T-Mobile US cuts overage charges, dares rivals to follow suit T-Mobile US is once again looking to seize headlines in the US carrier space by pressing forward with a campaign to end data, text, and voice overage fees. The company said that as of May 1 it will no longer charge users an additional fee when the data limit on a device has been reached. Similarly, the company has eliminated …
Seem to be getting the bum's rush from T Mob UK after circa £14 deducted from my PAYG balance for voice call I didn't knowingly make. Trying to sort it out with T Mob's Twitter help bods but they're not really helping.
I'm not sure T Mob or EE are any worse than average telcos -- most don't seem to give a damn about customers or customer service.
I'm on prepaid unlimited text and data but only a hundred minutes voice. I seldom go over 100 minutes, but when I do they make a big stink. But last month they billed me an additional 6 dollars, which is OK, and the nagging text msgs didn't occur. Maybe the overage will stop. But what concerns me is if they try to put me on a different plan that's more expensive. Then I'll complain, because I'm only paying 30 dollars a month now. I'll NEVER go back to at&t after all the problems I had with them, but I might change to Verizon.
Bad, no question about it. Unlimited use plans are what got those of us on this side of the pond in trouble in the first place.
The correct fix is to adjust the overage pricing to properly reflect additional costs. Something like $10 buys you another 100M of data from your base plan, and when if you cross a critical threshold level the next 100M costs you $15 or $20. Maybe a 1% variance freebie, but certainly not unlimited. Could even let the pricing on overages be part of the package you purchase, but flat rates seems simpler to implement.
I've looked at the paygo plans from various carriers, and they're only monthly subscriptions w/no contract: i.e., you can quit w/o penalty at any time, but it's still $30/mo. Prepaid is the closest to what I want, but that costs me $0.11/minute. My use is minimal, so the cost is bearable, but it still frosts me to be ripped off so.
I'd love for a carrier to just go ape, and follow the lead of Almost Free Speech (http://almostfreespeech.net). You pay for what you use, period. They'll even give you two cents' worth of services for free, to check them out, and it's enough to actually try out a site. (N.B.: I have no relationship with them other than that of a satisfied customer.)
C'mon, isn't there anyone out there who can buy enough service to set up a small second- or third-tier carrier and try it out? Sure, they wouldn't rake in the obscene profits, but what does that matter, if you've got all the customers?
Have same plan here. Only used 9 minutes of voice over the last 5 months. I have a PAYG TracFone with triple minutes for gabbing. The T-Mobile Nokia 521 Winphone is tethered to my Acer netbook & 22" monitor. You get 5 gigs @ 4g then they throttle you down to 2g (after warning you when you exceed 4 gigs usage) but I've only had that happen once in 5 months, after going on a Youtube BBC Documentary spree, (Iain Stewart is great). My 2 phones together average $45 to $50 per month, tax included. Good or bad? Great for me, a low use consumer.
...and I'm not even sure how newsworthy it is, is that T-mobile seems to be out of the feature phone business. As for the rest:
They've been offering unlimited talk and text for at least 2 years now.
They've been doing the throttle instead of overage on data for at least as long.
As far as I can see (AFAICS?), they haven't really done anything except make a bunch of noise about what they're already doing.
I'm a T-Mo customer and a basicly happy one at that, but they sure have gotten circus-y of late.
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