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The Nexus One is a pretty darn attractive purchase for non-TMO customers who are ready to give their John Hancock on a 2-Year agreement but you’re much less likely to go the distance if $500+ is required. Well one T-Mobile customer who wanted the best of both worlds was able to have his Droid and eat it too as detailed by Gizmodo:
Starting the day of the release I attempted to secure a shiny new toy to replace my aging iPhone only to find out that Google/HTC/T-Mobile were hamstringing existing customers for anywhere from $100 – $200 on the cost of the phone, so I set out to get a fair price. I spoke with a long list of Customer Care/Billing/Tech Support/& Loyalty Specialists to work through the problem. A Tech Support agent along with help from Billing agents suggested that I add a line to my existing account, then swap the created phone number with the original after a cancellation and reuse request. This became difficult as someone on their end flagged my account wrong. I spent the better part of the next 36 hours asking if some flag had been activated on my account indicating I was no longer an Individual Regular Postpaid account. Only after threatening to cancel my account altogether did someone figure it out. Flag changed, I was now able to proceed. Added the line (865 area code), ordered the phone and waited for that to arrive. Once that was achieved, I called T-Mobile back to cancel my original line (not on contract – no fee) and file a reuse of the number. Then came the waiting game. This morning I awoke to a text message from T-Mobile stating that the number registered for the sim card was my original number (412 area code). To sum it up in steps:
Requirements: Non-contract T-Mobile Customer, ability to add a line
1. Add a line through Google check out process.
2. Wait for phone arrival.
3. Once acquired, call T-Mobile to cancel original number, then file a reuse request to swap it with the newly created number (similar to a number port)
4. Wait. (12 hrs elapsed time prior to the swap).All said and done, Nexus One acquired for $179+taxes+$35 activation fee. One last caveat; by the end of the process, T-Mobile Specialists were getting weary of this method so I would verify they will do this for customers before proceeding.
FYI I’m definitely not suggesting you do this yourself. First of all, there is no guarantee it will work for you. Second, karma is a bitch. I know that technically it’s playing by the rules – just be sure to let us know how it turns out if you give it a shot.
no thanks.
Meh, not worth it for that crazy contract.
this phone sure was game changing especially for the customer.
I wonder if I could order a Nexus One through Tmob for $180(signing a new two year contract) then switch phones to my unlocked Nexus and sell the subsidized one? I’m currently on ATT but looking to switch to tmob anyway. Could pay for most of my unlocked one! Anyone know if this would work?
@Eric There is no such thing as a locked Nexus One. They are all unlocked. The only difference is you either buy it with a contract and discount, or without a contract at full price.
Lol I just don’t see this as being a fine n dandy idea….T mobile. ..no it just ain’t worth it.
If you can afford to buy off-contract, and don’t, you’re an idiot. If you think you can’t afford to buy off-contract, are you sure?
after doing some research i’ve found that t-mobile charges higher rates to customers with a contract than to customers without one. see, they give u a discount on the phone and then make all the money back on monthly charges. that way they can make more money. so, what i suggest is buy the phone without the contract and then get a data plan from t-mobile w/o a contract. eventually, the phone will pay for itself!
im str81 to much goi9ng on for a phone. my plan is toooooo good to give up for the nexus one. hopefully tmobile gets the xperia x10 and google can keep their wack ass nexus one with they stupid ass rules and plan changes. someone at tmobile should have through the red flag and told them trhis was stupid9paln and phone and plan deal0
not worth it….besides with the rumors of a nexus one with a slide out keyboard surfacing??….i’ll wait
will the nexus ever come to a tmobile store one day?
I did this when the motorola cliq came out, they wanted me to pay full price, but at the end the Loyalty Depertment ended up letting me doing an upgrade since it was basically going to be the same..
@Eric I made the switch from T-mobile to At&t I honestly say do not switch to T-mobile they have the worst coverage and the worst customer support! I strongly suggest for you to wait for the arrival of the 5 new Android Phones that will be arriving to At&t in August, the Nexus One may be a great phone as was the G1 I loved the G1 but on T-mobile the phone actually losses in the sense of SLOW 3G connection and very little coverage!
What’s the deal with insurance? Besides having big red, the only reason I don’t have an iphone is the need for insurance.
@Eric, I agree with Craig, I have had T-Mobile for 5 years and the 3G is mediocre. I work for AT&T corporate and I can tell you that most of my co-workers have waaaaay better signal than I do. T-Mobiles 3G is eh. It’s not terrible but it’s not as good as AT&T. I max out at around 900k/600k. This is after the 7.2 update. I called tmobile and asked them why their 3G sucks just to see what they had to say and the lady told me “There isn’t much difference on AT&T, I’ve been to dallas and my 3G was great” I was like “Lady, I have lived in Dallas my entire life and I can assure you that ‘Great’ is not the word.” So honestly if you don’t mind having to switch to Edge more than you do on AT&T, go for it. But I would prefer AT&T’s network over anybody elses. [Yes, including Verizons garbage EV-DO network]
I have done something like this on verizon before. worked for me, but then again, it was verizon not t-mobile.
So, just called T-MO. The customer service people are ready to help game the system, but…
I explained the above, and the lady said yes, no problem, but I have a family plan. My wife isn’t off contract yet, but I am. So I would buy the new phone and plan. Upon receipt, cancel my part of our family plan and transfer the number ($35 activation fee). My wife would be converted to an individual plan with test (no data) for $49 and I would be on the $79 plan. Until she is off contract in September, I would be paying essentially $20/mo extra (vs. family plan) and I couldn’t add her to my google plan until her contract was clear. (I could pay ETFs ($200 now, $100 when down to 6 months, $50 when 3 months). ON the family plan in september, I could get her in for an additional $20 to my $79 plan. But I found the T-mo people very ready to help. Alternative 2 would be to convert my plan to an upgradable plan and then pay $279, then apparently get converted back somehow? Cheaper over the months until contract is over…
I’ve successfully purchased a $179 as a current out of contract T-Mo customer… sort of. Here’s what I had to do:
1.) Cancel T-Mo account and have number ported to another carrier (ATT in my case)
2.) Set up new service with T-Mo (without a phone in my case, although I’ve heard you can get a free one too)
3.) Went through the google.com/phone buying procedure as an existing T-Mo customer and chose “Add new line of service to existing t-mobile account” Ta-Da! $179
4.) Port old phone number back from ATT to new line and cancel ATT & the first tmobile line.
If I wasn’t unemployed this wouldn’t have happened. It took an entire day. Stupid policy.
I will add, however, that I’ve always loved the T-Mobile customer service. They seem to have a lot of young, happy, clever reps that are given a lot of autonomy to get problems solved. I’ve never had a problem with TMobile service anywhere in California. I’ll be watching the 3G/2G switching that’s being reported, but after 24 hours of nexus use with lots of downloading I haven’t seen it yet. VOIP quality is just fine BTW. Loving this thing.
I had the worst luck with T-mobile, I always had dropped calls and a echo in the phones that I had I was with them for 2 weeks and I had already been through 3 different phones! Once the G1 came out I added a line to myaccount and gave the other line to my sister. shortly after another for my brother, all of the phones were having issues I would call T-mobile and they would put me through troubleshooting etc… this carried on for months I was fed up with all of the bs and decided to switch to Att. Which I am very happy with! I then tried to call T-mobile to get an agreement because of the poor service I had with them and because on the computer it showed that I was in 3G area that there was nothing they could do, and that my leaving instead of getting the problem fixed was my fault! Which I tried to get fixed for several months. Since they were no help to me I strongly recommend that no one else switches to T-mobile and if your contract is coming to an end you may want to leave and go elsewhere! BTW I am now payong off over $600 in cancelation and phone usage fees! Good luck to everyone who has the worst cell phone provider “T-mobile”.
I did it. They gave me a hard time for a second but ultimately I kept calling back and got it done! THANK YOU!
would this only work for people who are not on a contract with tmobile? because I have a 2-year plan but I don’t want to have to pay the cancellation fee to get the phone.
dh2fan, sorry you have to be out of contract. You can’t just transfer or port a number from one place (phone) to another and “get out of your contract” that way, WITHOUT paying the ETF.
Whoever did it can you help me out. I have the flex pay account and my contract is over. But on the google check out page when I click on add a new line, Google says I am not eligible to add a new line because of the flexpay account. But on T mobile website I am able to add a new line. I am so confused. I tried just getting a new individual plan altogether on Google checkout, but then it says “i already have a T mobile account so all I can do is add a new line” which it doesn’t let me. :/ This is so annoying. Did anyone with a flexpay account try this thing?