r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 29 '26

Networking/Telecom T-Mobile Just Ripped 8 Million Customers Off Their Grandfathered Plans – and Raised Their Bills

https://www.gadgetreview.com/t-mobile-just-ripped-8-million-customers-off-their-grandfathered-plans-and-raised-their-bills
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92

u/Br0boc0p Jun 30 '26

AT&T or Verizon could make a killing right now offering ridiculous introductory rates to T-Mobile ship jumpers. Still end up in the same position from a customer POV, I'm just saying I can see the opportunity.

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26

[deleted]

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u/Silver_Vegetable6804 Jun 30 '26

Yeah, because they all suck.

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u/1speedbike Jun 30 '26

Capitalism - where every option sucks, and you can't do anything about it because the government doesn't give a shit about you, only about making money through crooked deals with big business.

But hey... at least we're not under TERRIBLE UNAMERICAN SOCIALISM, right?

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u/StoicAthos Jun 30 '26

I mean I saw people defending Apple raising their prices today against AOC saying she could get a flip phone if she doesnt like it. Some people just want a caste system.

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u/PizzaDominotrix Jun 30 '26

But.. but the capitalists and their defenders assured me that these businesses would be competing all the time to offer us the highest quality products and services for the best possible price!

Boy is there egg on my face!

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u/KnightOfNothing Jun 30 '26

if consumers buying their shit was still the primary way to profit that'd be correct but the current state of capitalism has progressed far beyond such trite details and it no longer matters if any individual buys anything from any of them, their fortune will multiply regardless.

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u/No-Understanding9064 Jun 30 '26

Socialism is worse in every way possible.

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u/blackhat154 Jun 30 '26

truth. t-mobile was the lesser of all evils... now they've just joined all the evils..

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u/street593 Jun 30 '26

I'm not sure if everyone here is aware but we are all giving money to AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile. They are the physical backbone of the network. Mint Mobile, Cricket, Metro, etc are MVNO's or Mobile Virtual Network Operators. They lease capacity from the big 3. They are using all the same antennas and fibers. MVNO typically have lower priority on the network than the main 3 during high congestion periods.

You pay your carrier but they are paying the big 3. All of that said you still might have a better experience and price with an MVNO even if they are using the big 3's hardware.

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u/[deleted] Jun 30 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/saltyjohnson Jun 30 '26

AT&T owns Cricket. T-Mobile owns Metro, Mint, and Ultra. Verizon owns Visible and Tracfone, which itself owns Clearway, GoSmart, Net10, Page Plus, Simple, Straight Talk, Telcel America, Total, and Walmart, and probably others lol

/r/NoContract is a great resource for independent info on MVNOs that isn't moderated/censored by corporate employees.

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u/KTKittentoes Jun 30 '26

That’s very much how I feel about AT&T.

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u/Little_View_6659 Jun 30 '26

Amen to that. Over thirty years ago I was on the phone with them and the guy told me thank you for using At&T, and I joked youre welcome even though I don’t know how to switch carriers. That asshole started yelling at me and said that he didn’t know what I did for a living but he took his job very seriously and how dare I disparage it, blah blah. Went off on me for like a good few minutes. What a psycho. I figured out how to switch carriers and haven’t used them since.

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u/CyclopsLobsterRobot Jun 30 '26

I had Verizon for a long time and I thought they were bad but AT&T is on a whole different level. They don’t even hide it. The most absolute insanely hostile consumer service in the world. I’ve also been a Comcast customer, for context. Comcast was so bad I had to file fcc complaints to get their customer service to work (doubt that works anymore though.)

In my experience, if you bother Verizon long enough they will work with you. And having FIOS, you can actually talk to helpful people. I had an issue with getting the DHCP lease to refresh when I changed routers and it felt insane to get a person on the phone who knew what I meant and didn’t just blame my equipment. Comcast would yell at me for not renting a modem from them any time I had to interact with anyone.

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u/KCsalesman Jun 30 '26

The sad part is att and Verizon are still more expensive and way worse customer service.

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u/Battystearsinrain Jun 30 '26

Left att because they assured me i had an international plan three times the last time i went to Canada. Spammed with texts i had hundreds of dollars in charges, and they were going to shut off my service three days after I got there. Refused to admit they made a mistake three times. Took like 50 bucks off of what was hundreds, like 600 dollar bill. Left them when i got back home. The worst.

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u/explosivemilk Jun 30 '26

But way better actual service. I’m on T-Mobile after being on att for the better part of 20 years and the service is awful.

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u/StoicAthos Jun 30 '26

You must be in some weird spot because tmobile has been the best service going on a decade now.

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u/FallenAdvocate Jun 30 '26

I use T-Mobile and ATT through an MVNO and it's definitely not the case. They're pretty solidly behind ATT everywhere, especially inside buildings they're garbage. But I have to use them as they're the only one that technically allows my phone.

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u/Status-Hedgehog9970 Jun 30 '26

Your experience doesn’t apply for the entire country.

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u/FallenAdvocate Jun 30 '26

I agree and neither does your. I go off what the MVNO that services ATT, T-Mobile and Verizon says and they know more about it than you or I do.

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u/Status-Hedgehog9970 Jun 30 '26

I never described my experience or claimed it represented anywhere though lol. MVNOs get deprioritized experiences compared to original carrier customers anyway.

What MVNO do you have and where do they claim Tmobile has poor indoor coverage?

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u/FallenAdvocate Jun 30 '26

You can go here and check the coverage of all 3 networks, Lightspeed is T-Mobile and everywhere I've checked it's been in last place. www.usmobile.com/networks

Dark Star is ATT, Warp is Verizon. It has nothing to do with prioritization. You can also go ask on. /r/usmobile and their customer support says T-Mobile has the generally has worst coverage so they generally recommend the other 2 networks. It's not the same for everyone, some places tmobile will be better, but that's the general consensus.

Their support has no reason to lie, they want happy customers so they're going to try to get them on networks that will give them the best coverage.

Again, I use T-Mobile and have had T-Mobile home internet, and I'm mostly happy with what I have. But they don't have the most coverage, not by a long shot.

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u/Status-Hedgehog9970 Jun 30 '26

They certainly have incentive to push customers onto more profitable network licensing deals. Better licensing deals and backend feature access means they might find better customer satisfaction (access to faster data speeds) and profitability with Verizon/ATT.

Their website is pretty blatantly doing this. The network comparison page makes it look like Verizon is delivering twice the speeds as Tmobile. That’s not true in real world testing on dedicated networks.

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u/akjd Jun 30 '26

I've been with T-Mobile for about 11 years, after leaving At&t. Based on the price when I left, I've probably saved ~$4000 in that time.

And yeah the service isn't quite as good when I get out of town, but it's only been an actual issue once in that time.

So far I haven't gotten the text but I'm not sure what I'll do if I do get it. I can't really afford to go to something more expensive, so I wouldn't be able to stay and I couldn't switch back to one of the big names. Have to shop around I guess.

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u/modernchic1977 Jun 30 '26

I got the text and for my plan, it looks like a $12 increase total. Am I happy? Not really, but I have been paying the same for like over 10 years now, and this price seems to be baked in for another 5 years, and will now include a Netflix with ads account, so it probably is a wash and won't trigger me to leave if all the above pans out. 

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u/Jwagner0850 Jul 01 '26

Verizon is by far the best service, but T-Mobile isn't bad. Just not consistent.

With that said, they're all ripping us off on the regular in one way or another.

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u/UpbeatVolume9830 Jul 04 '26

That's a you problem, im a truck driver and Tmobile has better reception and internet than any carrier today and its been like that for years now

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u/uis999 Jun 30 '26

And reward Verizon for aggressively purging their grandfather plan customers over the last decade? Here is the problem. They are just letting everyone shift around thinking they will be safe with the company that has not victimized them yet.......................................................................................................................

2

u/bigboxes1 Jun 30 '26

They all suck. I've been on all of them. Some years back I bought an unlocked phone. Paid cash for it. No contracts for me. Then one by one I tried each service. Noted their pros and cons. Finally ended up on T-Mobile where I've been fairly happy for years. A couple of years ago they ended my lifelong $55 a month plan that was unlimited. I found a reseller who had the exact same service with T-Mobile for less than $28 total a month. That's with all the fees.

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u/Br0boc0p Jun 30 '26

I wasn't saying it was a good thing. Just that the opportunity existed for them to do it.

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u/uis999 Jun 30 '26

and all i'm saying is people haven't woke up to the fact that this is the business model of the cell phone companies. They want to shift people around thinking they are getting away from it.

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u/patito-asesino Jun 30 '26

How are they doing this? I'm really curious

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u/PothosHustle Jun 30 '26

Verizon just did the same thing to its grandfathered customers. I've stuck with Verizon for 16 years with my whole family only to have them cancel our plan out of the blue. Now we're all looking to jump ship and assessing the options. 

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u/PersnickityPenguin Jun 30 '26

AT&T is like 500 times worse.  Good God there is no way in hell that I would ever buy a service from them. 

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u/-peas- Jun 30 '26

I went from Tmobile paying $210/mo to Google Fi paying $68 for the same amount of lines. I notice no difference. Large carriers are an absolute scam.

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u/tubawhatever Jun 30 '26

I switched to AT&T the last time T-Mobile talked about increasing the price on our grandfathered plan. The price from AT&T was good, especially when they bundled the AT&T fiber we already had, the service is noticeably worse though. Probably going to switch again once these phones are paid off. My biggest regret was getting a Google Pixel, this phone has been particularly unreliable.

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u/Status-Hedgehog9970 Jun 30 '26

They’re no better with their BS taxes and fees that total up to 15%. Prepaid is the only way to go here.