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Ten Lies T-Mobile Told Me About My Data Plan
reifman (786887) writes "Last June, my post "Yes, You Can Spend $750 in International Data Roaming in One Minute on AT&T" was slashdotted and this led to T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeting 'how crappy @ATT is' and welcoming me to the fold. Unfortunately, now it's TMobile that's having trouble tracking data; it seems to be related to the rollout of their new DataStash promotion. Just like AT&T, they're blaming the customer. Here are the ten lies T-Mobile told me about my data usage today."
Your data plan doesnt take into account advertisements which are basically subsidized at your expense. It doesnt count the silent data collection performed by most apps, or silent updates performed in the background. root your phone, install http://fdroid.org/ and download adaway to null-route advertising servers and reclaim some of your data plan
Good people go to bed earlier.
T-Mobile Visual Voicemail used to work over the internets. But now you have to be on cellular data to use it. When T-Mobile made the change, they cited "security" as their reason. But even AT&T's VVM app works on unfriendly networks. Android includes ipsec, so if they really cared about security they could encrypt the VVM communications, but they don't. What they care about is money, and for prepaid customers, checking voicemail costs $1-3 depending on plan, since you pay for days on which you use your device.
The lie is that it has to be this way, which is what they will tell you if you complain. But it didn't used to be this way...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Light grey text on a white background FFS, how can anyone think this is a good idea?
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
The Ten Lies T-Mobile Told Me About My Data Plan
Here are the ten lies they told me during the course of the more than hour long call:
1. The first two reps told me that there was never a bug affecting data usage. Eventually, the supervisor acknowledged that yes there had been (as I’d been told in January) but that it had been fixed.
2. They said maybe it was my fault – that I just didn’t realize how much data the iPhone 6 uses despite having had it on my account since September 2014 with four consecutive months under 3 GB.
3. They told me my phone had slowed because I’d already used my 3 GB plan data and 3.5GB of my 10 GB data stash (which activated at the end of January). But their website showed this was clearly not the case.
What the T-Mobile Website Showed
Perhaps he mistakenly was combining the plan data and data stash usage (3.45 GB) but he continued to repeat that it was 3.5 GB from my data stash. Still later, he told me I had used up 6.5 GB of my data stash.
4. Then, they told me their website usage data was up to 3 days behind. When I told them that the website was already including most all of the data from today (2/20), my call was at noon, he said it was up to 24 hrs behind.
feb220
Data usage on 2/20 from T-Mobile Website during the call
Here’s what it says tonight:
5. Then, they told me that my entire data stash was gone because when I switched plans from Unlimited to 3 GB, I lost my data stash – ignoring my pleas that their January account tech had made the plan switch to fix the bug with billing in January.
6. They told me there might be a problem with my iPhone which they would help me troubleshoot. I told him I was hesitant to begin troubleshooting with someone who was quoting me statistics that didn’t reflect the reality shown on their website.
7. Then, the supervisor told me that perhaps I didn’t need to worry about this because the plan would reset tomorrow on the 21st because it’s a short month, not on the 26th as it always has. Here’s what the website showed:
What The T-Mobile Website Showed
8. Then, the supervisor told me my phone has only been using my DataStash (not my plan data). Again, the website:
9. They told me that my phone has been using up my entire DataStash over the past several months. The DataStash didn’t begin until late January.
10. And perhaps the last lie came at the beginning of the call, a voice said the call would be recorded for quality assurance. The jury’s still out on that one.
I'd do much worse than that to someone who writes in light gray over white. You owe me a couple of corneas.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I don't know about you, but the free international data roaming has worked pretty well for me in Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Belgium, UK, Austria and Canada. The 128kbps serve me perfectly fine for SIP calling (google voice + callcentric reverse), google voice via handouts lately, an EU mobile carrier that also has sip service, and for google maps, browsing and just about anything. I have about 3GB in roaming data I haven't paid an extra cent for in the past 8 months. Yes, I pay a bit high montly, but still less than ATT.
Admittedly I don't text so I don't care about that part - I use iMessage, Viber and WeChat
I also have T-Mobile, use my phone all the time for web browsing/apps, never use wifi, and my data usage for the last 30 days? 1.24 GB. Maybe you are holding your iphone wrong.
When I search on my iPad and go to a site, more and more of them have their own apps. Why in the World would I install an app to look at their content?
There is no reason other than having an advertising platform on my device.
It's just ridiculous. Apps and the web have become this medium to just get us to look at apps with mostly shitty content.
What bugs me with these data-counting plans is how they never have to prove to anyone that their numbers correlate to the real world.
If you sell apples by the lb you have to use a set of scales approved by the government. You have to show that it has been checked and correctly installed.
So, why does this not apply to bits and bytes?
So many users see odd calculations and billings from so many companies that one should think it was obvious by now this isn't fair...
From TFA:
It also remains a bit frustrating to me that the carriers are allowed to bill you for data amounts without actually having to show you the URL endpoints related to each data packet.
Um, wot? First of all the endpoints are not URLs - presumably he doesn't know the difference between socket addresses and URLs.
But to present a list of each data packet? I don't think this guy has any idea at all of how networking works. Even if his phone operated with an X.25 1500 byte packet size and everything he sent or received were even multiples of that, a 3 GB usage would then mean at least two million lines listing endpoints. In real life usage, much more.
WTF. We have one person's bad experience with a phone carrier as "news". If we're just going to start publishing individual complaints the entire site will be filled with rants about Verizon and AT&T, that's without even starting on Comcast and Time Warner.
I find this article funny because my experience with T-Mobile has been completely different.
I'll admit, I only consider them good because the competition is so bad (and I've had a number of cell carriers), but so far I'm very happy with them:
The only complaint I have is they disable the personal hotspot on my phone after 5 GB of usage each month. After that I have to pay.
In short: they might not have everything I want, but they are awesome compared to everyone else out there.
When I switched my 4 lines to AT&T, T-Mobile continued to bill me for 3 months on the numbers they no longer had.
Now, of course, the only people who will talk to me about it are collection company zombies who know nothing beyond their script.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I need to see a screenshot of his iPhone data usage tracking before I could take him seriously. Even if it is true that he never changed his usage pattern, he might have mistakenly installed an app that ate up his quota. If so, I think he owes T-Mobile a public apology.
I once had a signature.
On my phone you can send a text and see how much data you have used. If I were the article author, I would keep a daily record of usage. It might not prove anything but it might help narrow some things down. It would be obvious when the data really reset and you could see if you were doing anything odd if you data spiked. Set an alert when you are getting close to your cap. Then turn data off.
I have this issue of Rogers Wireless connecting to my phone across the Niagara River and charge me roaming. For some reason T-mobile is not able to stop it. May be they are owned by the same company or what not. So every time I go to Niagara Falls I can expect roaming charges. They have always been prompt in reversing the charges. It is typically 5$ to 15$. Just call, "say I have never been over the border" and the rep would reverse the chargers.
Looks like the poster got some great publicity due to the earlier post about 750$ a minute roaming charge from AT&T. I think it is possible he was very diligent in checking the usage and fees and managed to get the under paid and uninformed phone reps to say things that he managed leverage into another highly visible "10 lies from T-mobile".
Also T-mobile does not have over usage charges. It just throttles the connection speed. Even the throttled speed is 128 kbps which is good enough for google maps turn by turn navigation.
I usually side with the small guy against the corporation all the time. Now I wonder if I am being gamed by this poster.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If one person's personal bad experience with T-Mobile is news, than perhaps it's newsworthy that I use T-Mobile and am completely happy with it. Recently I switched to the two lines unlimited data with Hotspot for $100, it's great. My wife and I use a lot of data and there's no throttling or any problems at all, and the hotspot works well (we both have problems with internet sometimes not being available at work).
It works great in other countries, it's free to use data in Mexico (but with 3g) and in Asia (or anywhere, really) you could call people over wifi just like a normal phone.
The only problem is that reception in hilly forest areas of the Bay Area is sometimes spotty, often with no data. AT&T is better at that.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Often when someone complains about their experiences on Slashdot, someone else post a comment with a superior attitude, saying that he has never had that problem.
Please consider that maybe you don't understand the conditions.
The element of the U.S. culture in which males compete with each other is annoying and defeating.
they have the most amazing thing going on there. £15 a month and you get so many minutes and so many texts, but the selling point is this, and this is right off the T&C page:
"When we say all you can eat, that's what we mean. We do have a hard cap for domestic and pay as you go customers, but it's a cap you're unlikely to hit even if you saturate your connection 24/7 for a month."
That connection is a 7MBit 3G cellular, and the cap is 1000GB. You CAN hit 1000GB a month but only if you can clear 34GB a DAY. That's a 100% wall-to-wall saturation of your connection with NO interruptions.
I've been on this plan for several years now and NEVER ONCE have I managed to hit the cap. And I'm a heavy tethered torrenter.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Great. If I could only get coverage at my home [NOTE: I live within the Los Angeles city limits], I would switch to T-Mobile in an instant.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Tmobile is just like anyone else. Trying to succeed in business. I have ATT. I think they give you more for the buck than tmobile. John Legere has done us all a favor though. ATT has given me much better rates to keep up with the competition he has given them and he has done this selling an inferior product (no low band lte coverage in most markets and limited pops.I have almost no tmobile signal at home (Atlanta area). I have a fair but solid ATT signal. Actually Sprint has more signal at my house than Tmobile. I refused to pay $60 plus a month for landline service and went to VOIP. I pay about $4/mo with the service and it meets my needs nicely. I pay ATT about 65/mo after taxes for 3gb data, which is plenty for me. Verizon is my only other choice and they can't match the price. So ATT is it for me unless I go to Cricket and take the capped data rates and roaming limitations.
The virtue is that when I tell these people that the call was recorded... they suddenly get more cooperative. Its actually pretty awesome. I don't even need to play the recording to them to prove my point. I just tell them that I had a previous conversation with them, tell them what that was, and then tell them I recorded it. Which I did... but not one of them has asked to listen to it. They just submit.
I've gotten a lot of refunds and credits on my account that way.
Try it. First, get one of the apps for your phone that records calls... enable it... make your calls... and then when they start feeding you double talk... you tell them that the calls were recorded. They'll just give you whatever you're owed in most cases.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done. Or I can buy any GSM phone that supports the bands that T-mobile uses and have no commitment.
I've been with Straight Talk $45 "unlimited" everything for several years. Never had a problem. Works off of the ATT network so excellent coverage.
I'm a fairly satisfied T-Mobile customer, but one thing I've found with them consistently is ANY time they offer a new feature, service plan or offer - the customer service folks are untrained on it for months and the handling of it is very inconsistent.
I'm actually on wi-fi often enough so I never use that much LTE data in a month. For me, the "data stash" offer wasn't worth paying for a more expensive plan to get it. But yes, it would follow the trend I've seen with T-Mobile for them to have bugs in tracking it properly, phone reps who don't understand how their own web site works with regards to it, etc.
When they first started offering those "pay only x$ down and make interest free payments over 24 months for your new device" offers, they were all mixed up too. People were going in or buying online and getting wildly different results as to how much money (if any) had to be put down for the initial purchase. (Eventually, they seemed to iron that out, with some kind of internal credit score based system that still keeps you guessing a bit until you get final word -- but is fairly consistent.) When my workplace signed on so employees buying T-Mobile for personal devices could qualify for a corporate discount, they had that all mixed up too. The retail T-Mobile stores couldn't tell me if I'd get the discount or not when adding a new iPad to a data plan, etc.
I've just learned with T-Mobile to "go with the flow" basically. Pay your bill on time and if they hype up anything new that involves a plan change -- give it 2-3 months before you do it for the least amount of hassle and confusion. All in all, they've saved me a lot of money over using AT&T or Verizon, and gave me better phone handset options and more "extras" than Sprint ever did. They just rolled out LTE service in my town too, which I've been waiting and hoping for, for about a year now. (I mainly use my LTE data at work or on the commute, so it hasn't been a really big issue ... but it's nice to finally have the same level of service at home.)
Three haven't always been that good - a good few years ago (2009?), I was on an 'unlimited' data package with them, few months in to the contract I received a text citing changes they had made, my unlimited data was now limited to 500MB under "fair usage". I could not fucking believe it. It was in one of my parents name at the time, they kicked up a fuss for me but didn't get very far.
I hope the rug isn't swiped from underneath you too.
Call them up and tell them that. It may take little while or a few calls to get anywhere, but I've found that they actually respond to complaints about dead zones in their metro service areas.
If it's just a little gap in a place with otherwise good signal, they'll make back the cost of installing a little repeater on a street light in a few months of gaining a new customer. Of course, if there's no signal for miles, they're not going to put up a new tower for you.
Wifi calling actually works pretty well, too, but only on their branded phones (seriously, wtf?).
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I have the unlimited plan which gives me unlimited data use for data that never leaves the phone (ie for data that isn't sent to a tethered computer).
But the hackers who mess with the settings in rooted phones say that it isn't that you're charged for data as it goes out the wifi, it's that when you turn on tethering, the phone connects to a different APN.
So actually I have a limited amount of data usage while tethering is on, whether the data leaves the phone or not.
This affects me because it means that if I turn on a music streaming service in the phone while I have tethering on, I'll eventually run out of data whether the computer gets any or not.
I haven't verified that it works this way... But that also makes me wonder, since on LTE, voice data is just packets, does that mean that taking phone calls while tethering uses up my tether data, or do they at least track that?
I was on T-Mo's $30/mo Unlimited text & data + 100 Voice minutes plan. If I used up the 100 voice minutes, and I regularly would by a phone call or two, additional minutes would cost $0.10/min so I kept 20 bucks in the account just for insurance. Yet... ever time I went over 100 minutes I was cut off from voice. In some cases data was cut off too. My buffer never kicked in. I would end up having to renew early or at least manually. Auto-renew did not work. This went on for nearly a year before I got sick of it.
So then I looked at my data usage (on the T-mo website) and it was always un 5 GB/month. Well under. So I decided to switch to the $30/month unlimited Voice + 5GB data plan. This should work... but it didn't. My data was cut off after two weeks. I had somehow exceeded my limit even though I NEVER had before. And guess what? Under this plan they don't let you see your stats. You can't even see how much data you've used when you log into your account.
So I gave up on the bargain basement plans and went for the 40/mo unlimited voice/5GB data w/throttle instead of cut off. I consoled myself by thinking that I'd at least have unlimited music streaming & international data but... NO. That only kicks in at the 50/mo level. Found that out the hard way.
So now I'm paying for $50/month unlimited talk/text/data (only 1GB at 4g) plan, mostly for the privilege of no monthly billing hassle. This is really only slightly cheaper than Sprint, last I looked. I am abusing the free music streaming though and I have two international trips planed where I intend to use data.
It's still not a bad deal but my take away is this.... T-mobile will still nickle & dime you to death as well as the others and their low end plans aren't worth it unless you are patient and diligent. I'm also pretty sure they are playing games with your data stats.
No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done.
Then you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Here's T-Mobile's old terms:
$200 if termination occurs with more than 180 days remaining on your term; $100 if termination occurs with 91 to 180 days remaining on your term; $50 if termination occurs with 31 to 90 days remaining on your term; and the lesser of $50 or your monthly recurring charges (including any applicable taxes and fees) if termination occurs in the last 30 days of your term.
Unless you were signing a contract for a dumbphone or an entry-level low-end smartphone, you generally came out financially ahead over paying full retail price for a flagship handset, even if you left the carrier immediately after signing up.
What if you actually wanted a cheap phone? Well, here's the kicker - T-Mobile always allowed you to establish month-to-month service if you brought your own phone (or purchased one outright). All they've done as the "un-carrier", is put a positive marketing spin on eliminating discounted handsets. In other words, providing less consumer choice.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
You want unlimited data without throttling? They offer it for $30/mo. Otherwise, they don't cut off your data or charge you extra, so yes, it is unlimited usage, even if a portion of it is limited bandwidth.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
You're absolutely right, they're not even the least bit similar. I have no clue how some people can miss that. Personally, I quite liked paying $50/mo less than AT&T, for more services, for the first 18mo I was with T-Mobile, then seeing my bill drop by another $50/mo when both phones on the plan were paid off. I pay less than $150/mo for better service than I used to shell out $250/mo to AT&T for.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
It's not lay-away, it's financing. The difference being, the merchant holds on to your lay-away purchases until they're paid for.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
This perfectly mirrors my experience. They always eventually sort it out, you just have to be patient and try not to scream at the phone reps; understand that most of them actually do want to help, but they're hamstrung by a back-end system that wasn't designed for the number of users it currently has.
Growing pains. Yes, established players feel them, too.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
> In our area, T-Mobile lies about its coverage.
Then consider contributing some real end-user coverage mapping to the Sensorly project.
I've been with Three for some time and they began cutting my tethering. How - out of interest - do you tether while convincing them it's the phone eating the data?
It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.
The crux of the issue is, T-Mobile used to offer both options. You could choose a traditional 2 year contract and subsidized handset, which was priced competitively against offerings from the other "big 3" carriers. It actually worked out to your advantage if you wanted a shiny new flagship handset every two years.
They also offered a less expensive month-to-month option, with no handset subsidies. This existed before T-Mobile started calling themselves an "un-carrier" and removed the contract plans.
As I pointed out in my original post (now modded into oblivion, likely by T-Mobile shills), if you already own your phone outright, there are cheaper places to bring it to. As an example, I pay $35/mo with absolutely no bullshit fees or taxes, for unlimited talk, unlimited text and 2.5GB of high-speed data (with the typical unusably slow throttled "unlimited data", thereafter). On T-Mobile, their nearest comparable plan (3GB) would cost $60/mo and they'd tack on all the fees and taxes, too.
Let's ignore the taxes and assume a flat $25/mo price difference. With the money I'm saving by being on Cricket instead of T-Mobile, in 2 years, I've saved a total of $600. Using the iPhone as an example ($650 full retail price), the typical contract subsidy is $450. There's more than enough profit in T-Mobile's pricing to give you a handset upgrade every two years and still keep $150 more profit than Cricket. T-Mobile just uses clever marketing to trick you into thinking you're already getting the best deal possible!
You're an un-customer to the un-carrier.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
"At most" is not nearly large enough of a phrase for T-Mobile to hide behind considering that throttled speeds on T-Mobile fall short of 128kbps by more than an order of magnitude. And to be clear, yes, I am talking bits here. Once my 5 GB is up I'm looking at speeds that top out at 10 kilobits per second, barely enough to load the Google home page (over 800 kilobits) yet alone browse to the T-Mobile website and feed more money to the beast. It's a stupid game to play, balancing cheap phone bills with the best of the worst service available. I assume T-Mobile fully understands this and enjoys seeing how well they can train me to use exactly 4.99 Gb every 30 days.
https://support.t-mobile.com/d...
the typical contract subsidy is $450
Which doesn't apply here. When I first switched to T-Moble, I was paying less while financing 2 phones for unlimited everything (including unlimited LTE data), than I was paying AT&T for 700 shared minutes and 4GB of data per line. $50/mo, to be precise, or $1200 over 2 years. Plus the $100 paid to AT&T for my phone and $200 for my wife's, bringing the 2 year total AT&T ripoff to $1500. Now that both phones are paid for, the bill is an additional $50/mo lower; mind you, we paid $650 apiece for the phones, but there were cheaper options if we wanted them; that's not relevant here, though, since you have to buy your phone on Cricket, as well. That leads me to want to recalculate my savings over AT&T, completely ignoring the cost of the phone.
Well, let's see, and keep in mind this is for 2 lines... AT&T, still $250/mo, whether you bring your own phone or buy from them, this is the cost of service, 700min/mo, 4GB data per line, unlimited texting; mind you, their rates have changed since then, so it may well be cheaper now. T-Mobile, $150/mo for services, unlimited everything, including LTE data. So, really, device cost notwithstanding, AT&T would have cost me $2400 more over the past 2 years that I've been with T-Mobile, had I stayed with them. That's one month's rent, one month's phone bill, and a night out for me and my wife. And, to be honest, unless we were frequent international travelers, or made frequent international calls, there's no way my wife and I could be paying T-Mobile any more than we already do for 2 lines; we have every feature already.
I'm sure you're tempted to argue that I'm comparing AT&T to T-Mobile simply to make a more favorable argument for myself. The reality is, though, that I'm comparing one viable option to another. Cricket doesn't have LTE coverage in my area, while every other provider does. That's an important feature to me, so Cricket holds no value for me at any price; they're not a viable option for me. Now, they may have LTE coverage in your area, or that may not matter to you, in which case, more power to you. But let's go ahead and do the math for 2 lines of unlimited voice, texting, and LTE data on Cricket, anyway. According to their rates chart, they don't offer unlimited. Well, then, let's go with the highest option, 20GB, which is on promo for $60/mo right now, but I see a pattern in their rate options, which allows me to discern that this is probably normally $70/mo. $65 if I trust them to store my payment details, which I don't, so we'll use $70/mo. Times 2, but, oh, they'll give me $10/mo off on the 2nd line. $130/mo for limited LTE, in areas where they actually have LTE coverage, which is *nowhere* that my wife or I would be using our phones. Really, not worth the $20/mo savings; especially as I routinely top 10GB/mo, often topping 30GB, using my phone as a dash cam. Those months, it would be useless to me for 1/3 of the month, or more, as I use maybe 60min/mo; most of my usage is data.
Again, if Cricket works for you, that's great. If their offering truly was viable for more people, more people would use them. I really hate to say it, since it flies in the face of everything I commonly say about people in general, but most people aren't completely stupid, they run through the math on these things (or have a trusted party who does this for them), weigh the pros and cons, and, ultimately, choose what works best for them. The features I'd have to give up to go with Cricket (unlimited LTE... actually, LTE at all) are worth considerably more than $10 per line (e.g. the $20 "savings" I would see with Cricket; and that's *after* T-Mobile adds taxes and fees to the bill) I would save. That I can finance my phone upgrades is simply icing.
Of course, Cricket becomes a viable option at the 5GB level, where it's actually $30/mo cheaper for 2 lines than T-Mobile, f
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I don't. I'm totally honest with them. Told them when the floor fell out of my signal one day that it might have been something I did, they were straight back and telling me that their relay had actually burned out - yes it was me caused it, but I wasn't to know and neither were they that three days of solid saturation on a HSDPA connection would kill their hardware (though it had happened elsewhere). Within an hour a new mobile tower was up and I was back online. The CSM's exact words to me: "you paid for unlimited, you suck up all the bandwidth you want to. If the signal drops again just let us know and we'll have you back up again before you hang up." They didn't even hint at billing me for a new RF uplink coil.
I don't know of any Android torrent clients. They know what sort of traffic is going through their network, if you lie to them they will know and they will punish you for it.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I think I'm one of the lucky ones. My mother has had nothing but connectivity problems (iPhone, hah! Solved with the purchase of a Nokia Lumia 630) and later bandwidth problems (suburban with the nearest tower too far away for HSDPA, she was stuck at 3MBit on a good day, wouldn't even stream Youtube on an average day), there's me in the convergence zone of no less than three towers now.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Oh, oops. Looks like they now have a family plan that includes 2 lines and unlimited LTE data for $100/mo now. That's $20/mo less than I've been paying, so I just switched to it. That puts T-Mobile unlimited everything and Cricket with a 20GB/line data cap at the same price after taxes and fees, if you've got 2 lines.
Damn. Sorry about that, Cricket looked like it may have been a viable option for some people, but... well. Just... sorry. And thanks for prompting me to look into that; it's new since I looked last week.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Now that both phones are paid for, the bill is an additional $50/mo lower; mind you, we paid $650 apiece for the phones, but there were cheaper options if we wanted them; that's not relevant here, though, since you have to buy your phone on Cricket, as well.
I think you're getting the current Cricket, a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, confused with the old Cricket (a regional CDMA carrier). They allow you to use any AT&T locked or unlocked GSM phone. The coverage is the same as AT&T's native (non-roaming) network. I use a iPhone 5S originally from Verizon, on Cricket; I certainly didn't have to buy one of their phones.
According to their rates chart, they don't offer unlimited.
T-Mobile and Sprint are the only games in town if you really need truly unlimited data. Once that becomes part of your selection criteria, you know what your options are.
I say nearly because Cricket will cut you off after 5GB, while T-Mobile will throttle, and Cricket no longer offers tethering, so really. No. they're just not a viable option.
Cricket throttles at 128Kbps, the same throttle speed as T-Mobile and Sprint. It's just as unusable on all carriers. You are correct, however, that Cricket does not offer any form of wireless hotspot/tethering add-on. They also don't do anything to stop you from tethering if your phone natively supports it, or if you've enabled it by way of rooting/jailbreaking.
More-or-less, MetroPCS (which is now a wholly owned subsidiary of T-Mobile) offers exactly what you're getting now on the same network, for $120/mo. That's two lines at the base price of $60/mo each, a $5 family plan discount on each line for having two lines, then a $5 fee on each line for adding mobile hotspot functionality to both lines.
What you'd lose is the ability to roam in the few places T-Mobile still has roaming agreements (looking at their map, I can't imagine where) and the ability to finance your next handsets. Is that worth $30/mo?
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Anyone saying that they are completely ripping you off (and OP especially) is full of crap. Not the best service when out of country but it really isn't that bad...you simply feel like they are trying to take you for a bit of a ride...nothing you should be surprised of when dealing with an American company.
Here's my flight path (last week mind you, got home last night): Chicago --> Frankfurt --> Istanbul --> Toronto --> Chicago
I had Internet the whole time with less than 5 minutes of sync-up after arriving in each new country.
The only downsides to TMobile when out of country is that your data plan is slow and they try to get you to spend a silly amount for high speed Internet while in the foreign country. Calls in country are 0 (same as your normal plan) and calls to the US are 20 cents/minute which is silly but not horrible. Internet on phone is mediocre while out of country.
Want to complain about something? Focus upon the crappy airline food and lack of Internet access while on planes. Or better yet, focus upon the crappy people who don't know how to turn off their ringer on a plane. So many other problems in life centering around schmucks that don't appreciate how far we've advanced than rolling across the border with minimal fees. $750 is a bunch of crap...not reflective of actual TMobile customers. The 6 bucks to chat with my sister for 30 min from Istanbul is real though its my fault for not skyping or using facetime.
Oh, oops. Looks like they now have a family plan that includes 2 lines and unlimited LTE data for $100/mo now. That's $20/mo less than I've been paying, so I just switched to it.
Damn. Sorry about that, Cricket looked like it may have been a viable option for some people, but... well. Just... sorry. And thanks for prompting me to look into that; it's new since I looked last week.
T-Mobile has actually been running the two unlimited lines for $100 promotion, for a few months now. It's a good deal if it suits your needs and depending on what your state's wireless taxes cost, since taxes and fees are extra. T-Mobile should tell their customers when switching to a newly-released promotional plan would save them a few bucks, but that'd be akin to AT&T lowering your monthly rate if you didn't use your upgrade eligibility. In both cases, the carriers are just hoping a customer's ignorance will continue to fill the coffers.
Again, if you need truly unlimited, Cricket isn't an option. That's still no reason for people who use more modest amounts of data to pay extra for a higher data tier or unlimited plan that they don't actually need. Heck, a big part of the popularity of Ting (a Sprint MVNO run by Tucows) is that it can be extremely inexpensive for very light users.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
It is a real pain to attempt to read anything on these low-contrast web sites. Does anyone know of a good way to correct these sites? Maybe a CSS injector to enhance the text vs the background?
-- Posted from my parent's basement
I think you're getting the current Cricket, a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, confused with the old Cricket (a regional CDMA carrier).
No, you simply misunderstood. Was your phone free? No, you had to buy one. I said "on", as in "with", not "from".
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
And, like I said, to each his own. If Cricket works for you, than great. I even said as much and I'm not ripping on Cricket or trying to tear them down in any way. You, on the other hand, apparently understand the market better than your initial misleading response to me seems to indicate, leading me to believe that was your intent. Thus why I clarified things.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So this fuckwit went to Canada, turned on data roaming, turned on the app with one of highest data usages then cries when they charge him for it? THEN he actually leaves the company that
A. Refunded his idiotic mistake.
B. Refunded the insurance they had him buy to cover HIS mistake
and goes to a company that fucks everything up. Way to show for the 15th trillion time in human history that just because your dumb enough to believe that the grass is greener on the other side doesn't mean you won't eventually look like an idiot when you go crying that the grass really wasn't any better over there.
Did you even read the post to which you replied?
In case this was supposed to be an on-thread-topic post, apples have so many different types of matter. There is water, sugars both simpler and complex. There are trace amount of vitamins. There are proteins - both from the apple tree as well as any insects that might have made this apple their home.
Many of these are behind the scenes - i.e. under the apple skin. Why should an apple vendor have to weigh all of these to be able to sell a pound of apples? Data pipeline providers don't have to - T-Mobile is the only judge of how much data a customer used. Their "scale" or "meter" doesn't have to be approved by any regulator.
Why so much unfairness against apple vendors?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I like T-mobile as well, but have a completely opposite plan. I rarely use my phone (no social life), don't want to do anything on the web, and never travel outside a 60 mile radius from home. (Once in the last three years.) I dropped Verizon and switched to T-mobile, going with their prepaid option and a cheap flip phone. I top off the account and pay 10c min/text. This might seem like a lot for those who use their phones quite often, but for me this is great. With Verizon I was paying $70/mo, even after military and a secondary discount, and they said I couldn't get a no-data plan if I had a smartphone (I had a Droid 2 with them). With T-Mobile I've averaged about $15/mo.
Their signal can be weak and spotty in my area (Boulder, CO and abouts), and I can't get any picture/long texts (a rare occasion for me) because I don't have a data plan, but outside those I am extremely happy that I switched to them.