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Users Say T-Mobile Must Pay For Killing 'Lifetime' Price Lock (arstechnica.com) 56

Posted by msmash from the I-am-alive dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: T-Mobile promised users who bought certain mobile plans that it would never raise their prices for as long as they lived -- but then raised their prices this year. So it's no surprise that 2,000 T-Mobile customers complained to the government about a price hike on plans that were advertised as having a lifetime price lock. "I am still alive and T-Mobile is increasing the price for service by $5 per line. How is this a lifetime price lock?" one customer in Connecticut asked the Federal Communications Commission in a complaint that we obtained through a public records request.

"I am not dead yet," a customer in New York wrote bluntly, saying they had bought a plan with a "guarantee for life." Both of those customers said they purchased T-Mobile's senior plan marketed to people aged 55 and up. While the price hikes apply to customers on various plans regardless of their age, many of the complaints to the FCC came from people in the 55+ age group. Some pointed out that if T-Mobile simply waits long enough, the carrier won't have to serve 55-and-up customers forever.
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Users Say T-Mobile Must Pay For Killing 'Lifetime' Price Lock More

Users Say T-Mobile Must Pay For Killing 'Lifetime' Price Lock

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  • I'd like them to pay each person that was screwed over for their data breach as well.
    US Citizens are never going to see a dime from that National Public Data shimozzle.

    We're fucked.

    • That class action is working its way through now but they take time.

      • If you're referring to National Public Data, it was a one man shop with a couple of servers. There's no deep pockets of anything [techcrunch.com]for screwing the public over. What needs to happen ultimately is to find out how this one man shop obtained the records and from who the data was sourced.

        • T-Mobile is still involved and is ultimately responsible for what's done with the data. They'll still be held liable.

  • Easy choice. (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @01:26PM (#64887933)

    Pay a one-time penalty for reneging an agreement that would have lasted years? I'm sure T-Mobile has no problem with that.

    • If the one time penalty is 50 years worth of service fees per customer that might care.
      • My guess is there is something in the terms and conditions that limited their exposure. False advertising? Yeah probably. But they may have had a time limit on it, or some trigger that allowed them to increase pricing. No way I would allow myself to promise that under ALL circumstances. A 10yo could get a phone (maybe 18 without parental consent) and that person lives another 70 years. Imagine having a product from 70 years ago, at a price from 70 years ago. Inflation alone would kill it.

        Maybe the servic

        • Re:Easy choice. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 ) <me AT brandywinehundred DOT org> on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @01:56PM (#64888039) Journal

          I think I read in a previous article that the small print was they could give you 60 days notice and not penalize you for leaving. Which is sort of empty when there was no contract anyway.

        • Sure.. but it's also not just possible but Likely that T-Mobile thought they could shaft this small group of customers and get away with it.

        • Re:Easy choice. (Score:5, Informative)

          by MobileTatsu-NJG ( 946591 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @04:20PM (#64888521)

          I am not trying to argue T-Mobile's side, but clearly there were circumstances not disclosed in the summary.

          They were basically claiming that it is unthinkable for them to raise their prices because they've added a 2 month grace period if you decide to jump ship. When I filed an FCC complaint about it that's essentially what their reply was. I showed the FCC a quote on their website that says in unmistakable language that customers would never have to pay more. The FCC understood and requested clarification from T-Mobile on how a grace period addresses that. T-Mobile's response was to ghost us.

      • Re: Easy choice. (Score:5, Funny)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @01:50PM (#64888013)

        LOL. Perhaps you are not familiar with class action lawsuits in the U.S.

        The victims will be getting $5 credits on their T-Mobile bills at best.

        • I don't care if I don't see a penny, if T-Mobile has to pay out millions they will not like it and they will work to avoid it.

          And no, DrOp iN ThE BuCkeT is not in play, here. If that were the case they'd have settled directly with only those 2,000 users. Right now they won't negotiate anything with us, even a credit despite showing them their fallacy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by KlomDark ( 6370 )
          Funny you would say that. A guy I work with was surprised to get $1000 this morning from a 2018 Juul class action. So you don't always get a pittance.

    • They should be legally compelled to provide that service to those users for life, the penalty for trying to duck out of the deal is that it should be free of charge.

      • "the penalty for trying to duck out of the deal is that it should be free of charge." And make sure the phone company does not shit in the pot that they must involuntarily offerith up. "Shit" like throttling these "free" users' data speeds down to worse than dialup.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Well, yes, obviously. Although the fine really should be listed as being for blatant false advertising, because anyone with a brain knew a lifetime price lock wasn't actually possible in the real world. There's this thing called inflation. Just because even idiots *ought* to have realized it was a claim they weren't going to be able to back up, doesn't mean the false claim wasn't made; it was, and that's false advertising. Frankly, they probably should have fined them for it as soon as they started *adv
  • I knew back when I saw the commercial advertising a "Lifetime price lock guarantee" A) there is no way that T-mobile can possibly actually provide a fixed price forever for a process (providing phone calls) whose costs are not fixed and vary based on the inputs and B) They would eventually have to break the deal for people or let them age out when they buy a new device. The fact that this is now a lawsuit is no surprise. The fact that T-mobile would make such claims when they know the same things I do about

    • Re:I knew this would spark lawsuits (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sodul ( 833177 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @01:49PM (#64888011) Homepage

      That's actually not that much of a stretch, AFAIK, the bulkl cost of communication gets lower over time even when adjusted for inflation. So it should be possible based on the cost of the actual service provided. On the other hand T-Mobile has other costs such as paying the employees in the stores, their support reps, billing processing fees, the CEO's jet, etc...

      The problem with lifetime claims like these is that the marketing person who decided this got a bonus for a successful campaign, and is probably gone by the time it starts eating into the company profits so they got all the rewards and none of the long term consequences.

      Planning for long term is not a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      This will probably be worth it anyway.

      It was a good ad campaign and it probably brought people in. Even if they're penalized a year or two of revenue increase this would cause, it likely comes out ahead with the customers it brought in.

      I will say that T-Mobile has honored my legacy plans for far far longer than I would have expected in the past, though this is the shitty and obvious result of allowing so much consolidation.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        This will probably be worth it anyway.

        It was a good ad campaign and it probably brought people in. Even if they're penalized a year or two of revenue increase this would cause, it likely comes out ahead with the customers it brought in.

        I think you underestimate the penalty. The lawsuit damages are the icing on the cake.

        A lot of people who would have switched to T-Mobile even without that promise could potentially switch away because of that breach of trust, and there's no guarantee that this number won't be significantly larger than the number who decided to switch to T-Mobile because of that promise, particularly now that the lawsuit is bringing it to their attention.

    • The fact that T-mobile would make such claims when they know the same things I do about this (and really any self-respecting thinking person should know) is kind of wild.

      When this happened AT&T was going through their second round of breaking people's contract terms by raising their rates. This sparked an exodus that T-Mobile was quite timely in cashing in on. At the time the rate wasn't exactly cheap but it was reasonable. Also 5G was on the horizon. I imagine the original plan (before future mergers that caused price freezes for gov't approval...) was that you'd have to 'upgrade' to get 5G. "Oh you want the full speed? For $5/mo we'll open you up to our 5G

    • I mean, I have been on AT&T Prepaid for about 10 years now and my rate has actually gone down by $10 since I started. So... I guess it is possible.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      It's the "Lie Fast and Break Things" growth technique.

    • > whose costs are not fixed and vary based on the inputs and B) They would eventually have to break the deal

      Perhaps to remain profitable that *might* be true but the point of a contract is you do what you agree to.

      Many business offer loss leaders to get immediate cash and many more invest that cash and pay expenses out of returns.

      The idea that T-Mobile gets to do fraud against seniors because it might suffer a minor loss of profits by honoring its contacts is something only the fascist American Courts co

    • "The fact that T-mobile would make such claims when they know the same things I do about this (and really any self-respecting thinking person should know) is kind of wild." If they screwed up this badly, all I can say to them is "Suck it up, buttercup".
  • Never trust lifetime deals the company will likely go under before you die. I've had several lifetime warrantees, price locks, and other deals, all of the companies are gone. Its easer to promise everything while trying to acquire market share, and then re do the deal post success. Either that or you don't get enough revenue and the company goes away anyways. Or sometimes you bought a lifetime subscription with free upgrades to Joes photo wizard, then they need more revenue discontinue the product and repla

    • Re:Never trust lifetime deals (Score:4, Funny)

      by wyHunter ( 4241347 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @02:32PM (#64888195)
      How appropriate as 'warlock' comes from the Old English word wrloga, which means "breaker of oaths" or "deceiver" (per my Google search because I thought this to be true)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      My father was a customer of a furniture store that would sell shoddy furniture with 7 year warranties. The furniture felt dodgy, but the long warranty made the risk look palatable.

      Coincidentally they went out of business on year 6. He noticed a new furniture store appeared in its place with very similar warranties. Being pissed at being slighted, he looked into the city records and found out it's a group of relatives who just rotate on-paper ownership so they can just declare bankruptcy to get out of warran

      • Hmmm... I'd think they'd rotate more often than that. Like every 3 years or so. Rotating every 6 still means some people can utilize the majority of the warranty.

    • "Lionel Hutz no longer exists. Say hello to Mario Sanchez!"

    • Indeed. They did something similar with their "free data for life" deal a while back. They offered something like 250MB/month for free, presumably to try to upsell customers later. This was perfect for my use case on my iPad, which I take outside maybe 1~2 times a year and it would be handy to look things up on a map.
      It worked for a few months, and one day, it just stopped working. The only place I can connect to was the T-mobile web site. Nothing else would connect. I spent total of a few hours each

  • I am not dead yet (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @01:41PM (#64887985)

    Cue the obligatory Monty Python sketch.

  • To be fair, T-Mobile meant Jim in Accounting and he's dead. It's in the fine print's fine print.

  • If you can't get 'em for breach of contract, go after 'em for false advertising.

  • I'm altering the deal. (Score:5, Funny)

    by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Wednesday October 23, 2024 @02:38PM (#64888217)

    Pray I don't alter it further.

    Apologies to Darth Vater

  • Its the lifetime of the price-lock plan, not your own. Obviously when they raised the price, the price-lock plan was over, thus its dead. Never make assumptions when it comes to legal-eze fine print. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

  • Is it just me, or is that the wrong link. That's about bricked phones, not locking in subscription rate.

  • E-Machines and other computers in the 90's had these nice "Never Obsolete" stickers on the front of them.
    I wonder if we can go after Acer for not fulfilling E-Machine's promise of "never obsolete" in the 90's as well.

    • Maybe their customers wanted a better computer and not another bottom of the line "starter computer" e-machines, so they didn't take them up on their offer.
  • that they didn't make a lifetime deal with Boeing.

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