“T‑Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T‑Mobile ONE plan.” That was the promise. The Un-contract. The whole reason millions of customers picked the magenta team over Verizon and AT&T in the first place. Now T-Mobile is retiring legacy 3G and 4G-era plans — Magenta, ONE, Simple Choice — and automatically moving customers onto “modern” 5G plans at higher monthly costs. Billing changes hit mid-July for the current wave. The company that swore it would never surprise you with a rate hike just sent the notification.
T-Mobile raised our rate last year which is bad enough by itself after promising not to, but they also seriously reduced the quality and availability of their customer service. Why stick around for that? We switched to a much cheaper prepaid company (~1/3rd T-Mobile’s current price) and couldn’t be happier.
Edit: Was thinking about the other problems we had with T-Mobile and forgot to mention one big problem… Incoming calls routinely would not ring and voicemails left just vanished. This happened for months. Multiple friends (and a couple of doctor’s offices) mentioned it often enough that we realized we had a problem. T-Mobile’s great customer service could find nothing wrong and refused to look at the lost calls that originated from other TMO customers.
We have been grandfathered into a Simple Choice Plan for ~13 years and just switched over to whatever their comparable current plan is, and only saved $10 (woohoo). What’d you go with? I was looking into prepaid with Tmo but they’ve been in quite the steady decline for a while now.
Mint works pretty darn well. It’s still using t-mobile towers, but is a whole lot cheaper.
If you have any government assistance programs ) Medicaid, SNAP, etc.), look into the Lifeline program for potentially free cell service:
I switched to Mint a couple years back. It’s fine.
Which company was that? Mint moblie?
US Mobile. Switch was somewhat complicated (for instance you can’t upgrade from one plan to another, unlike most postpaid plans) but once through the startup difficulties they’ve been great. Chat support is especially good.
Its almost like everyone saw this coming once Sprint was allowed to merge with them, and then US Cellular
they all pull this shit… three different providers besides tm here, just in the last 2-3 years.
and they get away with it, so it continues…
Mergers of larger corporations shouldn’t be permitted. In fact, any attempt at initiating a merger should instead initiate a breakup.
Ooh, imagine if Spirit was broken up…
Or Delta or American or United.
Got the text this morning. God damn scammers.
Yes, they’re a company.
This is some straight up MBA enshittificarion. I’m on the military plan with all unlimited yada yada, even then data is throttled down after a certain amount. Waiting for an email that says they’re supporting the troops by increasing the amount we can contribute to the economy or some shit.
The same company that told me they would give me a $300 prepaid visa to switch. Then told me I had to stay a customer for 30 days before I would get it. And at 30 days told me I was outside the 30 day window to claim it?
I’m so surprised.
A few years ago I tried to buy a couple of phones at a T-Mobile store and they flatly refused to sell to me unless I purchased their monthly phone insurance. The manager openly admitted he knew the practice was illegal but didn’t care.
The company is also famous for refusing to pay customers trade in value by fraudulently claiming phones have cracked screens and significant damage.
T-Mobile’s been a shit company for years.
In 2025 T-Mobile reported a net income (net profit) of $11.0 billion. Think of the poor shareholders!
Again? Didn’t they do this a couple years ago too?
Rinse and repeat
I stopped using T-Mobile a few months ago. Used to need the Internet while living in a shelter, until I moved into a government funded apartment. I now have TAG Mobile for my phone (free each month w/ 10 gigs of data), and $30/month AT&T 100mb up/down fiber Internet.
Being poor sometimes has advantages.
If you have ANY government assistance program (like SNAP), you qualify for free mobile and reduced cost home Internet.
For what it’s worth, y’all, Mint Mobile is pretty great. I actually got an email in December when renewal time came telling me I should downgrade my plan and save money, based on my data usage for 2025.
If you get government assistance, look into free mobile options, like TAG Mobile.
You know all the corporations are now thinking…“The prez lies with immunity. The precedent has been set. Let’s go boys…SELL SELL SELL !!”.
Well, fuck. These companies move in step with one another and I’ve been paying the same 60-something per month since January 2007 before AT&T gobbled up Cingular.
Guess I’m probably next.
US Mobile is still in the “good prices, good service, be nice” phase of their existence. Buy out or enshittification should still be a few years off. It’s a fraction of the price of TMO’s new rates too.
Came here to say this. I know the enshitification will come. It always will come but for now US mobile is fantastic.
Damn dude that’s rough.
I pay €15/m for 35GB EU-wide data and unlimited talk/text. Sim only and not an introductory rate. In fact, I’ve been paying the same for years and the only thing that’s changed is my data limit slowly increasing.
I think unlimited plans are roughly double but I don’t use that much.
1 Gbps fiber at home for €50/m but unfortunately they do jack that up slowly over time so you either need to switch providers or lock in again for a promotional rate.
I don’t miss living in the US and getting fucked in the ass by Comcast and the like…
I have a deal in Ireland, 7.99 month for life, unlimited calls and data EU wide. Currently paying €30 pm for 1gbps fiber. Still remember being amazed at the cost of mobile phones in the USA when I was there on a summer visa as a student back in 2005, sounds like things haven’t changed a bit.
Comcast fucked so many people that they had to rebrand.
I dunno anyone still using the big 3 telcos, not much value over the MVNOs unless you’re really the type that wants to bundle Disney+ or something.
The big companies give line prio over mvno clients.
telcos
Are we Australians rubbing off on the international English lexicon? I don’t know how to feel about this haha
That’s definitely not new slang. In the US at least.
TIL then I guess. If I imagine someone saying this in a US accent, I just can’t picture it haha
I’ve never heard of ”telco” as a US citizen in my 40s. I’ve heard “telecom” but not “telco”.
I only have in the utility industry and even then it’s not often telcom
Thank you for somewhat restoring my head cannon haha
They do shit like this and get away with it because it’s slim pickings for a plan that has phone, internet, and most importantly no data cap. All carriers suck at one of those three.
I’m using Cricket wireless. $45/mo gets me unlimited internet on my phone with a 15gig hotspot.
I’m all physical media, but if I need to download something, I do it on my phone (sorry, seeders) and transfer it over to my PC to watch on my TV.
Lmao I’m amazed cricket still exists. I remember using their shitty USB internet sticks 15 years ago.
There’s a small profit to be made administering a plan on a common carrier while the bigger operators. rake in the big money from idiots permanently leasing a fucking cell phone.
I’m all physical media, but if I need to download something, I do it on my phone (sorry, seeders) and transfer it over to my PC to watch on my TV.
that sounds like a lot of hassle. why are you downloading on the phone?
The only hassle is the tranfer, and that’s set & forget.
And I don’t spend $50-100/mo (wifi + streaming)to waste time channel surfin.
you can share your phones internet connection (including wifi) with a computer over USB. you need to enable it on the phone. its cool I think. this way you could also be seeding.
on linux, with some distros you need to load a kernel module by hand. for some reason it does not load automatically on some of them. if you are interested I can look up my notes about it
Two things:
Sadly, my USB port completely borked, so that’s off the table. I use KDE-something-or-other to txfr files over my internetless wifi.
Second, I did look into it, and even on my Graphene OS phone, the USB tether is treated identically to the hot spot; that is to say, the carrier can detect you’re connecting a device and there is no workaround other than paying the cellular provider for the privilege of using your connection as they see fit.
and there is no workaround other than paying the cellular provider for the privilege of using your connection as they see fit.
there must be a workaround. I have been seeing solutions for this in the past, but I don’t remember because I haven’t had such a shitty provider.
probably it’s the TTL value in the packets. if you can move the sim card or a clone of it into a portable openwrt router, that’s an easy fix, otherwise it would probably need patching android which you probably can’t do because graphene is too hostile to that.
im on tello and i like it. $25 for an unlimited data plan, and $10 for a 2g sim for my backup phone (in case i break or lose my main phone)
I’ve been on and off tello for like 10 years now, currently they hold my second line, and they are good… assuming you don’t need cs beyond ‘turn it off and back on’, and the towers you frequent aren’t overloaded. If I try and use my data on the tello sim at any time except in the dead of night (1a-4a), everything is timing out. This local tower is way oversubscribed.
Also, their unlimited isn’t true unlimited, as are all mvnos. After… 50gb (surprising, they doubled it in the last few months apparently) it’s like 64kb/s. Which is quite a lot of data, and technically it’s not a hard cap so it’s not outright lying, but it’s not really unlimited. I’ve always hated this ‘well technically’ bullshit, so I call it out every time I see it, for the people who don’t know.
Good warning here to watch MVNOs (anyone besides the largest largest carriers). Save tons of money, but deprioritized traffic.
At a World Cup match, for example, if anyone gets connected it’s probably those with higher phone bills.
Wonderful/necessary deal for many, still!
yeah i know about the data cap. its not really a problem for me, but i should probably have specified when recommending.
On the backup line you can subscribe to the cheapest data-only plan for like $5 a month and then just add $20 worth of pay-as-you-go credit, which never expires and will be used for calls, at 1 cent per minute.
It will save you $5 a month on the backup phone plan, making it even cheaper.
good thinking! still though, $35 all day for 2 lines aint bad
That’s the price for Germany World Cup failure.
