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.”
I’m on mint, and just waiting for T-Mobile to come after us. Nothing this beautiful can last.
When did they buy Mint?
About a year ago?
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?
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.
Is that what’s going on? So often since I switched to Mint I’ll have full bars and can’t do anything online.
Anything that is not AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile will most always rely on one of these three and their towers. Which means you will be deprioritized for their customers. There are some smaller companies that have their own towers but they are few and far between and cover a very small area. Google Fi for example, uses the T-Mobile network and a smaller network that only covers a small patch in the Midwest somewhere.
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.
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.
I was worried about that since they buy access to towers, thank you for sharing your experience. Are able to see when that happens in a concrete way, or is more just the noticable lag?
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.
That’s how it feels
Mint got sold when Ryan Reynolds needed more money to buy that soccer team
Ha, good point! They had to replace the entire pitch, twice!
Mints fine in my experience, but my time is almost up (december) and have been using them since 2018. Im considering moving onto US Mobile which offers better plans (and option of which towers you want to use, they offer tmobile or verison, so pick based on phone specs/area) or a Google fi family plan
Thx, I’ll look into it, see if it’s my area
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.
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.
What ISP do you have? Is it a local ISP?
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.
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.
And go where
My ISP lowered their (already very competitive) prices for no good reason, so some do exist
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.
They are the sole owner of the fiber around here, you aren’t getting faster more stable internet for that price, no way.
I was paying about around $30 for gigabit, which is awesome here in the Czech republic. They dropped the price by $5 to $25.
I understand why companies would do it usually, but here, I honestly don’t see why they would. They’re offering great service for great prices
There is a plausible economic incentive to do this:
Reputation.
This happens less in markets with few, big sellers and lots of customers locked into long-term contracts (like ISPs), but it does happen occasionally in high competition markets where customers can take their business elsewhere easily.
Restaurants are a good example - where I live, a host might hand out a round of after-meal shots on the house to encourage a big table of uncomplicated guests to come again.
That’s not entirely true. I recall a consulting client who had a customer program where redeemable points didn’t expire.
The thing was, this meant that inactive accounts with just a handful of points ended up costing a ton in accounting upkeep because they had to account for the possibility these years old accounts might suddenly redeem points.
So they rolled out a new program that was legit much better for the vast majority of active accounts to migrate people over.
Yes, it was still them doing something that was to save them money, but the new alternative was also better for the customer too. It was simply closing a loophole they’d not thought about when first designing it which didn’t benefit the customers, it simply led to procedural costs that skyrocketed.
So there are rarely cases where companies will spend money to do something in your interests. It’s just always going to also be in their own interests too.
I’ve actually had Verizon call me to offer a lower rate for faster home internet. I presume it extended my contract and somehow got the sales person a bonus but it still cost me $15 less per month.
Over the years, Verizon has increased my speed twice without additional charges. But not for the same price I was paying in the first story.
Yes, the good old “the more you spend, the more you save!”
AKA you spend more but you get some much more value that actually you’re saving (no you’re not).
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
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.
What makes you so cynical as to assume with less competition oligopolies have more power? /s
Just like Microsoft’s announcement of the closure of the Activision deal trumpeting “more choice” for gamers. Literally just took away a competitor! Kroger’s purchase of Albertsons when we’ve all been dying in the US from grocery price gouging for the last 4 years.
Fuck the legislators, SEC and the courts for letting companies continuously destroy competition while mostly giving up things they wanted to anyway.
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.
Why do you not have laws against this kind of shit? There’s no way a company can do that to you here without explicit permission.
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.
There was a minute where TMo was the good guy in wireless.
Now, for me at least, Xfinity is the one to have.
T-Mobile is still awesome. My 5G plan is $70 a month for phone and Apple Watch and I got a free year of MLB and MLS and a bunch of other stuff.
That’s not to defend this bullshit “opt-out” move but at this point it’s still a rumor and hasn’t happened yet. We’ll see how they play it out.
Fair enough.
It’s just that I pay $30/month per unlimited line that include UWB with Xfinity mobile, which runs on Verizon’s network.
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.
Rent seeking bullshit.
Looking forward to seeing how this plays out. I’m on the Magenta plan. It’s already more than enough for my needs so it’ll be interesting to see what they have to offer and how they receive my opt-out.
This is bonkers. Why not just send a notification about new pricing plans and allow customers to opt-in? That’s rhetorical.
What made you choose Telekom over Vodafone?
They aren’t raising the price, they are just charging you more money. Your plan is being removed, so they can put you on a different plan that costs more. And, at least in my case, is actually inferior to my current plan. Fucking assholes are actually making me consider AT&T which I swore I’d never do.
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.
I’ve been on Simple Choice for many, many years now. I get up to 14 lines @ $50/line, each one has unlimited data & talk, plus 50 GB/month tethering. (There are other options included but I don’t use them.
Apparently, last time I looked, Magenta is more expensive, had no extra lines, and tethering is an added cost. Plus those extra features are mostly an added cost as well.
I really hope that we can indeed “opt out” of being forcibly moved to a different plan!
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.
110 for what? And who has anything cheaper?
2 lines. Att has the same for 75 and that’s just att.
Remember that T-mobile gives a bottom line prices, while AT&T and Verizon add a bunch of junk fees. Be sure to check into that before you switch.
A follow up. Is that before or after taxes and fees? I’m paying 117 all up to att for two lines with a grandfathered plan and would like to pay less.
My wife and I were planning on switching this weekend from AT&T after nearly 20y but that’s not gonna happen.
