantly small amount of data in the modern era of anything Internet connected.

Were you mostly on wifi? You said you used your mobile primarily for entertainment, that usually takes data.

I believe you I'm just drawing a blank at how you were using your phone and its data plan!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Two phones:

  1. feature phone with GSM/2G (EDGE) only - no shutdown of this network on the horizon (Nokia 220 is my trusty old pal even if better (Symbian) phones are very cheap right now)
    • calls, texts (free among family due to shared plan unrelated to my data contract, otherwise $0.20/min, $0.10/text)
    • basic internet use (Opera Mini, mostly without images), max 16 kiB/s
      • looking up timetables (shortcuts, tactile keys and small form factor allow doing this while running for a train at full speed) (<30 kiB per lookup, <5 kiB if regional only on another website)
      • built-in RSS feed reader for news and such (I used to also browse Reddit this way) (<10 kiB per feed)
      • some webcomics for entertainment (xkcd, Oglaf) (cca 200 kiB per image)
      • basic Google search (opening hours of shops etc.), even Google Images
      • no email or similar services because Opera Mini backend handles plaintext passwords and they're probably not well encrypted in transit
      • the phone allows no automatic daily limit so I’d need to reset the counters daily, but it’s easier to just play it safe and estimate the sum of how many kiB the loading bar showed
      • there are no background apps that use 2G so it’s safe to just leave data on: even if my smartphone is rooted, managing data access on it would be too much of a nuisance
    • alarm clock
    • FM radio with an 8-year library of recorded songs in low quality (4-bit 16kHz) but make for a fun shuffle playlist
    • a few downloaded videos reencoded to 320×240@15 from when I had no other phone - gems like Citation Needed, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Bad Apple!!, The Llama Song
    • Snake!
    • long battery life, reliable
  2. smartphone (rooted Samsung Galaxy J5 2017, Android 10) - no SIM card
    • productivity: e-mail, notes, web browsing, train tickets, banking...
    • offline mapy.cz maps including route finding
    • Lemmy! (Eternity or Jerboa)
    • NewPipe: download YouTube videos on Wi-Fi for listening on the go
    • library of “high-quality” music (mostly YouTube rips)
    • apps I need to use for some services (lunch orders, package tracking etc.)
    • PDF reader: ebooks and documents
    • F-Droid games
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They better not fuck with my plan. It's bad enough I had to get the boot from Sprint.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm still on a no longer available plan with unlimited everything in can and us for less than what my friends are paying for literally nothing. I don't have voicemail because I hate it and adding it would force me onto a shittier plan anyways last I checked.

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