A Straight Talk mobile plan with unlimited everything for $45 per month sounded pretty great to Thom, and he bought an unlocked Samsung Galaxy to use with the carrier. All has been well since September, when he subscribed to the plan, but now something terrible has come up. Limits. TracFone (Straight Talk is a joint venture between TracFone and Walmart) tells him that he’s running up against the plan’s unspoken 2 GB limit, and they reserve the right to cut him off. [More]
For Once, AT&T Being Incompetent Is Good News
By November 30, 2012
Do you remember reader Aaron? We published his story about a month ago. He was stuck between two mobile providers. He ditched AT&T when his iPhone 5 was devouring so much data that his data connection got throttled. Fine, he said–he switched to Sprint, which has unlimited data, but painfully slow data. He resolved the situation by going back to AT&T, but here’s the interesting part: he got unlimited data back because AT&T thought that he had never canceled his account. Well, um, that’s nice. [More]
Should Sprint Tell Me That I Could Switch To A Cheaper Data Plan?
By September 11, 2012
Amy may be the first reader in Consumerist history to complain about being left on an unlimited mobile data plan. She has tethering on her smartphone, which lets her use her phone as a mobile Internet hotspot. Yes, apps exist that can help you get around this limitation. Officially, if you want to tether, you generally have to pay for a data plan that includes it. Amy was paying for a $30/month plan, but learned that she was grandfathered in, and a cheaper plan existed. Sure, the cheaper plan only includes two gigabytes of data, but she never uses that much anyway. It costs $10 less. She wanted to alert her fellow Sprint customers to this change, and complain that the company didn’t let her know she had an opportunity to give them less money in exchange for capped data. [More]
Sprint Customers In Texas & Georgia May Now Have Access To 4G LTE Service
By July 16, 2012
With Verizon already touting its 4G LTE roll-out and AT&T claiming that LTE is currently available in 47 markets around the country, third-place wireless competitor Sprint needs to do everything it can to compete. Over the weekend, the company finally flipped the switch on its LTE network, but unless you live in some parts of Texas, Georgia and Missouri, you’ll probably still be waiting. [More]
Call AT&T To Remove Unwanted Add-Ons, Lose Unlimited Data
By June 21, 2012
Michael is one of the remaining unlimited data customers at AT&T Wireless, and got to keep this plan after upgrading to a shiny new iPhone 4S earlier this year. At least he thought he did. When he signed his new contract, he accidentally ended up with some add-ons he hadn’t requested, like roadside assistance and insurance on his phone. He called to remove these, and somehow this resulted in his losing his unlimited data plan and switching to a mere 3-gigabyte one. [More]
Verizon CFO Probably Wasn't Supposed To Say That Thing About Killing Grandfathered Unlimited Plans
By May 17, 2012
Yesterday, the CFO of Verizon Wireless kicked the hornet’s nest that is the Internet by unofficially announcing that VZW would be killing off currently grandfathered unlimited data plans as customers made the shift from 3G to 4G LTE. Judging by the company’s response since then, he probably wasn’t supposed to let that particular cat out of the bag just yet. [More]
Nearly Half Of AT&T Unlimited Customers Could Save By Switching To 300MB Plan
By March 15, 2012
While many, many AT&T wireless customers with so-called unlimited plans are justifiably furious at the company for throttling data speeds after a subscriber uses 3GB in one month, the results of a new survey show that nearly half of people with unlimited plans aren’t even using 300MB each month. [More]
Verizon Upgrades My Smartphone, Downgrades My Data Plan
By March 9, 2012
At the end of last year, Christopher and his girlfriend upgraded their Verizon phones to a pair of lovely matching Samsung Galaxy Nexuses. They’ve both had Verizon data plans long enough that they’re grandfathered in to unlimited data, and Christopher has unlimited international data as well. Or…. he did. After the upgrade, his unlimited plan is gone, the employee who turned it off has (apparently) fled the country, and no one at corporate or the local Verizon store knows how to get it back. [More]
AT&T Customers Petition CEO To Stop Throttling Unlimited Data Plans
By February 29, 2012
The battle over the word “unlimited” has begun, as AT&T customers are fighting back against the Death Star’s throttling of so-called “data hogs,” even though available info shows that most of these people are using completely reasonable amounts of data for owners of unlimited plans. [More]
Verizon Catches On To Unlimited Data Loophole, Returns Account To Tiered Pricing
By January 3, 2012
Apparently, there had been a way that you could talk the Verizon Wireless automated CSR into changing your current tiered data plan into an unlimited one. But now that this work-around has been published and oodles of people have tried it, VZW appears to have caught on and has begun auditing changes to customers’ accounts to make sure people aren’t working the system. [More]
AT&T Promises To Let Me Keep Unlimited Data Plan With New Phone, Doesn't
By October 7, 2011
When he upgraded his AT&T phone to a Samsung Galaxy S II, Matthew was under the impression that he would get to keep his old unlimited data plan from his iPhone. That would be a good reason to upgrade to a newer, snappier phone. The problem is that it was not, strictly speaking, true. [More]
Is Wireless Data Still "Unlimited" If It's Throttled After A Certain Point?
By July 20, 2011
As we noted in April, when T-Mobile proudly announced that it was offering “unlimited” data plans for smartphones, there should be a pretty sizable asterisk next to “unlimited,” because, after the user consumes 2GB of data in a month, T-Mobile throttles back on the speed at which any further data is delivered. Some would call that a “limit,” but T-Mobile continues to disagree and has rolled out a handful of additional unlimited-with-throttling plans. [More]
AT&T Still Wants Some People To Have Unlimited Data: BlackBerry Users
By July 8, 2010
Michael writes that his wife uses a BlackBerry for her work e-mail, but pays for the service herself. It’s part of a family plan with Michael’s iPhone, to be precise. When Michael tried to put their phones on a limited data plan, he learned something interesting and hilariously backwards: customers can only pay $15 for Enterprise access (e-mail on a Microsoft Exchange server) if they’re also paying $30 per month for unlimited BlackBerry data. What if they don’t use that much data? Well, too bad. [More]
