When I heard the announcement that AT&T was in plans to buy out T-Mobile my first reaction was dread. My favorite phone company, the one with the best plans I ever found was going to be bought out by the telephone company that I hate most. The acquisition came and passed without any apparent changes to T-Mobile, so mentally I let my guard down and deluded myself with the hope that things wouldn't change with T-Mobile.
This week they did.
Two months ago I purchased T-Mobile's mobile 4G hotspot, a convenient device which turns T-Mobile's 4G network into a wifi network that I can use to connect my laptop, or iPad to the speed of 4G internet wherever I go. It came with a great plan as well: if I bought the device I could pay month to month just like my phone, and never have to enter a contract. This particular type of plan has always appealed greatly to me because I'm the type of person who would rather just buy the device outright and then pay for the service month to month rather than entering a two year contract.
T-Mobile's hotspot plan sweetened the pot even further by giving me a discount since I was already a T-Mobile customer: I received a fairly significant 20% discount on the purchase of the device and every month I would receive a 20% discount on my bill.
The service also offered 5 gigabyte and 10 gigabyte unlimited plans. The basic concept is that if you sign up for the 5 gigabyte plan you get 5 gigabytes of data at the full download speed of 4G, and then after that your service is not cut off but it is significantly rate limited.
I set my device up with the 5 gigabyte plan, planning to try it out and see if the rate limiting would affect me enough for me to need to sign up for the better plan.
Fast forward two months and I discover that I need the 10 gigabyte plan. The first month when the rate limiting kicked in I barely noticed it. Sure I couldn't stream YouTube videos anymore, but it wasn't that bad for web browsing and my web based work which mostly just involves transferring plain text code files too and from my local machine and the servers of the startup I work for.
But recently the rate limiting has increased greatly. This month when I surpassed 5 gigabytes of bandwidth due to Mac OS X downloading system updates the bandwidth slowed dramatically to a mere trickle of about 10-20 kbps. So I headed to the local T-Mobile retail store, wallet at the ready, eager to give them my money for five extra gigabytes of data per month.
Imagine my surprise when the customer service representative told me that there was no way they could increase my plan to the next level without making me sign up for a two year contract. Needless to say this did not appeal to me and I told him so. He proceeded to make a call, apparently to some higher up customer service center, and they also said there was nothing that could be done. I had to sign up for a two year contract.
By the time the customer representative got off the phone I could see that he was even more frustrated than me. He told me that he was really irritated with the policy change, that it didn't make sense, and that he had already seen customers cancel their plans with T-Mobile over it. He said there was nothing he could do for me, and suggested that I call customer support myself, complain, and threaten to cancel my service as that was the only way that I might possibly be able to improve my plan without needing to sign a two year contract.
So I did.
I called T-Mobile customer support and explained what I needed: the 10 gigabyte per month plan which was advertised a mere two months ago when I bought my wireless hotspot and signed up for the 5 gigabyte plan. Once again the customer service agents explained that there was nothing they could do. In fact, one of them told me that if I wanted to change my cell phone plan I would also need to sign up for a two year contract. This is ridiculous. Historically T-Mobile has provided great flexible month to month plans. If I wanted to add more minutes I could very easily, and it was month to month.
Now T-Mobile is quietly doing away with its convenient and economical month to month plans and trying to force all its customers into contracts. In the T-Mobile retail store, where my conversation was not being recorded and monitored, the frustrated T-Mobile customer service representative told me outright that they were trying to increase the number of contracts because of the AT&T buy out.
And so the time has come for me to leave T-Mobile behind. Really, why would I stick with T-Mobile's plan when there are much better plans like a CLEAR mobile plan for the same price:
- Unlimited data usage – no extra usage charges
- No preset download speed cap
- Upload speeds up to 1.5 Mbps
I really don't understand the logic behind T-Mobile's change. If AT&T is pushing T-Mobile to ruin their plans and make them as bad as AT&T plans they are just going to lose customers to the providers that are now better, like CLEAR.
So goodbye T-Mobile. I see no reason to stay with a service which won't let me increase my plan (hence paying you more money every month), without signing up for a two year contract. Probably the only reason they want me stuck in a two year contract is so that they can't lose me to the better service providers like CLEAR. With CLEAR I'll be able to use 10 gigabytes, or even 20 gigabytes of data if I need without having to worry about a download speed cap.
For the time being I'll keep my T-Mobile cell phone plan because I am grandfathered in, but if it comes to a point where I need to adjust my cell phone plan there is no way I'm going to sign up for a two year contract. Once again there are better month to month plans that won't tie me into a contract.
A message to AT&T and T-Mobile: If you want to keep your customers loyal to your service the way to do it is with exceptional service and great plans, not restrictive two year contracts. You are just shooting yourself in the foot.
4 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
I've recently made the jump to Sprint from T-Mobile. I too was a huge fan of their month to month plans with mobile hotspot, until the day of the rate limiting. Mine was much more unforgiving, because the 10-20kbps that you mentioned hit me almost immediately.
I wasn't averse to a two year contract but I had made up my mind long ago after hearing about the proposed merger I would give them one slip up and I'm out.
Just like you, I was prepared and WILLING to pay extra for the 10gb plan, they wanted a new contract, I didn't waste anytime. Sprint not only gave me a student discount, I got a credit union discount, they bought my Galaxy S, gave me a discount for coming from a rival carrier, yet ANOTHER discount for letting them port my number.
End of the day, I walked away with an Evo 4G for $50 and new service I wouldn't have to pay on for a 2 months.
Thanks for the tip. I'll investigate Sprint if I need to change my phone plan. But as far as wireless hotspots go it looks like CLEAR is the leader there and I'm planning to go with them.
In the T-Mobile retail store, where my conversation was not being recorded and monitored, the frustrated T-Mobile customer service representative told me outright that they were trying to increase the number of contracts because of the AT&T buy out.
I am not sure that the word of one retail CSR that the new policy is because of the AT&T merger convinces me that this is the case. Cell phone carriers change their policies all of the time, mainly to increase customer retention and decrease churn. I can point to examples of this from all four national carriers, not just AT&T.
Full disclosure: I am an AT&T customer, and own a small number of their shares. I am also opposed to the merger.
Fair enough. It might be presumptuous for me to make that assumption based on one retail CSR, but you must admit that it does seem reasonable especially when you compare T-Mobile's historical commitment to the month to month plan with this new policy, begun so soon after the merger.