T-Mobile's 'Un-contract' Promise Unravels as Price Hikes Shock Customers (arstechnica.com) 73
T-Mobile's recent price hikes of up to $5 per line on older smartphone plans have left many customers shocked due to the company's previous "Un-contract" promise. Announced in 2017, T-Mobile pledged never to change the price customers pay for their plans. However, a now-removed FAQ revealed that the guarantee only ensured T-Mobile would pay the final month's charges if prices increased and customers chose to leave within 60 days. The price increases affect various plans, despite T-Mobile's earlier promises of "no crazy strings, no hoops to jump through, no hidden fees, no BS."
Surprise!! (Score:2)
They lied.
Surprise, everybody!! SURPRISE!!!
Next up: the inevitable class action lawsuit. (Sigh....)
Re: (Score:2)
They probably felt safe with an actuarial analysis of future costs and (low) inflation.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a suit, by the same lawyers who donate to the politicians who caused the inflation. Double self-dealing, and, sadly, legal.
As Shakespeare said, As You Like It!
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Isn't the free market just amazing?
Selling a great high quality product for a lot of money is silver, selling a mediocre low quality product for even more money is gold.
It's all just a matter of whether you can get away with it.
re: free market (Score:1)
Actually yes, the free market IS amazing and there's no other economic system I'd rather be under!
Once again though, the detractors have no idea what they're talking about. Cellular carriers aren't operating in a "free market". They're strapped to loads of government regulation and manipulation.
Say you decide you can do what they do for a better price? Good luck starting your own cell carrier to compete with them. Chances are, the Federal govt. wouldn't even sell you the portion of frequency spectrum you'd
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Free markets will never exist the way most people think they do, and real free markets never stay free for long. Even if the government never comes in to do anything, eventually the businesses in a market will "fix" it to make it more profitable for them and crush any smaller entries. In order for a free market to maintain its freeness, the government needs to regulate it, but if the government is regulating any of it, is it actually a free market anymore?
Re: free market (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing that strikes me is you anti-capitalism always make arguments against it that apply equally well to democracy. Yet I don't see any of you calling for an end to democracy. Though you do call for one of socialism or communism, which history has shown us repeatedly are just an economic dictatorship that makes everybody except for the political elite impoverished.
Nobody said democracy was perfect either. But it is the best we've got.
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Ah, the classic false dichotomy. Pretty much nobody argues for communism. That's just some fallacious idea tribalists use to try to defend the many flaws of capitalism. It's not us versus them. It's not capitalism versus communism.
The nuanced reality is that there are many implementations of economic systems (including forms of capitalism) in various areas, influenced by many factors. The same holds for democracy, of course.
The main amazing thing free capitalism does is massively speed up the evolution of p
Re: free market (Score:2)
Ah, the classic false dichotomy. Pretty much nobody argues for communism.
Classic nothing.
First, I was speaking of anti-capitalists, who don't want any variation of it. They have a disdain for free markets, period. There's no capitalism without free markets. Nothing you offered here would satisfy them.
Second, I didn't offer a dichotomy. At all. If you disagree, then explain what makes you think that.
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You have it backwards. Capitalism doesn't require a free market. But a free market does require capitalism (because free market is just a stricter form of capitalism).
Re: free market (Score:2)
Stricter how? Free market just means prices are governed by the forces of supply and demand and aren't artificially restricted. Laissez-faire is pure free-market -- literally meaning people just do as they will, though some argue it's anarcho-capitalism, depending on interpretation. Capitalism itself, a term coined by Karl Marx with intended derogatory meaning, effectively means a system where people capitalize on the work of others within free markets. The more modern definition is thus:
https://www.merriam [merriam-webster.com]
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Stricter how?
Stricter in the sense that it requires ZERO government oversight/regulation. Everything else you wrote after the question was meaningless garbage that no one is even talking about or referring to. It wasn't worth writing, it's not worth reading.
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Stricter in the sense that it requires ZERO government oversight/regulation.
Nobody has ever made the case for this, unless you're just talking about anarchists. You can't have capitalism without the rule of law; it just doesn't even work without it.
Everything else you wrote after the question was meaningless garbage that no one is even talking about or referring to. It wasn't worth writing, it's not worth reading.
No, that's just your own cheap attempt at a cop-out. I specifically alluded to all of this in my original post, not my problem you can't read.
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You introduced 'anti-capitalists', accused Bahbus of being one, and accused him of advocating for socialism or communism, of which nobody was speaking in any form until you started talking about them. The only reason to do that is to have a nice straw man to attack, as evidenced by your long-winded follow-up below with even more irrelevant talk of socialism and communism, presented implicitly as the only alternative for capitalism.
What you should try instead is to engage in meaningful discussion on (the nat
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Umm, Russia hasn't even pretended to be a communist country since 1991. Not sure how you missed that.
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Real democracy, which we don't even have, is not at all similar to capitalism. Capitalism only cares about money. Capitalists will literally create a problem (war, for example) just to sell the solution (more guns). Capitalism, left unchecked, is always doomed to become an oligarchy, which we have already started transitioning into as seen with how much a single large company can influence laws - it's ridiculous. Capitalism will always funnel money into a small amount of the population allowing them to have
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Real democracy, which we don't even have
And what, to you, constitutes a real democracy? And what are examples of some?
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Equally interesting is the 'capitalists' that think any government intervention anywhere is somehow socialism even after Smith clearly called out that government's rightful place is to regulate the market and that failure to do so will cause the market to fail. He also warned that charters were to be handed out exceedingly sparingly and that corporations must be kept strictly to their charters and on a short leash.
Since that has been ignored, I'm not so sure the system we have now even *IS* capitalism anymo
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It's a mixed system, plus oligopolies, with just a small leaning towards oligarchy - those within the oligopolies have too much sway, but not actual control, in the government.
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And who are these oligarchs? Congress? Walmart? Elon Musk? Do tell.
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Equally interesting is the 'capitalists' that think any government intervention anywhere is somehow socialism
I've never heard this. Can you name some of them?
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About half of /., much of the GOP.
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Cellular carriers aren't operating in a "free market". They're strapped to loads of government regulation and manipulation.
The government regulation (and there's a lot of it) is relatively minor. The main reason it's not a "free market" is that the barriers to new competitors are prohibitive. There are MVNOs, but they are just resellers that are beholden to the three main companies. Disruptive innovation is impossible in US cell phone service, as no new company can enter the market because the physical logistics are just too daunting. It's this one reason that the cell phone service market doesn't operate as a "free market"
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Yep. Welcome to America where all major industries are oligopolies. So, the only way to enter the market is to already have millions or billions of dollars to spend.
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Not sure I agree with some of these statements? Yes, it's a huge financial commitment to start a new cell carrier. But that was true from the time the first one sprung up. You can't get around the fact that it's going to be massively expensive to build cellular towers every so many miles, spaced all across the United States, and to get fiber connections run to each of them to carry the data. You can only somewhat mitigate the costs of opening many retail establishments to help customers get signed up and ru
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OK, as a detractor, I have questions for you: What do you think these companies would do if there was exactly 0 regulation they had to deal with? If they could do everything they wanted? Do you really believe they will then do better or worse than they are doing now?
Be honest, please.
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Were these questions aimed at me? My answer is:
Nobody here is advocating for "exactly 0 regulation". No regulation at all leads to anarchy, essentially - or at least kind of a "Wild West" where the only rules that get enforced are the ones someone has enough ability to threaten others into obeying. I've always maintained that those scenarios are "power vacuums" that ultimately can't last. A total anarchy only works as long as the population involved is relatively small and their needs are relatively simila
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Good, we're on the same page that markets desperately need regulation to not be completely dysfunctional. I thought something else, given that you wrote this: "Once again though, the detractors have no idea what they're talking about. Cellular carriers aren't operating in a "free market". They're strapped to loads of government regulation and manipulation."
For this specific bit of news we can then agree that if T-mobile were operating in an actually "free market", things would be even worse.
With regard to y
Re:Surprise!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite inflation (which affected nearly all developed countries), T-Mobile made record profits when they were keeping their promise [macrotrends.net]. But they realized they could make more by breaking their promise. There should be a price when a company buys the competition and then does this sort of thing, but I'm flexible re whether the appropriate price is disgorgement of the increase or the competitors.
As T-Mobile said: "I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."
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Sure, many folks in tech found great jobs and had salary hikes before the latest round of layoffs. That was temporary. Now we're at a place where wages haven't increased to match inflation since 2020 (what are we at? Like 20-25% higher cost of living since then?), whereas corporate profit
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The whole 10% owns 90% needs a reset... Unfortunately those resets generally come in flavor of French or Russian revolution (beheadings, executions, civil wars, etc..). The modern equivalent being nuclear conflict. We're pretty much on track for that right now. If only there was some peaceful way, but who am I kidding, like those top 10% lottery winners would give anything up peacefully.... And I use the term loosely to describe people that lucked out in something, business, career, inheritance, made the ri
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the politicians who caused the inflation
Actually most of the inflation that we're experiencing is caused by price gouging by the major retailers. Of course the politicians are the ones who allow them to dominate the marketplace so completely rather than breaking up the mega-corporations, so I suppose you're correct that way although I don't think that's what you meant.
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If that were true we'd see inflation of the items being delayed/interrupted and items related to them. Instead it's across the board.
And the only trade that Ansar Allah is disrupting is shipping headed for Israel and US/UK shipping entering the Red Sea. The Suez Canal is still carrying about half its normal traffic in spite of increased insurance charges, the other half is rounding the Cape, taking about another week to two weeks depending on destination and increasing the actual cost by less than 5%.
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Why do you say that as if class actions are a bad thing?
They're not. They're the only recourse people have against giant corporations.
I'd love to see a LOT more of them.
Re:Surprise!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it enriches a certain group of parasites. It's more about who benefits than thinking clawing back profits from corporations is a bad thing.
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Why do you say that as if class actions are a bad thing?
They're not. They're the only recourse people have against giant corporations.
I'd love to see a LOT more of them.
Class Action Lawsuit: Whereby a third party enriches themselves while pretending to defend the wronged party from the wrong doer. The lawyers make bank. The people wronged make pennies for sending in a SASE that cost more than they're getting out of the lawsuit even if they win. Yup. Seems like a great way to once again stack the cards against the people. This is like witnessing a rape, then "helping" by offering to do a double penetration. "I'll fuck you WAY harder than he's fucking you!"
What a fantastic w
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And the companies just chalk it up to the cost of doing business, as the punishment is never more than the money they made.
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That isn't the problem. The problem is that businesses who are doing wrong are getting slaps on the wrist fines for their wrongdoings. A lot of these class action lawsuits should be putting the company heavily into the red and threatening to bankrupt them. The lawyers are doing a lot of the work, so sure, they should get paid as well, but a lawyer should never get paid from "judgement" money unless they were also a plaintiff themself.
Is the system setup incorrectly? Yes. Is it as bad as your metaphor implie
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That isn't the problem. The problem is that businesses who are doing wrong are getting slaps on the wrist fines for their wrongdoings. A lot of these class action lawsuits should be putting the company heavily into the red and threatening to bankrupt them. The lawyers are doing a lot of the work, so sure, they should get paid as well, but a lawyer should never get paid from "judgement" money unless they were also a plaintiff themself.
Is the system setup incorrectly? Yes. Is it as bad as your metaphor implies? No.
Having been in several class actions, yes it is. The only people that get any money from these lawsuits are the lawyers. While I agree that these businesses should be actually punished, we unfortunately live a world where corporations make all the rules. They let us have a dog-and-pony show of them being publicly scolded, and then hand us our pennies and move on. And while I don't begrudge a lawyer being paid, I have yet to see any class action do more than enrich the hell out of whatever firm took the case
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So have I - some I didn't even know I was. The lawyers should get paid out by the defendants separately from the judgement amount. But because they don't, and because they don't actually punish the company hard enough, the money left over is shit. However, until at least one of these gets fixed (or capitalism finally fucking dies), I'll happily take corporation getting any kind of punishment over them not getting punished at all.
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My understanding (which may be outdated/wrong) is that it's illegal for lawyers to add you to a class action suit without your permission but it happens all the time. They pretend to get around that by claiming that if you don't reply to their communications to opt out then you've acquiesced to being a member. I'm not really clear on how that would be even vaguely legal. If their email gets dumped in the Spam folder you're in! Congratulations!
I remember one suit against Seagate that I was added to witho
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I'm not sure if it's the lawyers doing it or not. There was a PayPal one not too long ago and money just showed up in my Venmo account. Since PayPal owns Venmo, I assume they were told to refund anyone in their systems that was affected by whatever it was. Might depend on the lawsuit or the company.
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Whereby a third party enriches themselves....
* at the expense of the reluctant big corp.
Why is this detail ALWAYS left out?
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Whereby a third party enriches themselves....
* at the expense of the reluctant big corp.
Why is this detail ALWAYS left out?
I'm not a fan of societies leeches, no matter what form they take. A parasite sucking on another parasite is still a parasite. Fuck the whole lot of them. If we lived in a world that was just, none of this shit would be allowed to stand.
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"I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas..."
Especially when your ageism is triggered.
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I'm shocked, for sure. I feel like the ground has been ripped out from under me, a telco LIED!
What next? Google cancels a project only 2 years after launch? Who would believe that?
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I'm not sure why people bother getting straight Tmobile. A better option that has been around for quite a while now is Google Fi, which as I understand for the most part uses the Tmobile network, but it can also jump to other networks, and can also run calls over local WiFi. And they are much cheaper and more consistent than Tmobile (Fi is good for international also).
In fact right now, you can get a free Pixel 8A. A $500 phone with a $500 rebate (over 2yrs): https://fi.google.com/about/phones/pixel-8a [google.com]
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I'm not sure why people bother getting straight Tmobile. A better option that has been around for quite a while now is Google Fi, which as I understand for the most part uses the Tmobile network, but it can also jump to other networks, and can also run calls over local WiFi. And they are much cheaper and more consistent than Tmobile (Fi is good for international also).
One reason is that the main advantage of Google Fi (network hopping) is available only on Android. Otherwise, I would have changed a while back.
My service was rock solid when it was Sprint. Since the merger, service at my house dropped from four bars to one. Service at work dropped from four bars to one. Service along various routes that I drive regularly added multi-mile-long dead zones. At this point pretty much everything they promised the FCC and FTC when they allowed the merger to happen has prove
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Suckers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Haha. Anyone who believes anything these crooks say had it comin'.
Impossible (Score:2)
Yeah, its pretty impossible to promise that prices will never go up. Inflation happens.
That said, their guarantee to pay your last month is nice, but their advertising certainly didn't make clear what they were promising.
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They can point to this and that but in any sane world they'd just be liars at the end of the day.
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Sure. But it used to be the case that existing accounts were grandfathered in at the originally-contracted rates until a change was made to the plan. In something like 2001 or 2002 I switched from Sprint to Pac Bell wireless, which went through a few other names before T1000-ing back into AT&T. I kept that 300 daytime, 3500 nights-and-weekends, unlimited texting (Because they hadn't built the systems to bill for SMS when I got on the plan.), unchanged and with no price increases until 2008 when I bou
But mergers increase competition damnit (Score:3, Informative)
TMobile+Sprint would lower prices, they said. Government regulators agreed. They promised!
lol
I was in Europe and bought an (actual) unlimited SIM for my phone, at a kiosk, for the month~$7.00 Not a pretend unlimited like the US. Full speed, all the time.
America is so screwed it's hilarious.
Re: But mergers increase competition damnit (Score:1)
Of course Apple has done away with SIMs
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What the large print giveth (Score:3)
The tiny print taketh away.
Re: What the large print giveth (Score:2)
Now wait until they do that with digital purchases
As Always (Score:2)
It's no surprise that they lied. It's no surprise that, in the US, they are the worst major mobile provider by long shot in terms of coverage and call quality. They have always been terrible, and I will always actively make fun of anyone who openly admits to using T-Mobile (again, in the US).
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I can literally see the T-mobile headquarters from my house, and we get 3 bars here. It's absurd.
I'd dump T-Mobile if (Score:2)
You can get Verizon if you go 30 minutes up the road, but they won't sell you a plan if your address is in my area. They give some lame reason about there being a local rule that they can't be in that area. Seems more like a monopolistic throw down by T-Mobile to me.
You USED to be able to get AT&T in our l
My continuing story... (Score:2)
When the first article about TMob's price lock shenanigans came up I posted my personal experience with TMob. I, too, had gotten the price-increase text even though I was on a price-lock guarantee. I have an update about that.
I filed an FCC complaint and finally got ahold of someone at TMob that wasn't trapped in an NPC script and they told me I am not actually on the plan with the price-lock guarantee. Now that's weird, I did NOT just run off to the FCC and file a complaint without doing a little doub