this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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T-Mobile imposes $5 monthly price hike on customers using older plans (arstechnica.com)
submitted 5 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Endlessvoid@lemmy.world 107 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Remember the tmobile un-contract? This is literally from their press release in 2017: "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. When you sign up for T-Mobile ONE, only YOU have the power to change the price you pay." https://www.t-mobile.com/news/press/un-carrier-next

Remember how they promised the FTC they wouldn't raise prices if they could pretty please merge with sprint to become the biggest telecom network in the country? https://www.yahoo.com/news/t-mobile-promises-sprint-merger-195428217.html

[–] SecretSauces@lemmy.world 32 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Doesn't that open them up for a lawsuit then? Either breach of contract if it's in their legalese, or at least false advertising.

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Easy fix:

  1. "Sorry, we no longer offer a T-Mobile ONE plan, therefore your plan has been converted to a regular T-Mobile plan. If you object to this you may terminate your account."

  2. "Due to increased costs and a whole bunch of reasons that has absolutely nothing to do with our greed we will have to raise the price of our regular plan."

[–] realbadat@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago

I'm on a plan that predates the plans being effected by the price increase.

My price has been the same for years. That said, the plan I'm on was also because of an issue way, way, way back (like a decade ago), and actually being responded to by someone in the c suite after making a comment on the ordeal, who then handed me off to exec customer service to get my issue addressed.

I doubt anyone is getting that sort of response and result today, but I personally have no reason to change providers - Verizon and AT&T would be just as bad, if not worse. Verizon even tried to charge me for devices I had paid in full (and I was out of contract timing) when I switched to T-Mobile.

[–] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

Disclaimer: IANAL

Contracts in perpetuity don't hold up, especially since this isn't even a contract. They always expire at some point, unless renewed.

A claim of false advertising could hold up, but again that's a promise not held in a contract.

Finally, it looks like that marketing campaign was over 7 years ago. No court would ever hold them to business plans from that long ago. They have to provide adequate notice for any changes (often 30 days), but they can certainly discontinue a program.

[–] applepie@kbin.social 31 points 5 months ago (8 children)

Tmo went anti consumer over last 2 years.

"Inflation" and don't get me started on 5g. So much money spent but nothing to really show for it. What is it doing what LTE hasn't done?

[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Remember when John Legere was CEO and doing Livestream cooking in his house? Those were the good times.

[–] airglow@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

John Legere was hired specifically to make the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile happen, and he resigned right after. He put on a charade to make people think that T-Mobile was a customer-friendly company that would continue to be customer-friendly after merging with Sprint, while knowing the entire time that everything would go to hell after the merger happened and he was gone. John Legere is a con man that pushed a giant anticompetitive corporate merger through antitrust scrutiny, not a benevolent person.

[–] phoneymouse@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It’s because they merged with Sprint and don’t need to give a fuck anymore. They used to be the”uncarrier.”

[–] zarenki@lemmy.ml 12 points 5 months ago

Even their earliest "uncarrier" features weren't without issue. Making certain services (spotify, apple music, youtube, netflix, etc.) not count against subscribers' data caps, while continuing to enforce data caps for other uses, goes against the spirit of net neutrality. This also includes throttling video streams by default to force lower quality (with opt-out on their site).

Promos like a free pizza on Tuesdays seems like a neat optional perk on the surface but their existence fundamentally mean subscription expenses on cellular network service are partially going towards things that have not even the slightest tangential connection to the service.

[–] tyrant@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Don't you realize 5g is spreading the covids?! $5 + 5g = COVID 19! Wake up sheeple! The math is right there! Do your own research!

Edit: I'm happy that most people on Lemmy get an obvious joke without the need for the /s

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[–] deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

What is it doing what LTE hasn't done?

Bandwidth. I’ve got faster upload on 5G than my home cable internet. It’s a massive speed increase vs LTE, and I’ve not had issues for a long time.

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[–] DannyMac@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I don't think you all understand, the T-Mobile CEO has a fiduciary duty to shareholders, which is a responsibility to act in their best interests and their sole interest is making money. If the CEO doesn't turn over every stone to find a way to make money or reduce costs, they're breaking the law.

Oh wait, you all do understand this horseshit better than most. Lemmy is my sane place 🥰

[–] brlemworld@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Making money == making as much money as possible. They just gotta stay in the black

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 6 points 5 months ago

Yes it can also be argued that stupid short-term gains like this can lead to less revenue in the long run which isn't doing your fiduciary duty.

[–] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

What's sad is the fact that the whole concept of a fiduciary duty to shareholders is overused in traditional corporate culture, and they don't even need to enshittify this much in search of profit under any laws or legal contracts! For a better explainer: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits

[–] Cosmos7349@lemmy.world 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Jokes on you I’m into that shit. Now do that one where you give my info away to a random hacker again.

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[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago (6 children)

pack our plans with value and build out the industry's best 5G network

I’ve generally needed to disable 5G on their network because it was slower than LTE. 5G has only been useful in places they didn’t have coverage before in my experience

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Same. I have 5G off because it's just so bloody slow and unreliable.

Let's not even talk about the problems where periodically I can't make any outbound calls and no one can call me. Which has been a problem for at least the last 5 years, for both me and my wife.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 5 months ago

Isn't that usually what happens though?

5G is the new best thing, people jump on 5G, 5G gets overloaded decreasing its speeds while 4G gets unloaded increasing its speeds.

Same thing it was with 4G, which is why I kept using 3G until start of 2024 when it got shut down here.

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[–] shortwavesurfer@monero.town 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mind crossposting this too !t_mobile@lemmy.ml?

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 months ago

Lame. I wonder if this will affect me as someone who was affected by the sprint merger and am on a sprint equivalent plan?

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

“affected by the price hike will be able to call up to change their plans to newer T-Mobile offerings, but they won’t be able to opt out of this increase.”

I'm pretty they can opt out of the price hikes with a little effort.

[–] return2ozma@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I went to Google Fi after being with T-Mobile for 14 years. Google Fi uses the T-Mobile network and I've had zero issues since.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Not a fan of (in this context) how Google handles their products. They have a history of killing a product or degrading it to oblivion. There's even a dedicated site for this. I just don't trust them to keep this going, so I never went to them. Plus, other MVNOs, like Tello, have unlimited plans on the tmo network for $25. The same plan on gfi is $50.

[–] Lemonparty@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For what it's worth I've had Google Fi for eight years. My bill has never increased, and we have unlimited data. I'm on a plan with my wife and her dad and we pay 167 per month for all three lines including insurance on two phones (12/month total). We are in an area with 5G coverage, it speed tests between 100-300 Mbps generally.

Sure they could kill it at any time but 🤷🏻‍♂️

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[–] ares35@kbin.social 9 points 5 months ago

verizon did the same thing awhile ago, and it was more than five bucks a month.

was still cheaper for us to keep the old plan than to switch to a new "unlimited" one, though.

[–] hashferret@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Got the text about the increase and it's definitely nail in the coffin for me. I've confirmed that I don't need much data even with forgetting to reconnect to wifi.

Strangely found myself tempted towards Helium Mobile since it's 20 bucks for "unlimited" with 30GB of high speed. But of course it's a crypto product... I'd been planning to wait til they release a feature to supposedly cryptographically protect against SIM swap attacks here. Assuming it checks out for security I'd consider it a decent extra benefit. Thoughts?

edit: forgot to mention they're a tmobile mvno. so not exactly completely getting away from them.

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago

Be careful that unlimited ( more acurately labeled via the "high speed data" limit) is a widely used practice of false advertising.
Check the throttle speed to see what happens after you run out of data.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

We won't be sharing the details on which plans but the portion of customers who are included are being notified today," a T-Mobile spokesperson told us.

An internal presentation obtained by The Mobile Report said, "Costs and inflation have risen over the past decade; even with this small increase we still offer the lowest price versus AT&T and Verizon.

T-Mobile customer service reps are being instructed to tell users that "costs are rising, and we haven't touched plan prices in nearly a decade.

CNET further notes that users "affected by the price hike will be able to call up to change their plans to newer T-Mobile offerings, but they won't be able to opt out of this increase."

In October 2023, T-Mobile decided to move some customers to newer, more expensive plans unless the users called the company to opt out.

A recent report by Finland-based research firm Rewheel detailed rising mobile prices in various countries, and it said that consolidation in the US has harmed users.

The original article contains 550 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I pay $5 for mobile service lol

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

I pay $7... with a T-Mobile MVNO. They recently increased my data without increasing the price, so that was cool.

[–] PsyDoctah9Jah@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Anyone heard back from their FCC complaint? My rate plan price shouldn't be changed. It's not even about the money per say, but the greed and term violations 🤨...

[–] Giooschi@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Jokes on you, I subscribed to my mobile plan 8 years ago and I still pay 6€ for unlimited calls/sms and 30GB (Italy, Iliad)

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

I'm crying in Canadian.

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