T-Mobile UNcarrier Day 3 of 3: get rid of carrier overages
We thought T-Mobile would be announcing day 3 of their latest “UNcarrier” announcements last Friday — the first two days consisted of new plans and affordable connected tablets — but we had to wait a full weekend to hear anything (which CEO John Legere says was done to help support the launch of two of the year’s biggest smartphones). The day has finally come, though, with T-Mobile capping off this hat-trick with an announcement that they’re abolishing domestic carrier overages.
“The old carriers’ entry-level plans lure you in with a low monthly cost for a fixed amount of domestic minutes, texts or data. Once you go over those limits – even by a little – you’re hit with bill shock,” said CEO John Legere in a blog post today. “On behalf of all U.S. wireless consumers, we’re putting an end to the fear of getting one too many pics or clicking on one too many links – and bam. You’re hit with overages. Not at the Un-carrier.”
Simply put, they don’t want to charge you for accidentally sending a few too many texts or talking a couple of extra minutes. These changes will apply to all “consumer customers,” which likely means those on a business account might be subject to different rules. Regardless, it’s a pretty ballsy change, and T-Mobile is challenging other carriers to follow suit.
They’ve gone as far as creating a Change.org petition that calls on Sprint, AT&T and Verizon to fall in line with the vision. T-Mobile has always been pretty bold about calling out carriers and forcing them to compete, but this is the first time they’ve done something to make that happen in a tangible way.
Consumers can head to the petition here and sign it if they want to try and coerce these carriers into making similar changes. And if that doesn’t work, well, you can just as easily switch to T-Mobile. We’ll be awaiting the fine print on these changes before truly jumping for joy, but if T-Mobile’s other long string of unorthodox moves are anything to go by, we can be sure they aren’t pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes.