With Rollover Data, AT&T Just Keeps Walking Face First Into T-Mobile Attempts To Make It Look Stupid
from the faking-it dept
We've noted more than a few times how T-Mobile has been slowly improving the wireless industry by doing something outrageous: giving customers things they actually want. So far that's included unlimited data options at a time when the bigger carriers have embraced caps and steep overages -- and a move away from the old subsidized handset model, where users can now often buy handsets outright or subsidize them over payment plans. While some of the actual pricing promotions have been cosmetic in nature, there's no doubt that T-Mobile's consumer-friendly policies and wise ass CEO have been a great thing for the industry.The latest example of T-Mobile disruption is its recent introduction of roll over data, a common sense approach that lets users store their unused monthly data allotments for future use in what T-Mobile calls a "Data Stash." It's certainly not a revolutionary idea, and it's not even original in the last month (a Southern wireless provider named C Spire offered the option a week or two before T-Mobile), but in a wireless industry dominated by just two players, we're at the point where god-damned common sense is the very height of innovative disruption.
Enter AT&T, bloated and groggy from decades of regulatory capture and unfamiliar with real competition (despite what groups like the CTIA claim). AT&T's been quietly admitting it's starting to feel the pinch from T-Mobile's shenanigans, which is of course precisely why AT&T tried to acquire and eliminate T-Mobile several years ago, and why regulators stepped in to block it.
Now forced to at least pretend to compete, AT&T this week introduced its own roll over data program, though in traditional ham-fisted AT&T fashion it has more than a little fine print. Unlike T-Mobile's plan that lets you store unused data bytes and bits for up to a year, AT&T lets you store your roll over data for all of one month. Worse perhaps, before you can even use your rolled-over data you have to first burn through your primary data allotment. Meanwhile, much like it did when AT&T pretended its very limited 1 Gbps offerings in Austin wasn't an obvious response to Google Fiber, AT&T is busy telling some reporters that this me-too effort (a poor one at that) has nothing whatsoever to do with T-Mobile.
It's another example of AT&T trying to fake and head bob its way past competition, in the process walking face first into T-Mobile's attempts to make the company look stupid. Amusingly, in an end of 2014 prediction blog post, T-Mobile CEO John Legere found it pretty easy to predict AT&T's behavior:
"AT&T will find new ways to cause their customers pain - especially those still on grandfathered unlimited plans. Just to squeeze more money out of them. (Meanwhile, we’ll keep embracing unlimited.) I’m also betting AT&T will introduce a weak Data Stash™ knock off – but the fine print will be massive, and they’ll miss the first and most important step in the process – which is to stop punishing their customers with domestic overages and instead get rid of them."Again making AT&T look bad isn't hard, since AT&T is the one doing most of the heavy lifting. Legere quickly took to Twitter to mock AT&T for its efforts, in turn scoring even more PR points among consumers annoyed by AT&T and Verizon:
Only day 7 of 2015 and my predictions are coming true! Want to bet they won't give you 10GB to start or end overages? http://t.co/MyTQvGDU5l
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) January 7, 2015
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Filed Under: fine print, john legere, rollover data
Companies: at&t, t-mobile
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I'm still hoping for more competition, because I feel $50 a month for 3GB of data is too much money. But all the benefits listed above evens things out a little.
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$30 a month unhidden charges
$20 a month hidden charges
_______
$50 a month total charges
vs
$50 a month prepaid charges.
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It's about honesty in business.
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I have rollover minutes and the lowest possible number of minutes for my plan and I have accumulated 4300+ rollover minutes that I will likely never touch unless I develop narcolepsy while on the phone with a service that never hangs up on you while my phone is plugged in so it doesn't lose power (i.e. yeah, never).
I'm not surprised they would pull this half-assed rollover data plan, but hopefully they'll get forced to open up the terms more in the future.
Meanwhile using Google Maps for navigation when I'm in a different city uses up significant amounts of my 300 MB data plan. Accidentally leaving the webcam app on that I used to check on my dog at home while I'm away has led me to get $60 worth of overage charges that I had to call customer service to get canceled and pretend like they were doing me a favor for not charging me an insane amount for a piddly little amount of data.
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Broadband needs a T-Mobile, not a Comcast/TWC merger.
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she picked a refurb/used one from sprint they SAID they had X number in stock at that store... (actually, she said it kept on bouncing around all kinds of numbers in stock) she orders that, THE ORDER IS CONFIRMED AND THEY SEND AN EMAIL AND PHONE MSG that says it is ready at the store, blah blah blah... goes the next day to pick it up, and they dont' have it...
WTF? says she (or g-rated equivalent)...
by the time i meet her there to pick out my new phone, she has steam coming out her ears, and the STUPID fucking clerks are being MORONS and LOSE a customer because nobody knew shit about shit, and was not the least bit interested in finding out...
wife storms out and cancels our accounts (5 people on plan that was past obligation and on month-to-month) and switches to t-mob...
stupid droids at sprint, LAST thing the idiots say as we walk out the door is 'we did our job'... NO, you didn't asswipe, your 'JOB' is NOT to simply look on a computer screen and see the phone isn't in the store, YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE IT RIGHT...
it would be one thing if she was looking for a phone they didn't have in stock and got pissed about it; but this was a phone they SAID they had in stock, and sent msgs TELLING her they did and to come pick it up...
t-mob is working great, got our wifi hotspots like we wanted, and even on trips, we hardly approach our data limits... (not streaming movies and shit, just maps, web surfing, hooking up the tablets to them, etc...)
no doubt, they are all eee-vil, but it seems t-mob is slightly less eee-vil...
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TracPhone
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If you only accumulate minutes month after month, you're actually buying too many of them... and paying for them!
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And buying them means paying for them... even if you don't need them.
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So what? You're the one paying for minutes only to have them taken from you never to be seen again.
The point is that we end up paying less than we would on any standard network, but we get all the services you enjoy paying 4x what we do. Not sure how you think we're the fools here.
And now that Tracfone finally has smartphones available, I've lost the only reason I ever had to want to get on a "normal" plan.
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Re: TracPhone
Only available carrier? Only carrier with strong enough signal in your place?
I currently have 3 lines from different carriers and for different reasons, 2 pre-paid. I reduced my expenses with mobile phone by 50% with that setup.
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if only
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Roots of today's AT&T
Yep, Cellular One has gotten at least a few to forget they just changed names and logo when they bought the real MaBell's mobile.
Hey fellows, today's AT&T is not the same as Ma Bell and the seven dwarfs, it is the [still] stupid renamed Cellular One.
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Re: Roots of today's AT&T
"Ma Bell" later on, after the split. So it's still technically the same company, just less of it. Verizon's historically AT&T as well, coming from Bell Atlantic. Which may explain why there's virtually no competition between the two.
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nice but
ATT has a lot of users stuck with them since there aren't many other options to get data while traveling.
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Re: nice but
There are some eastern CT areas and some areas away from I91 in Vermont that I lose signal entirely, but my phone stops working for everything except emergency calls and I have never been charged a roaming fee.
Now that they offer WiFi calling, the areas that were previously a bit of a pain point for me are mostly resolved.
Not so long ago, Verizon was the only realistic option for me, so I would have to say a lot of progress has been made in recent years.
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Common sense?
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Wait, why is this bad? That's exactly how I'd expect it to work...
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This wouldn't be bad if rollover data was good for more than one month. However, if the data expires after one month, and you don't use it first, than it usually is useless. Here is how it works in practice:
*Primary allotment first*
January: Use 1GB of 2GB allotment. (1GB to rollover)
February: Use 2GB of 2GB allotment. (0GB to rollover)
March: Use 3GB (2GB allotment + 1GB overage)
*Rollover first*
January: Use 1 GB of 2GB allotment (1 GB to rollover)
February: Use 2GB - 1 of rollover, 1 of allotment. 1GB to rollover
March: Use 3GB (1GB rollover, 2GB allotment, 0 overage)
In the second case you have "useful" rollover. In the first case you use the same amount of data, but have to pay for overages.
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You can call and get the fees removed
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I never had an unlimited plan, but way back when, I was an AT&T blue account holder, from before the merger with Cingular. After the merger, over time I got the pinch; text messages that had been ten cents each became fifteen cents each, and then the back-breaker was when it was no longer possible to send a message to my phone via xxxxxxxxxx@mmode.com. When I poked around on the AT&T support site, I found out that the only way to get that back was to sign up for a new plan, with a new contract. I can't imagine what feature I had would be lost next if I had been dumb enough to stick with AT&T.
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AT&T does not have monthly rollover minutes
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