T-Mobile Sued For ‘Lifetime’ Price Guarantee That Wasn’t
from the words-are-but-wind dept
We’ve noted repeatedly that in the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition).
Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans — including customers who believed they were under a “price lock” guarantee thanks to a 7 year old promotion.
In 2017, T-Mobile unveiled a promotion proclaiming that T-Mobile contracted customers on their One plans customers “keep their price until THEY decide to change it” and that “T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile One plan.” Except like most of T-Mobile’s promises recently, customers quickly learned that wasn’t true.
T-Mobile raised rates on everybody, including users on plans that were supposedly locked in. Annoyed customers initially filed complaints with the FCC, and now they’ve filed suit. A fresh class action lawsuit filed in US District Court for the District of New Jersey says the company misled millions of wireless subscribers:
“Based upon T-Mobile’s representations that the rates offered with respect to certain plans were guaranteed to last for life or as long as the customer wanted to remain with that plan, each Plaintiff and the Class Members agreed to these plans for wireless cellphone service from T-Mobile. However, in May 2024, T-Mobile unilaterally did away with these legacy phone plans and switched Plaintiffs and the Class to more expensive plans without their consent.”
T-Mobile has since claimed that the original 2017 promotion had some notable fine print: namely that T-Mobile didn’t really mean that your price would never change, only that T-Mobile would pay your final monthly bill if the carrier raised the price and impacted customers decided to cancel. A since deleted FAQ supposedly made that clear, but the original announcement didn’t.
That’s still pretty obvious misrepresentation, but well within the norm for an industry that loves to abuse even basic dictionary definitions of words and phrases like “unlimited,” “cellular coverage,” or “customer service.”
Filed Under: cellular, class action, consumers, lifetime price guarantee, mergers, mobile, telecom, wireless
Companies: t-mobile
Comments on “T-Mobile Sued For ‘Lifetime’ Price Guarantee That Wasn’t”
oh… look… my… shocked… avatar…
What T-Mobile meant to say was, “UNLIMITED, Lifetime” price guarantee.
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…where “lifetime” means the lifetime of this guarantee*
* not a guarantee
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Ahh, it’s like “Unlimited”.
It’s “Unlimited” because we call it that, not because the service we offer, at egregious rates, has any relation whatsoever with the meaning of the word unlimited.
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It could also be called “Humpty-Dumpty marketing”:
An FAQ entry is not something that companies can expect their customers to read. Only customers having that specific question would; if they felt the original text was clear, they wouldn’t.
And, of course, by the time any question has become “frequently” asked, a whole bunch of people will have already become confused or misled.
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Is an FAQ even be legally binding? Wouldn’t the stipulation have to be in the contract itself?
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To the extent anything in it can be read as a promise, I don’t see why not. Companies might wish that only the contract terms were binding, and would nullify anything stated to the contrary elsewhere; they might even add a clause to that effect. But that’d make a mockery of the concept of false-advertising laws, right? Advertise whatever you want, then say “that’s not what was in the contract you agreed to!”
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I could see it be binding against the company, but not the customer. So if the company promises something in the FAQ that’s not in the contract, they should have to honor it (the same way companies have been found responsible for the verbal promises that their employees make), but if the FAQ says something that’s favorable to the company and harmful to the customer and it’s not in the contract, then it shouldn’t be binding to the customer because the customer agreed to the contract, not the FAQ.
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Of course. A customer can’t be bound by an FAQ answer they haven’t seen, any more than they can be bound by a commercial they haven’t seen. And even if they had seen it, it’d be reasonable for them to assume the contract took precedence.
(In the extremely unlikely case that the user had publically advertised or stated their own interpretation of the contract terms, I guess that could be used against them. In that sense, it’s fair.)
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It very likely is in the contract, just in complicated legalese, which the FAQ then translated into normal English
To be fair, who, in today’s world, still believes promises from corporations. FFS, how many examples does it take?
They are soulless machines that are bent on PROFIT to the exclusion of all else. They have succeeded in regulatory capture, for decades through the judicious use of literal bribes and people think they’re going to be honest about a promise? They buried their out in dense legalese, in a EULA. That should tell anyone all they needed to know about this.
To be clear, they should be sued, but let’s not go all SurprisePikachu about it.
It’s like Mango Jabba. If his lips are moving, he’s lying. <— period.
“Lifetime guarantee” is the phone industry’s “boneless chicken”. The precedent has been set;
watch for the court to side with industry, not the consumer
You can’t believe a thing they say.
This became set in stone once SCOTUS decided that literal bribery of elected officials was, “no biggie” with their horrifically corrupt CU ruling. This was further cemented when SCOTUS ruled that bribing an official AFTER an act, solely in your favor, is no longer bribery. Bribery can only, somehow, happen if the compensation is passed before the act.
If anything, GQP clowns appointed to judgeships have proven that they don’t care about precedent unless it serves their own decision. In all other cases, it’s a little bit of faff and should be ignored. In fact, it’s so meaningless to them, that 3 of what should be the best of the judges, literally lied to congress and the entire country about honoring the precedent set with Roe v Wade.
I don't get "lifetime guarantees" anyway
Lifetime of whom or what? Of the customer? “Your power tool electrocuted my father due to shoddy workmanship. I want a replacement.” “Sorry, lifetime is over.”
Of the product? “Your product broke. I want a replacement.” “Sorry, lifetime is over.”
Of the company? That may be shortlived.
What would it mean if an undertaker offered lifetime guarantees for their coffins and/or services?
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A few years ago, my grandparents had their 50-year-old furnace replaced (it worked fine, but the newer air conditioner had broken and the young HVAC people didn’t know how to attach a replacement to that furnace).
We came across some of the paperwork for the old furnace. It contained a certificate from The Canada Trust Company, promising to uphold the warranty if the manufacturer went bankrupt. It wasn’t a lifetime warranty, just something like 10 or 20 years, but that was still eye-opening: companies used to actually take this stuff seriously.
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Now you have to buy extra 3rd party / vendor warranties in hopes that it will cover the inevitable design and manufacturing defects which rear their raging heads in 3-5 years.
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Google “pre-paid burial”
I know it exists because my parents bought it and it worked exactly like it was supposed to.
The classic corporate contract defense:
This was a defined term on page 83 paragraph 7, clause 3.1415.
It was very clear if you are insane.
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Yes.
You may remember this satire about that very thing. 😉
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
T-Mobile Sued For ‘Lifetime’ Price Guarantee That Wasn’t
Karl Bode’s article highlights a significant issue where T-Mobile’s “lifetime” price guarantee has led to a lawsuit. Despite a promotional offer from 2017 promising customers that their prices would remain unchanged, T-Mobile recently increased rates by $3-$5 per month. This move affects many customers who believed they were protected by the price lock. The situation underscores how promises made in promotions can sometimes fall short, especially when sector competition diminis
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Prompt: Rewrite this summary, but in the speech patterns of a pirate who is drunk on rum and really likes to use words like “cringe,” “rizz,” and “sus.” Also include a reference to the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in a metaphor.
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Gather ’round, me boys. I have a story about the Read Pirate Karl to share. passes bottle. It be a story about regulatory capture and and the devil in the deep blue, I tell ya.
Long ago, a group callin’ themselves the Pink Pirates, promised something to some people. The promise was sus, but they were bedazzled by the rizz, like a siren’s song that’ll drag ya down to Davie Jones’ locker, it was.
Read Pirate Karl decided he wasn’t gonna take that, like some soft landlubber. He showed up, like a storm at sea, without warnin’ or worry. He roared about injustice, and 3 more pieces of Gold.
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It ain’t much, but it’s honest work and I’ve had a long day already. If anyone wants to carry this on, please do. 🙂