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."

Comments

heres another lie.

[nimbius]

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

Re:heres another lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use an iPhone in the first place?

Re:heres another lie.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it has an Apple logo on it, duh! How else do you expect me to fit in with the cool kids?

Re:heres another lie.

[LordLimecat]

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.

Those updates offer you the option to defer them till Wifi.

More to the point, most geeks object vocally when carriers try to look at what you're doing. T-Mobile doesnt. They provide a pipe. What sites you visit, how big their ads are, and what apps you download-- none of that is their problem. If you use their pipe, they count the data.

Its worth noting though that they dont charge overages, you just lose LTE access when you cross your limit. Oh no, cry me a river. Maybe you want to look at deferring those updates till wifi, or quit watching youtube over LTE, or (gasp) upgrade your plan. T-Mobile's plan is so much better than any other carrier, its laughable, and here you are complaining that theyre not DPI'ing you to detect what the ads are.

Re: heres another lie.

[Karlt1]

Because on an iPhone, I can disable apps on a one by one basis from using cellular data, from using data in the background and don't have to worry about dozens of popular apps loading ads on my home screen.

Re: heres another lie.

[Sable Drakon]

Settings>Data Usage>(Insert Offending App Here)>Restrict Background Data checkbox. Tick that box on, and the app won't be able to use cellular data.

Re:heres another lie.

[chihowa]

Just in case it wasn't clear from the post above, you lose LTE/3G but still retain EDGE access. Email, light web browsing, maps, and the like still work fine on EDGE, just more slowly. I've rarely gone over, but only dropping my speed when I do is just about the best reaction to an overage that I've seen.

Re:heres another lie.

[LordLimecat]

But they nickel and dime you for everything else. Even with their top plan where everything was supposedly included, a friend sent me text messages from his T-Mobile service, and I never got them. It turned out that for the privilege of sending or receiving SMS to or from other countries, you have to pay T-Mobile $10 extra per month, despite it not costing them anything extra, and even when the people in the other end are also on T-Mobile. Pure money grabbing.

I am not aware of this being true. I recently travelled through 3 countries in the mid east and asia, and had web and texting for free. The only thing that would have cost money was voice. This required no special plan or notification to T-Mobile.

Re: heres another lie.

[jc42]

The cool devs still do, though, because hardly anyone is making money on the Android markets.

Heh. I have a number of friends (acquaintances, colleagues, etc.) who are giving up on IOS, after numerous cases of their apps rejected by Apple, and then in many cases duplicated a month or two later by an Apple app. This tends to lead to a certain amount of what we might call cynicism about the whole process.

I like to remind them (or tell them, if they haven't read their history) that this has always been the story in "cottage industry". You do the work on your own time, and the employer then decides whether what you did deserves pay (and often keeps the rejects rather than returning them to to the worker). Historically, people working in cottage industries have been rather poor, since the employers control the market and take most of the income for their own coffers. In the modern software industry, the employers also normally claim any "intellectual property" that you develop, which of course includes everything that you create if you're a software developer.

But it's nothing new; it's how "unregulated" industries have always worked. Maybe it'll be fun (in a historian sense) to stick around and see how it all plays out in the long run.

Here's one

[drinkypoo]

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...

Re:Here's one

[wolrahnaes]

Two words for you:

Google Voice

Not only does it give you great voicemail but you get the option of a second number on which you can filter and forward calls to your heart's content, plus free texting, and you can access it all from your computer, tablet, whatever. For the anti-Google crowd there are a number of other providers offering similar services, any VoIP provider is technically capable of doing it.

Carrier voicemail is a pile of crap across the board, I haven't used it since I got a smartphone.

Re:Here's one

[drinkypoo]

Don't cry about this shit. Get your money back and buy a $30 Nokia, problem solved.

So just to be clear, the solution to the problem that visual voicemail doesn't work over the internet is to get a phone which doesn't have visual voicemail, and which always period the end full stop requires me to use the cellular network to check voicemail? Uh no

Re:Here's one

[jader3rd]

T-Mobile Visual Voicemail used to work over the internets. But now you have to be on cellular data to use it.

It still works over Wi-Fi if you have Wi-Fi calling enabled.

Re:Here's one

[Aighearach]

I use Google Voice, and the voicemail feature is still useful, but they've already cut off 3rd party app usage which really gutted the use cases it was good for. I still use it, but I can't recommend it, because it might get shut off at any time. There is just no implied future to the service; it exists as long as it exists, because it doesn't make any money for them. Sad but true.

I would instead recommend that users who can afford it use a commercial IP telephony service with similar features.

You can indeed access the voice mail from any device, but you can't use the phone features except through google apps.

Article bad web page design

[MrL0G1C]

Light grey text on a white background FFS, how can anyone think this is a good idea?

Re:Article bad web page design

[reboot246]

You've been modded off topic, and I probably will be, too, for agreeing with your post.

When I tried to read his list of lies, I gave up after the first sentence. I'm 62 years old and I don't see as well as I did back when I was Superman. A curse and a pox on web sites that use such low contrasting schemes. The article may have been interesting, but I'll never know what he intended to say because I simply can't read it without getting eyestrain and a massive headache.

Even increasing the font size in my browser can't compensate for low contrast. Using "Select All" makes for text that is a bit easier to read, but grows tiresome after a while because all the images have been selected, too.

Re:Article bad web page design

[cruff]

A curse and a pox on web sites that use such low contrasting schemes. The article may have been interesting, but I'll never know what he intended to say because I simply can't read it without getting eyestrain and a massive headache.

I agree 150%! I will often close a web site nearly immediately if it has piss poor graphical design. By the way, have you investigated if your browser has the option to turn off page styles? In Firefox selecting the View/Page Style/No Style menu option will turn off the crappy graphic decisions made by the web site author, if you really need to view the site.

Re:Article bad web page design

[Anonymous Coward]

> In Firefox selecting the View/Page Style/No Style menu option will turn off the crappy graphic decisions made by the web site author

I find that killing the style sheet usually just trades bad color scheme for bad layout.

I use the no color add-on which puts a button on the toolbar to toggle a page between color and black-and-white without affecting the layout.

Screw this clickbait

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Screw this clickbait

[fustakrakich]

Turn off mobile data and only use wifi. If everybody does that, you might see some changes. But as long as people keep buying these damn things faster than they can be made, nobody should complain about the success of the business model.

Re:Screw this clickbait

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I work with this data every day. It really *could* be up to 72 hours. Under particular conditions. If your phone does not hang up with GSM/CDMA you will not get the data usage until 24 hours have passed. At which point your carrier will hang up the phone and your phone will call right back in 1 second later. The backend processing could take up to another 48 hours. LTE may not hang up at all for up to one month but *may* send in a usage interim summary every 3 days.

The reality is more like 1-2 hours. I have seen as fast as 20 seconds. I have one customer on a system that does 40k connections a day (bug in their firmware).

The data it summed up on AAA connection end. Which is where the 'usage' comes from. Billing does not track what you did. Just how much. Inside the core routers they do track where you go (as they have to route it). Front of house does not look at that data at all. In fact they can not access it. It would probably take ages to find someone to actually dig out the logs and then get permission to do so. As they are NOT supposed to do it (even though it is pretty easy to do)...

Re:Screw this clickbait

[sjames]

Why shouldn't people complain about fraud? It is, after all, supposedly illegal.

Re:Screw this clickbait

[BronsCon]

Let's take it a bit farther, shall we? Assume all 10 are actually lies, they're not about the data plan, at all; they're about the data usage. I'm willing to bet that T-Mobile was completely up-front honest about the data plan, as their marketing materials are all pretty clearly written and it would take a complete idiot of a sales rep and a complete idiot of a customer to get those details wrong.

How about "Four Misinterpretations of My T-Mobile Data Usage, Repeated to Look Like Ten"?

Maybe you deserve it ?

[obarthelemy]

I'd do much worse than that to someone who writes in light gray over white. You owe me a couple of corneas.

Re: Maybe you deserve it ?

[BronsCon]

You've clearly never been a T-Mobile customer using a new feature as they're in the process of rolling it out. Or, really, any other company doing the same. There's is a huge difference between a lie and a misunderstanding, in that a lie requires intent. It's fairly common for training, and even support systems, not to roll out until after the feature (backwards, in my opinion, but they do it so they can roll the features out faster); I would be willing to wager that this is exactly what happened here, having experienced the same thing when T-Mobile first rolled out Simple Choice, again when they rolled out Jump!, and yet again when they rolled out the CellSpot routers. I pay for unlimited LTE, so DataStash has no bearing on my account, but I would imagine they're rolling it out the same way they've rolled out every other change in the 2 years I've been with them.

They're really not a good provider for anyone who doesn't have at least a little patience. They're used to being the smallest of the "big" players and their customer base has bee growing very quickly since they started Simple Choice, but it seems they're still using the same release procedures that caused headaches during that initial growth period. Should they change? I don't know, it seems to be working for them, honestly. Would many of us be less frustrated with them if they rolled out the support systems and training before the features? Maybe, maybe not; we might be more annoyed that the features take longer to roll out. And there's the rub.

Slow news day

[Chris453]

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.

Re:Slow news day

[cptdondo]

Exactly. I've had T-Mobile for years, use them internationally all over the world, and never once have I run into this, except in China when my nexus 4 decided to download a new version of Android, over and over and over.

This whole article translates to WAAAAHHHH!!!! I'm a whiner and I didn't get my way so I'm going to throw my mashed peas at the wall!

Grow up and quit whining. Sometimes you run out of your data allotment and all that happens is that TMobile throttles you down to a slower speed so you can't stream porn anymore.

Much ado about absolutely nothing.

Re:Slow news day

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I've had T-Mobile for years, use them internationally all over the world, and never once have I run into this, except in China when my nexus 4 decided to download a new version of Android, over and over and over.

This whole article translates to WAAAAHHHH!!!! I'm a whiner and I didn't get my way so I'm going to throw my mashed peas at the wall!

Grow up and quit whining. Sometimes you run out of your data allotment and all that happens is that TMobile throttles you down to a slower speed so you can't stream porn anymore.

Much ado about absolutely nothing.

Ditto, however with such whining capabilities this sounds like a mileniall in which case its his parent's phone plan and he might get his allowance shortened =/

googling on iPad

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:googling on iPad

[fustakrakich]

It's just ridiculous.

Well, you can only blame the market for not rejecting this stuff at the onset. People should send their phones back and demand they fix it or give their money back. It's going to take a lot of people, but hey, that's the nature of the beast. Otherwise, if they can't be bothered, there is no reason to blame the venders. Personally it's not an issue. Without unlimited mobile data, I turn it off and use wifi.

Re: googling on iPad

[jc42]

Be careful that the "better caching" you see isn't actually pre-fetching, where the app downloads several of the next few links in the background so that if you click one, it loads much faster. Problem is, that counts against your data even if you never do click those links.

I've done a number of demos of what a site can do to you with pre-fetching. I make a page that shows viewers a few pictures, but also has "hidden" links that you don't see to other images, videos, etc. There are several ways of including such links without the browser actually showing them, which I won't waste time with here. I also include at least one link that's visible as an ordinarily link pointing to a large file that takes a while to download. After talking a while about other parts of the page, I tell the person to click on that link -- and observe that the content shows instantly, although it's obvious large and should take a while to download. This gets across the concept of pre-loading, and why it's useful. But I can also explain that it means stuff you never looked at may have also been downloaded.

Then I tell them to take a look at the source (perhaps teaching them how to do that), and point out the hidden links. I invite them to imagine what the pre-loading could have "installed" in their browser's cached without their knowledge. For instance, they could now be on their local government's terrorist or drug dealer or religious heretic or kiddie-porn lists because of what was just pre-loaded, and the evidence is sitting in their cache. I invite them to discover just what those links actually pre-loaded. And no, I won't tell them how to do that, any more than an actual hostile web site will.

Sometimes I grin and tell them that if they haven't done anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, right? ;-)

Actually, the hidden links generally point to rather innocent stuff, like tourism photos or wikipedia pages or cute cat videos, but they don't know that unless they figure out how to see the hidden content. The most useful is probably a page that simply explains that I could have linked to anything on the Web, and I'll leave it to their imagination what could be in their cache as a result.

Data-counting and accountability

[KreAture]

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...

Re:Data-counting and accountability

[KreAture]

I believe you are wrong here.
In your example you can actually watch the person, you can even videotape (or digitally ofcoruce) him/her.
But, in the case of your phone or pc, the supplier/isp refuses to tell us exactly how they count and what they count.

For example, phone service providers will often charge differently for a picture message than for data traffic. In which case they may or may not deduct the snooped message sent via IP from your data total and add a fixed number to the bill instead. On the other hand they may later switch to a unlimited plan where they now only bill for the data, but will not clarify, or even know themselves, if they are now still deducting the picture messages.

In comcast case they used an independent party to verify their billing and then went out and stated that they felt it was really good and only -0.76% to +0.36% wrong. The problem there is any error in such sales shall be on the side of the consumer, so they would have to offset all their billing by +0.76% to be in the clear from a regulatory perspective.

Let's get technical

[arth1]

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.

Re:Let's get technical

[CanadianMacFan]

And if they gave him a list of everything he downloaded for his billing then he would complain about how they were tracking his every move online and invading his privacy.

Re:Let's get technical

[dcooper_db9]

No problem for the carrier. They'd just charge him for downloading the report.

Whine, whine, whine

[Art Challenor]

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.

Funny, my experience has been completely different

[KingOfBLASH]

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:

• I get an unlimited data plan for the cost of a limited data plan on Verizon
• I get LTE in all major metro areas, and it's FAST
• Unlimited really seems to be unlimited. I abuse it (streaming movies for instance) and haven't once seen a slow down. And I check periodically with a speed test app
• Due to a large european network, roaming abroad can be cheaper than other carriers
• While other carriers like Verizon and AT&T have a lot of bad press for tracking of users / selling users data, there's been none from T-Mobile. A cynical person might say this is because they're just better at it, but I feel it's important to reward companies who do the right thing.

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.

phone data usage

[pikine]

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.

Something fishy

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

T-mobile plans do not have contracts. One can leave the network anytime. So there is no real hold over the customers. If they have bought a phone on installment plan, you have to pay off the remainder, but otherwise no real hold. So typically t-mobile customer service is very nice.

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.

One man's personal anecdote

[kamapuaa]

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.

Or: Maybe you don't understand the conditions.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re: Or: Maybe you don't understand the conditions.

[Anonymous Coward]

The element of European culture where that snobbishly looks down at Americans is immature and annoying

ThreeUK's "All You Can Eat" plan is the dog's bits

[ihtoit]

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.

I record all my calls

[Karmashock]

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.

Re:I record all my calls

[ProzacPatient]

Be careful with this. In some states it is illegal to record a conversation unless a certain number of parties or all parties agree to being recorded.

In my state in particular only the consent of one party is required and that party can be yourself if you're a participant of the conversation.

Meh.... This isn't that surprising, really.

[King_TJ]

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.)

Similar experience

[Simulant]

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.

Re: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

[Powercntrl]

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.

Re:He confirms: T-Mobile was lying. Q: How much?

[DrunkenTerror]

> In our area, T-Mobile lies about its coverage.

Then consider contributing some real end-user coverage mapping to the Sensorly project.