I think worse than other carriers. They are still positioning themselves as the underdog uncarrier, so it feels even less authentic. I don't see much of virtue-signaling from AT&T and Verizon.
The usual gotcha is you can keep the plan if you want, but slowly the plan becomes unusable. Imagine having a very cheap unlimited 2G-only plan in a world where even 3G networks have been shut down.
I have a $23.49/month unlimited AT&T hotspot plan that will die once the device it is locked to dies.
Right. I don't blame T-Mobile for raising prices per se, it's not really an unreasonable increase. But they were idiots to ever promise that they would never raise prices. It's not possible to uphold that deal and still make money.
they didn't really promise that they would never raise prices, they promised that if they did, they would cover your last bill (which people are also having a hard time for them to fulfill).
Perhaps if they expected a Moore's Law of some sort to apply to bandwidth costs? That is, they expected expense of maintaining a basic plan to drop over time far faster than inflation.
The whole point of things like this is to be believable. How can you guarantee anything from warrenties to insurance if you don't believe advertised promises?
Warranties and insurance don't guarantee anything. Companies that offer those things make their money by denying claims. Insurance companies deny claims when they think they can get away with it all the time.
tldr; there is no such thing as an absolute guarantee
The only thing you can probably get out of a “guarantee” is a piece of paper you can submit as evidence in a court of law. How much you value that depends a lot on what it says and who gave it to you.
On an individual level, sure, be wary, but on a societal level, that's widely considered to be a bad thing, and something we should punish for. We shouldn't just say, "I expected them to lie", but also hope for that to change
Yeah I have no objection to punishing them, they clearly glossed over the details in their marketing, but they're hardly the first to do it. I'm not surprised that "we'll never raise prices" didn't turn out to be true, that's all I'm saying.
FTA
>T-Mobile contradicted that clear promise on a separate FAQ page, which said the only real guarantee was that T-Mobile would pay your final month's bill if the company raised the price and you decided to cancel
Same way that credit card companies and websites change their terms every now and then. It's not what you agreed to when you opened the account, but they just do it. Don't like it? Then cancel. They know that canceling credit cards is a pain, you have to go change all your recurring charges and automatic payments, and also closing and opening credit card accounts can ding your credit rating a bit. So most people just bend over and take it.
That's a sweeping generalization and not true for a lot of users. I stay with T-Mobile so that I don't get deprioritized, but also because I get free global roaming, which I use a lot.
And also because I can add tablets and watches for only $10/month extra. Once you start adding secondary devices, the MVNOs get expensive very quickly.
FYI Google Fi has plans where you can get extra SIM cards that share the same data (data only, but all Google Fi calling is over data anyway, really; you can "call" from a computer).
I like the flexible plan because I'm almost always near wifi, and thus my bill is often just $35 or so, but the bill will never be over $80 even if I were to have my phone downloading 24/7. MVNO mostly on T-Mobile network. It seems that Google has a better MVNO deal than many others, less slowdowns.
Fi deprioritizes after 15 or 50 GB/month based on your plan, though. I mostly don't hit that, and even if I do, I've never really noticed it -- I'm in a low population density area.
Most people want unlimited for the convenience. You can very easily go to Fi or a budget carrier for more fine-grained plans like the ones you described.
I wasted money a couple upgrade cycles buying tablets with the SIM slot for extra money thinking I may one day need it.
What's the point in spending the extra money per month instead of just using your phone as a hotspot. I'm genuinely curious about the use case. With watches, they now have GPS built in and I just don't want to feel like I'm talking to Zordon the few times I would be outside without my phone but with a watch
I'm on a similar 3rd party (?) carrier, Visible, through Verizon and obviously the dataplans are deprioritized. That being said, I've had 100% the same experience using them and Verizon throughout my state, and speeds stayed on par at the times I've tested. IIRC they do also offer an uptier that puts you as priority, but so far I haven't needed it.
I agree. It's insane when you look at the plans of the big 3 providers. First of all, always showing prices for 3-4 lines, which is ... weird.
Then you read and you see stuff like 'X on us'. I don't want that. Or '480p DVD quality' shown as a feature! So I can't even decide how to use my data? Or 'choose your perks, $10 each! (I thought perks where things that you get? Not thing that you have to pay for.).
Or you show 5 plans and half of them have taxes included, and the other ones don't? How am I supposed to compare?
Both Mint and Boost are "MNVOs" but are sub-companies of T-Mobile.
I do agree its a good experience, but they all are from the same corporate tree today. If T-Mobile's main business starts to get into trouble, you can expect a shakeup.
T-Mobile is easily one of the worst, most unreliable, and most incompetent major corporations I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Not surprised in the least they're reneging on this (admittedly stupid) promise.
They'll never raise prices... 30 days at a time, just like the contract says they can. You're free to leave any time, provided you didn't fall for the trap of financing your phone on an agreement that gets bound to a stipulation that the month-to-month contract be kept active.
This is referring to the massive ad campaign they ran where they said they would not do what they're doing now. That's something courts will take into account.
