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Once again, the phone company wins...
Feb. 11th, 2011 06:31 pmNot surprising I suppose.
I got my first phone from T-Mobile back in 2001, and have been using their service ever since. Several years ago, I persuaded Bill to get a cell phone, and we opted for the T-Mobile family plan. And since the University offered a brokered discount to T-Mobile users, I got that applied to the account as well, about three years ago. Last year, when I left the University, I continued to get the discounted rate; but I figured that wouldn't go on forever, so Bill assumed the role of Primary on our family plan, with me as a secondary. And, since he still works for the University, we had them re-do the University discount. The net result was our rate stayed the same. Everyone was happy... until now.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a Virgin Mobile all-you-can-eat plan. Neither of us currently has data, but with my massage business, I'll probably need it, so that when I'm out on calls I can track/manage my appointments. The Virgin plan is a month-by-month pre-paid contract. So for $25 a month, I would get as much 3G data, email and text as I want, plus 300 minutes of air time. (Currently, we jointly use less than 300 minutes, so that's plenty for me). The only thing is, I wasn't sure how much a single line would cost, if I left T-Mobile and Bill continued on with a single line.
I just got off the phone with T-Mobile. The customer care rep I was talking to explained that every change we've made started a new contract. Add a discount, change the primary between Bill and myself, and bingo! You've committed to another two year contract, with extraordinarily expensive buy-out clauses. Note that we never changed the actual phones, the plans, or anything else; just stuff about discounts and who to bill. So now, we are locked in to the T-Mobile Family plan for the next two years - until August 3rd, 2012.
I assured the young lady as politely as I could under the circumstances that we would never, ever change anything on our account again; and that we'd be saying goodbye to them on August 4th 2012. She offered to transfer me to a 'loyalty representative' because we'd been such "good customers for such a long time". Shame they didn't think about that as they quietly shafted us with new contracts. I declined.
Talk about selling your soul to the devil.
I got my first phone from T-Mobile back in 2001, and have been using their service ever since. Several years ago, I persuaded Bill to get a cell phone, and we opted for the T-Mobile family plan. And since the University offered a brokered discount to T-Mobile users, I got that applied to the account as well, about three years ago. Last year, when I left the University, I continued to get the discounted rate; but I figured that wouldn't go on forever, so Bill assumed the role of Primary on our family plan, with me as a secondary. And, since he still works for the University, we had them re-do the University discount. The net result was our rate stayed the same. Everyone was happy... until now.
I've been toying with the idea of getting a Virgin Mobile all-you-can-eat plan. Neither of us currently has data, but with my massage business, I'll probably need it, so that when I'm out on calls I can track/manage my appointments. The Virgin plan is a month-by-month pre-paid contract. So for $25 a month, I would get as much 3G data, email and text as I want, plus 300 minutes of air time. (Currently, we jointly use less than 300 minutes, so that's plenty for me). The only thing is, I wasn't sure how much a single line would cost, if I left T-Mobile and Bill continued on with a single line.
I just got off the phone with T-Mobile. The customer care rep I was talking to explained that every change we've made started a new contract. Add a discount, change the primary between Bill and myself, and bingo! You've committed to another two year contract, with extraordinarily expensive buy-out clauses. Note that we never changed the actual phones, the plans, or anything else; just stuff about discounts and who to bill. So now, we are locked in to the T-Mobile Family plan for the next two years - until August 3rd, 2012.
I assured the young lady as politely as I could under the circumstances that we would never, ever change anything on our account again; and that we'd be saying goodbye to them on August 4th 2012. She offered to transfer me to a 'loyalty representative' because we'd been such "good customers for such a long time". Shame they didn't think about that as they quietly shafted us with new contracts. I declined.
Talk about selling your soul to the devil.
