It’s not just AT&T that’s decided the way to a customer’s heart is through free stuff. As of today T-Mobile is joining the club, with give-aways ranging from pizza to company stock. Yes, literal shares of the business. [More]
t-mobile
Ad Watchdog: Sprint Should Clarify What ‘50% Off Your Bill’ Really Means
By 6.3.16
The National Ad Division is a program of the Council of Better Business Bureaus that investigates claims of misleading or otherwise problematic ads. Complaints typically come from an advertiser’s competition, and recently T-Mobile spoke up about Sprint’s marketing that promises to cut customers’ bills in half, or give them 50% off. The watchdog agreed that the claim made in ads is not, strictly speaking, true. [More]
T-Mobile Makes Deal For Roaming In Cuba, Cheaper Calls To Island
By 5.9.16
If you’re one of the travelers planning a trip to Cuba now that direct flights and cruises will be available and you’re a T-Mobile customer, you’ll be able to roam inexpensively on the island. In addition, T-Mobile customers in the United States will also get to make cheaper calls to Cuba, costing $.60 per minute with an international calling plan. [More]
Sprint Pulls Ad Featuring Customer Calling T-Mobile “Ghetto”
By 4.13.16
Sometimes we just want to throw our heads back and shout at the advertising powers that be, and ask them what the heck they were thinking when they do boneheaded things. Like an ad Sprint just rushed to pull after only a few hours online Tuesday, which features a white customer calling competitor T-Mobile “ghetto.” [More]
Don’t Like Talking? Save Money By Ditching Voice Service For Your T-Mobile Smartphone
By 3.31.16
Depending on your habits and personality, you may not need to make a lot of actual phone calls using your smartphone. If you find that you don’t use your phone as a phone all that much, you can save quite a bit of money by taking advantage of a set of mobile plans originally designed for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. [More]
Netflix Admits To Throttling Its Own Streams On AT&T, Verizon Wireless Because Data Caps
By 3.25.16
If you have a network connection of a certain speed available on your phone, you expect receive data at roughly that speed, more or less. That’s how it works. Except that’s not how it’s been working for Netflix: the popular streaming video service was moving at a fraction of what users expected, on Verizon and AT&T networks. Consumers were all ready to line up and blame their mobile carriers, but the wireless companies weren’t the ones screwing around with anything, as it turns out. Netflix was. [More]
YouTube Stops Complaining About T-Mobile’s Binge On, Joins Program
By 3.17.16
Remember all those years ago, when YouTube publicly railed against T-Mobile’s Binge On program, saying the wireless company may have violated FCC rules by throttling all video traffic? And then it led to a war of words, culminating in the T-Mobile CEO cursing out his critics on Twitter and accusing the Electronic Frontier Foundation of taking money from his competition? That was only a matter of weeks ago, but it’s all water under the bridge because YouTube has agreed to be part of Binge On after T-Mo made changes to give content companies more control over streaming quality. [More]
T-Mobile Offers Free MLB.tv Subscription To Promote Streaming, Draw Customers
By 3.16.16
Baseball season begins in a few weeks, so why not use it as an opportunity to sell some mobile phone plans? You might not see the direct connection there, but T-Mobile does: they’re offering free subscriptions to the MLB’s all-team streaming service to their customers to promote baseball and their Binge On exemptions for selected streaming video services. [More]
Court Reminds Us All: You Have No Right To Sue Your Phone Company
By 3.14.16
If you don’t like your wireless company’s service, or your current rate plan, you’re free to change providers. But if you think your wireless provider is breaking the law, you can’t sue the company; and it doesn’t matter which of the four major carriers you have, because they all strip their customers’ of their legal rights. [More]
Stanford Law Professor: T-Mobile’s ‘Binge On’ Violates Net Neutrality Rules
By 1.29.16
Last fall, T-Mobile introduced Binge On, an optional program that lets users stream certain video streams without counting the data against their monthly allotments. YouTube and others have accused the company of throttling data in order to make this happen, and a new report from Stanford University claims that T-Mo’s actions are in violation of federal “net neutrality” rules. [More]
T-Mobile Adds Amazon Video To Binge On, Claims Users Are Streaming Twice As Much
By 1.28.16
Three months after launching its Binge On streaming streaming video program, which doesn’t count content from certain partners against a customers’ monthly data allotment, T-Mobile has made new deals with Amazon and others to include their content. Additionally, the company claims that Binge On has doubled the amount of video its customers are watching. [More]
T-Mobile Creates Drinking Game For AT&T Earnings Call, Hopes You Get Drunk Enough To Switch
By 1.26.16
Earning calls can be a drag, full of heavily massaged numbers and industry jargon meant to make anyone listening fall asleep. To spice things up, T-Mobile has created a drinking game, but not for their own magenta-hued earnings. Instead, T-Mo is intent on getting everyone drunk while listening to AT&T’s quarterly report.
[More]
Verizon Finally Catches Up To T-Mobile, AT&T; Launches Program To Free Up More Data For Mobile Subscribers
By 1.19.16
Last month, executives with Verizon said the company would one day test sponsored data. That day is apparently today, as the largest wireless provider in the U.S. launched FreeBee Data, its version of T-Mobile and AT&T’s programs that don’t ding users’ data plans when they access certain content. [More]
T-Mobile CEO John Legere Sorry For Cursing Out Critics On Twitter
By 1.11.16
Last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere went on Twitter to post video responses to questions about his company’s Binge On program. While the rabble-rousing exec is often applauded for his plainspoken demeanor, he was roundly criticized for cursing out one pro-consumer group that has been critical of his company. After a few days to think about it, Legere is now apologizing. [More]
T-Mobile CEO John Legere To Critics Of Binge On: “Who The F**k Are You?”
By 1.7.16
Earlier today, I predicted that there would be further slinging of words between T-Mobile and critics of its Binge On video streaming program. What I didn’t know at the time was that T-Mo CEO John Legere would go on Twitter to respond to, and profanely insult, those critics. [More]
T-Mobile Execs Say YouTube Is “Absurd” For Complaining About Downgraded Video Quality
By 1.7.16
The war of words between T-Mobile and YouTube continues, with executives from the wireless company claiming it’s “absurd” that the streaming service should care so much about T-Mo downgrading the quality of YouTube videos. [More]
Test Claims To Show T-Mobile’s YouTube “Optimization” Is Just Connection Throttling
By 1.5.16
We’ve had a bit of a high-tech tiff going on for the past few weeks between YouTube and T-Mobile. First, YouTube accused T-Mobile of unfairly degrading their video. T-Mobile replied nuh-uh, everything is simply optimized for mobile and the world is great. So who’s right? [More]
24 Stories We Covered In 2015 That We Never Saw Coming
By 12.31.15
The following is a true story: One day, two Consumerist staffers were chatting about the work day. One said, “I can’t believe I’m writing about the legal ramifications of butt-dialing.” The other replied, “We should probably remember this conversation for a year-end story about things we didn’t expect to ever write in 2015.” A calendar alert was made, and our future selves were duly reminded. [More]
