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Communications Technology

T-Mobile Will Start Charging a $35 Fee on All New Activations and Upgrades (engadget.com) 59

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
T-Mobile may be joining rivals Verizon and AT&T by introducing an $35 charge for all new postpaid activations and upgrades, according to The T-Mo Report and some Redditors. Engadget: According to T-Mobile internal documents, it's introducing a "Device Connection Charge" for "all activations and upgrades for mobile, Beyond the Smartphone and broadband devices." Before, the Uncarrier charged activation fees only if you received in-store customer support for new activations, with online orders exempt. Now, all new postpaid activations are charged, whether or not you were assisted. This includes updating to a new device, adding a Bring-Your-Own-Device line, or ordering a Home Internet line, according to The T-Mo Report. T-Mobile has always tried to separate itself from regular telecoms, but charging customers for essentially nothing doesn't sound very Uncarrier-like, if the reports are accurate. And you can't take your business to Sprint, as it no longer exists thanks to its merger with T-Mobile. When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for customers," but constant activation charges would definitely not be better.
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T-Mobile Will Start Charging a $35 Fee on All New Activations and Upgrades More

T-Mobile Will Start Charging a $35 Fee on All New Activations and Upgrades

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  • Someone has to pay for all those empty stores. (Score:3)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:05PM (#63019893) Homepage
    With 3,4,5 employees all hanging around one desk poking at their phones with no customers to serve...
    • Recently had to go to an AT&T store because they couldn't activate my replacement phone remotely and I needed a physical SIM (because they're worthless). First store wasn't open at 12:30pm. Second store had just 1 employee. He said the other store has been having issues with the guy not showing up and they don't really have much other staff. Seems like many places, people left the low paying jobs and they're severely understaffed at this point.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Recently had to go to an AT&T store because they couldn't activate my replacement phone remotely and I needed a physical SIM (because they're worthless). First store wasn't open at 12:30pm. Second store had just 1 employee. He said the other store has been having issues with the guy not showing up and they don't really have much other staff. Seems like many places, people left the low paying jobs and they're severely understaffed at this point.

        Well, they left their shitty low paying jobs that were highl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bobby ( 109046 )

        I've been using Red Pocket, annual plans. With them you can use any of the 4 (3.5?) carriers. I'm on AT&T (yuck) but can switch to T-Mobile, or at lower data cap Verizon.

        I bought my original SIM card for $10 at Target. In fact it came with AT&T and Verizon in the $10 packet. You can get SIMs for all carriers at Target, Wallyworld, etc.

        I forget the whole story, but they couldn't activate an older AT&T card I had, and at some point a couple of years ago I had to buy another AT&T SIM. Red

    • This is painfully true. I drive by three on my way from the office to home. I use T-Mobile, and aside from the first time when I switched like 7+ years ago I've never done business in any of them.

      I tried to stop in one of them a while back to see if they had any better phones to upgrade to and disable my smartwatch plan (which I'm sure some lobster in the Atlantic is enjoying greatly), and they basically told me "We can't do that in store, we only handle new customers. You have to call in to change your

      • How do you pay your bill, with the app? I had Sprint until about 8 months ago, when I finally got a 5g phone and changed over to t-mobile. The service has been much better. For the first few months I paid the bill through their website and had no problems. Then it started giving me this "oops, an error has occurred, try again later" error. Now I have to go into the store once a month to pay the bill because I don't want to install the app. I'm still getting the "oops" error whenever I try to pay it thr

        • Sometimes their 'My T-Mobile' site won't load properly for me in any browser, but if I reload it a few times it will load long enough to let me pay the bill. I tried looking at new phones on their site and it's a hot(pink) mess that wouldn't work correctly, had broken and badly-sized images for the products, and generally was awful to use.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Matt ( 78254 )
      That's very different than my one experience. I went to the local T-Mobile store first thing Saturday morning to research their 5G home internet offering, and it was so crowded I left immediately.

      Verizon, across the street, was much more approachable and has a nearly identical offering.

      I was with Sprint in the past, but I never had to go into a store after T-Mobile assimilated them. It looks like the Sprint store I last went to is gone, but that's just based on what Google Maps shows me.

      • Was it crowded with customers or just friends of the employees? That seemed to be a thing on the weekends. Whoever they were they weren't buying anything but just all sitting around staring at their screens.

  • e-SIMs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:09PM (#63019911) Homepage Journal

    This is one reason they love e-SIMs - they can obstruct your freedom to use a device you want; in this case charging $35 for what "used to be" a SIM card swap.

    Permissionless is always preferable for the end user. It's amazing to see some old-school folks here wax poetic about asking for permission (after all we've learned).

    • Indeed. That is why eSIMs are a bad idea..

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 )

      This is one reason they love e-SIMs - they can obstruct your freedom to use a device you want; in this case charging $35 for what "used to be" a SIM card swap.

      Permissionless is always preferable for the end user. It's amazing to see some old-school folks here wax poetic about asking for permission (after all we've learned).

      The "freedom" you claim to have with SIM is a myth: it does not exist and never did. The carrier has always had control over this process, including right now when you transfer your SIM to a new device.

      You're old enough to remember when you had to go in-store or on a website to punch in your new device's IMEI before you could use your new device with your existing SIM. That manual process for registering your new device's IMEI with your carrier account was eventually replaced at some carriers by an automate

      • Re:e-SIMs (Score:4)

        by Bake ( 2609 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @05:33PM (#63020371) Homepage

        You're old enough to remember when you had to go in-store or on a website to punch in your new device's IMEI before you could use your new device with your existing SIM. ....

        Is this some sort of an American joke I'm to un-American to understand?

        In the rest of the world we just popped the SIM into another phone and went about our day.

        • Currently, no, we do the same thing: swap physical SIMs and go. I think the OP is talking about the "bad old days" before it became that simple.

        • You're old enough to remember when you had to go in-store or on a website to punch in your new device's IMEI before you could use your new device with your existing SIM. ....

          Is this some sort of an American joke I'm to un-American to understand?

          In the rest of the world we just popped the SIM into another phone and went about our day.

          Not a joke. As another response to you suggested, I was referring to the "bad old days" when there was a manual process with most US-based carriers for registering a new device's IMEI to an account. These days it's generally as simple as "swap and go", but the point I was making is that it's only that simple because the carriers choose not to interfere, not because the carriers are unable to interfere due to a "freedom" like what the OP was talking about.

          There are no US laws stopping carriers from adding fe

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _merlin ( 160982 )

            Many countries do have laws prohibiting this behaviour. The whole point of GSM's mandated removable SIM card requirement was to make it simple for people to switch devices or carriers at will. You could really do with some more consumer-friendly regulation in the US.

            • Many countries do have laws prohibiting this behaviour.[...] You could really do with some more consumer-friendly regulation in the US.

              Yep, I'm aware, and yes, I very much agree.

              To be clear, my comments were solely aimed at addressing concerns in the US market, given that this article is talking about the (characteristically) bad practices of US-based carriers. While parts of my comments are true elsewhere—there's nothing technological stopping carriers from engaging in these sorts of bad practices anywhere—the political and legal situations are obviously very different around the world, with many places enjoying the sorts of c

        • If your phone isn't stolen, or associated with the account of a user who didn't pay their bill this is exactly how most activations work, US or elsewhere. The detail is that ultimately the carrier gets the phone unique id, and can arbitrarily decline to activate.

  • They've always charged $35 if you activate in-store or over the phone. They don't charge the fee if you activate online. Did so just the other day and it's clearly highlighted in their terms.
    • To me it feels very different because before I could activate for free and now I can't. And yes I am on T-Mobile, on a family plan with 6 phones on it, so it's not like replacing one of the phones is a rare occurrence.
      • They're just doing what everyone else does. Free money for them, as they see it. I upgrade my iPhone each year and have paid the $35 activation every year with AT&T.
        • But their whole schtick is that they aren't like other girls and they're special and better.
          • It was clear years ago that was just their way of amassing customers, and once they grew large enough they'd become like everyone else. After the Spring merger, they're sized to take on Verizon and AT&T. This seemed to be where they were headed all along.
            • I blame it on the loss of John Legere. He was a pretty straight-shooting CEO or President or whatever he was. He kept them in line.

              As soon as the merger hit, and he left, it all went to shit. Aside from their 'unlimited' data actually being unlimited at normal full speeds if the tower isn't congested, it's no different than the rest now.
              • John was an idiot and a fraud. He even admitted it was all an act. In reality, he was a suit and preferred that but the act certainly roped in customers. He got the payout he was looking for and bailed.
      • I was swapping SIMs between two phones on my account today (iPhone and Android number swap), and they were going to charge me the activation charge for each line, as they need to update the linked IMEI for security. $70 charge. Absolutely not!
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for customers,"

        Sorry, that was a typo in the press release, it should have read:

        When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be "better for T-Mobile shareholders,"

        Please update your records.

  • Long time T-Mobile customer here, and ... (Score:3)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @03:40PM (#63020055) Journal

    Yeah, this is not a welcome charge they've added. But honestly, even the previous policy just served to confuse and frustrate people. I mean, say you're at the mall and you go past their kiosk and think, "Hey.. I may as well do my phone upgrade here so I can walk out with it today, vs. waiting for T-Mobile to ship it to me."?

    All of a sudden, you're billed $35 for the activation. Felt like a punishment for not tying up one of their reps on the phone and saving T-Mobile the cost of shipping a phone to you.

    Personally, I think they should keep all the phone activations free because that's literally where they're adding/keeping customers each time, vs them going elsewhere. The activation process itself could be made much easier than it is, except carriers purposely put roadblocks in it to make it harder for people to switch carriers back and forth. There's no good technical reason they couldn't make it nearly automatic. (Slide in SIM card or activate e-SIM right from the phone itself and you're online in seconds.)

    I've had other frustrating phone activation experiences with T-Mobile over the years. One comes to mind where I was trying to bring over an iPhone I'd purchased "unlocked". They insisted on selling me a SIM card for it at the retail store, despite me arguing it wasn't necessary. When I called T-Mobile customer support to see what the situation was, they agreed with me that I didn't need a new SIM from the store at all. But the store wouldn't budge... insisting "it's corporate policy". So I wound up leaving and activating it later, over the phone. Somehow, that whole process screwed up T-Mobile's billing too. So I kept getting bills for $9.95 or so (whatever the cost was supposed to be for their SIM card). I always paid everything else on my phone bill but that charge kept popping up on each bill as a separate unpaid previous charge. Never could get anyone at T-Mobile to remove it, though several promised they'd escalate it to someone who could "look into it".

    A year or two later, I got tired of them mailing me nonsense bills for under $10 every month, so I *finally* got a rep to research it for me. He realized there was NO record of what the charge was ever for and had no explanation how it got there. He went back as far as his computer would let him, looking at my previous bills, and couldn't see how it got there. So at last, he just marked it "paid" and made it go away.

  • Not enough competition (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grmoc ( 57943 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:00PM (#63020131)

    Seems pretty clear that there isn't enough competition when this is happening.
    I wish our anti-trust stuff worked better.

  • Right from Chapter 1 of the Merger Manual (Score:3)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @04:08PM (#63020151)

    ``When that deal was finalized, T-Mobile said things would be `better for customers,' but constant activation charges would definitely not be better.''

    Corporation lies to regulators. Screws customers after merger is complete. Business as usual.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grmoc ( 57943 )

      Sure would be nice if we prosecuted such for fraud/perjury.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by kellin ( 28417 )

        Except why would the govt do that, when all these big corporations pay tons of payola cash to our senators to keep things as they are?

    • This is our cartel based economic system in action.

      There is no completion in damn near 100% of the US economy. All the crap they tell you how capitalism creates an "efficient" system resulting in lower prices is pure propaganda. Regulation is a joke because politics is fueled by corporate contributions and the 1%, who always outspend regular consumers.

      Money is not equivalent to free speech. The pretense that spending is a form of free speech means that democracy is fundamentally broken. This is just one

  • I had been carrying an ancient T-mobile flip for years. I just wanted another flip, not an upgrade. They were going to charge me $100 for a new flip. I didn't really get mad or pull any kind of "talk to the manager" BS. I was very polite and said that if $100 was going to be charged anyway, I might see what the Verizon store down the street had to offer. Bearing in mind, I had been with them for over a decade, not only did I get my new flip for free; I got a discount on my new plan! The new phone is

  • Consider an MVNO if bringing your own phone (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ambiguous Puzuma ( 1134017 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @05:00PM (#63020283)

    I recently ported a secondary line to Tello (in the US). Tello uses the T-Mobile network, and for all practical purposes acts like T-Mobile for me, but my billing, sim card activation, etc. were all done through the Tello website. Monthly bills are much cheaper than they would be with T-Mobile, and I haven't run into any surprise fees like this.

    My understanding is that traffic for MVNOs like Tello might be deprioritized in times of congestion, but I've yet to experience any noticeable slowdowns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      My wife and daughter have been using Straight Talk for years. Other than the occasional hiccup, usually related to thinks like expired debit cards on their auto-pay, it's been great. About half the cost of Verizon, and literally the same service. The only difference is they don't get the "benefits" of all the crapware I have on my Verizon phone.
    • I was on Ting. It was very cheap at first because it is pay-per-use instead of flat rate and we tried to use it conservatively. Well some years go by, all my kids get phones and a couple go to college and my wife is calling them constantly... I look into it for the first time in a while and realize we'd been paying over $300 per month!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )

      I used to be on Metro. During rush hour...forget it. The phone didn't work. It was so bad the towers would literally deny me any network at all.

  • ...switch to contract-free prepaid.

    In my experience, as a long-time prepaid customer, T-Mobile is by far the best deal if you spend a lot of time in Canada or Mexico, with no added data charges and unlimited data, no matter which carrier you connect to.

    A few years ago I spend some time on Pelee island in the middle of lake Erie. I could variously use data from US and Canadian carriers, depending on where I was on the island. It cost me no more than the ~$60 a month I currently pay, and no WiFi was needed. D

  • For about the last month, T-Mobile has had no service on CA-17 from the summit almost all the way to Scotts Valley, and dropouts even IN Scotts Valley. Significant signal problems in Sunnyvale and Mountain View, too. I'm seeing problems on multiple devices from multiple manufacturers (Apple, Google), so it's not my phone. I don't know what they're doing, but I don't like it one bit.

    Things have gotten bad enough that I'm half seriously thinking about taking my factory-unlocked iPhone 6s to Verizon right

    • Actually it may be your phone. You say you have an iphone 6s. That is several years old, and Tmo is rapidly purging the older 3g and 4g equipment from their towers -and repurposing the frequencies to their expanded 5g service.

      I have noticed that my phone (a pixel 4a -also several years old) is roaming on ATT most of the time now, whereas for years it was on Tmo service. My wife's new samsung-whatever is right next to me getting solid 5g Tmo service. I don't care, since Tmo does not charge me for roaming

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Actually it may be your phone. You say you have an iphone 6s. That is several years old, and Tmo is rapidly purging the older 3g and 4g equipment from their towers -and repurposing the frequencies to their expanded 5g service.

        The other phone having trouble is a brand new Pixel 6 Pro. It's not a frequency allocation problem. It's an "I can't find the tower" problem, i.e. a "flipping between 1 bar of signal strength and 'No Service'" problem. Or at least the Sunnyvale and Mountain View signal strength prob

    • I switched from Verizon to Google Fi and am saving money, but then again I don't use my phone a whole lot and my bills does go up when I use it more. I'm still paying less though and I suspect I'm still using Verizon's cell towers. I've not noticed any difference in service. YMMV.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DewDude ( 537374 )

        No. It's all TMobile. Part of GoogleFi's big selling point was the triple-network connectivity; TMobile, Sprint, US Cellular.

        • All I really care about is that it works and I'm paying less than I did before. I thought it varied by region and for some reason I think I read somewhere that most of it is VZW around here, but if I'm wrong I don't really care. As long as I'm not paying them directly anymore.

  • Meanwhile former Sprint customers continue to be treated like second-class citizens and are not eligible for most of the "extras" TMobile adds on like free Netflix and such.
  • I'm still amazed that carriers in the US can get away with this, in other parts of the world they even offer the first month free, price matching if you have a lower cost plan and some others a good discount on your first three months.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )

      This used to happen. But now we're down to three carriers that own all the cellular spectrum. They likely came to an agreement to not do that.

  • T-Mobile has always charged an activation fee, as far as Iâ(TM)m aware. But they (along with every other carrier, ISP, cable/satellite company, etc. that Iâ(TM)ve used) will waive the fees if you ask, and/or tell them youâ(TM)re going to use a provider that doesnâ(TM)t charge a fee. The only caveat is that you may have to ask more than once before you find someone helpful.

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