Before T-Mobile merge with Sprint, there were $25/month postpaid plans from both T-Mobile and Sprint.
T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
11–20 of 126 posts
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#12How is this even remotely legal? I'm genuinely asking. They must have consulted with lawyers and believe it is legal. But even if their TOS say they reserve the right to change anyone's plan at any time... that seems like one of those clauses that judges always strike down. This is just flat-out providing a different service than you contracted for. This is like if I order a $200 SSD from Amazon and instead they ship…
> I don't understand how this is legal.
It's presumably laid out in the contract that their users sign. IANAL but I understand contract law gives wide latitude for parties to make agreements to do things which are generally legal.
One could imagine a legal regime that prohibited price or service changes in otherwise-legal contracts. Of course, that also might not be ideal. For example: a vendor used by the provider suddenly changes the capabilities of a piece of equipment such that the original service sold by the provider can no longer be provided at any price. What everybody wants in that scenario is for you to be seamlessly moved to the closest reasonable alternative, not for your service to automatically terminate. Similarly, most people will gripe about a $10/mo change in price, but against the likely alternative of automatic cancellation, the increased fee is what _most_ people will prefer.
And again, 100% of them will have agreed to this exception-handling clause when they signed up.
> This is like if I order a $200 SSD from Amazon and instead they ship me a $300 SSD and charge me $300, and there are no returns if I don't cancel the order before it's fulfilled.
There is a material difference in changing prices (say) 5 years after a contract was signed and ordering a specific item at a specific price a week or two earlier. IANAL but I believe the ordering of goods via the Internet is in fact covered by different laws in a way that services are not. Which again, makes some sense given that service contracts frequently have a term of "forever," during which time everything about the world can change. (Pretty sure my current phone contract was signed over 10 years ago. I'm glad they changed my plan to let me use LTE, for example.)
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#13How is this even remotely legal? I'm genuinely asking. They must have consulted with lawyers and believe it is legal. But even if their TOS say they reserve the right to change anyone's plan at any time... that seems like one of those clauses that judges always strike down. This is just flat-out providing a different service than you contracted for. This is like if I order a $200 SSD from Amazon and instead they ship…
> I don't understand how this is legal. It's presumably laid out in the contract that their users sign. IANAL but I understand contract law gives wide latitude for parties to make agreements to do things which are generally legal. One could imagine a legal regime that prohibited price or service changes in otherwise-legal contracts. Of course, that also might not be ideal. For example: a vendor used by the provider s…
But contact law also strikes down contact provisions all the time.
Generally speaking, contracts between two parties who know what they're doing, with lawyers, are pretty iron-clad.
But TOS with consumers are not. Unreasonable/abusive TOS clauses are struck down quite frequently. Things like consumer protection laws supersede anything in a TOS.
And consumer protection laws are precisely the kind of thing meant to stop companies from playing bait-and-switch with consumers like this.
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#14It is amazing to me that the government continues to allow these mergers when time and time again it shows that the consumer end up paying more, not less.
It's because government is run by people from/with close ties to the businesses and take massive bribes that we quaintly call "campaign contributions" from them.
Any excuse to allow the mergers will be found because of that.
In a word, it's plutocracy.
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't understand how this is legal. It's presumably laid out in the contract that their users sign. IANAL but I understand contract law gives wide latitude for parties to make agreements to do things which are generally legal. One could imagine a legal regime that prohibited price or service changes in otherwise-legal contracts. Of course, that also might not be ideal. For example: a vendor used by the provider s…
But contact law also strikes down contact provisions all the time . Generally speaking, contracts between two parties who know what they're doing, with lawyers, are pretty iron-clad. But TOS with consumers are not. Unreasonable/abusive TOS clauses are struck down quite frequently. Things like consumer protection laws supersede anything in a TOS. And consumer protection laws are precisely the kind of thing meant to st…
Absolutely agree re: abusive TOS clauses. My question is this: if you were on a panel evaluating whether it's more abusive to a) migrate customers to a plan that's $10 more or b) end their service because the vendor no longer offers that service, which would you vote for?
Note that consumer panels will have less ability to force a vendor to set prices or provide specific services, so there will not be the third option of c) force the vendor to continue providing the service at the contracted price.
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
But contact law also strikes down contact provisions all the time . Generally speaking, contracts between two parties who know what they're doing, with lawyers, are pretty iron-clad. But TOS with consumers are not. Unreasonable/abusive TOS clauses are struck down quite frequently. Things like consumer protection laws supersede anything in a TOS. And consumer protection laws are precisely the kind of thing meant to st…
Absolutely agree re: abusive TOS clauses. My question is this: if you were on a panel evaluating whether it's more abusive to a) migrate customers to a plan that's $10 more or b) end their service because the vendor no longer offers that service, which would you vote for? Note that consumer panels will have less ability to force a vendor to set prices or provide specific services, so there will not be the third optio…
That's why in Europe abusive and surprising (to an informed party) terms and condiations are invalid. Quite aome legal disputes around those so.
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#17Almost 25 years ago, Fucked Company did such a beautiful job of aggregating countless parallel stories as the dot-com bubble started to burst. It made it so easy to see what was going on in aggregate. There’s an opportunity for the same sort of thing now, but tracking all the desperate scrambling for revenue as the “we’ll make money after the next 10x users, promise” loses its ground as a business model.
And when they started getting filtered out, they created a "luckedcompany" clone with a slightly different logo and string replaced any "fuck" into" luck" before presenting to the user.
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#18What a great way to convince me to never consider T-Mobile!
I hope you like the only competitor network. This partial monopoly is why they can do this. All of those 'virtual operators' are given deprioritized service but somehow still count as competition when their business is evaluated. Yet another instance of regulatory capture at work.
AT&T is ruthless but Verizon lets a bunch of mvno operators on qci 8.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't understand how this is legal. It's presumably laid out in the contract that their users sign. IANAL but I understand contract law gives wide latitude for parties to make agreements to do things which are generally legal. One could imagine a legal regime that prohibited price or service changes in otherwise-legal contracts. Of course, that also might not be ideal. For example: a vendor used by the provider s…
But contact law also strikes down contact provisions all the time . Generally speaking, contracts between two parties who know what they're doing, with lawyers, are pretty iron-clad. But TOS with consumers are not. Unreasonable/abusive TOS clauses are struck down quite frequently. Things like consumer protection laws supersede anything in a TOS. And consumer protection laws are precisely the kind of thing meant to st…
A lot of these older plans were marketed as no contract plans. That was tmobiles whole thing for a while. No more contracts. Obviously there still is via terms and such but it’s a pretty gray area I’m sure lawyers would be willing to argue in court. They also claimed prices would never go up (on your plan).
Re: T-Mobile switches users to pricier plans
#20It is amazing to me that the government continues to allow these mergers when time and time again it shows that the consumer end up paying more, not less.
It's because government is run by people from/with close ties to the businesses and take massive bribes that we quaintly call "campaign contributions" from them. Any excuse to allow the mergers will be found because of that. In a word, it's plutocracy.
Exactly this. Our leaders are directly compensated for supporting monopolies.