T-Mobile CEO lays out another dirty industry secret (and how they plan to change it) #SmartphoneEquality
T-Mobile was one of the first carriers to come clean about carrier subsidization practices which resulted in the launch of their game-changing Simple Choice plans, and now they’re out to expose another dirty industry secret. CEO John Legere took to Twitter with a three minute video to call everyone out on the “well-qualified” shenanigans we often have to deal with.
To be specific, carriers advertise amazing deals on service and phones, but often times than not the cost of doing business with the carriers can be more expensive than they let on. They’ll put “for well-qualified buyers” in very fine print to note that the deals are subject to standard credit checks.
The most common example of this is when signing up for new service with a company — if you don’t have good credit, they’ll probably ask you for an expensive refundable deposit up-front to ensure you’ll make nice on making on-time payments. Another common example is when you try to sign up for one of the latest $0 down upgrade plans — some will make you pay a hefty down payment, and sometimes they will outright refuse to offer you that particular upgrade plan altogether.
To Legere’s credit, he admitted T-Mobile has done the same for most of their existence, but that he wanted to take this opportunity to begin changing that. His proposal? After 12 consecutive months of on-time payments, all customers are treated as if they have the best credit. For new customers the clock will start ticking the day you sign up for service. Those already with T-Mobile will qualify immediately for this “Smartphone Equality” if they already have those 12 consecutive months under their belt.
That’s not a very radical change — T-Mobile will clearly still factor credit into their decision if you haven’t yet met those conditions — but it’s a good-will showing that let’s the customer know they will eventually be treated like they should with the trust that they’ve earned from Magenta.
We should point out that T-Mobile is not the only carrier who makes goodwill decisions based on customer history. I’ve had plenty of perks with Verizon, Sprint and AT&T solely thanks to my history of on time payments with all three those carriers. I have never had to get a credit check outside of the day I first signed up for service.
The difference, though, is that those guys do it on a case-by-case basis, while T-Mobile’s promising it to anyone who can hold up their own end of the bargain for 12 months at a time. We’re still digging for the fine print on this new policy change so we’ll be updating with more details if they happen to roll in.
[via T-Mobile]