T-Mobile tries to convince customer to drop price hike-related FCC complaint, fails spectacularly

In addition to the usual little freebies and… slightly more unusual big freebies, T-Mobile appears to be trying another strategy as well to make subscribers affected by a recent price hike wave (or two) get over their disappointment with the “Un-carrier.” Unfortunately for Magenta, the letter sent to at least one customer explaining the debacle we extensively covered over the last few weeks is highly unlikely to convince said user to “close” their complaint with the FCC.

Did T-Mobile lie when unveiling the “Un-contract” offer? 

Among others, Magenta claims that its “Un-contract” program never guaranteed prices wouldn’t increase, merely offering to pay customers unhappy with a potential hike their “final month’s recurring service charge” as compensation if they decided to leave for a different carrier. While that promise is apparently still on, multiple Redditors are citing a now-deleted press release from 2017 as proof that T-Mobile is lying.

But wait, there’s more

For its part, T-Mo is highlighting that “lines covered by the April 28, 2022 to January 17, 2024 Price Lock guarantee are exempt from the monthly recurring rate plan changes”… unless you happened to migrate to a “new plan not covered by Price Lock.” That already seems to overcomplicate what was supposed to be a very simple and straightforward deal, and on top of everything, quite a few people are saying their prices were “unlocked” without warning or proper explaining.

False advertising is a problem that may well stick with the former “Un-carrier” (which many exasperated customers are now referring to as the “Re-carrier”) for quite a long time going forward, both as far as retaining existing customers is concerned and in terms of continuing to boost those all-important subscriber numbers. 

You can probably expect a huge class action lawsuit to follow shortly after these somewhat scattered FCC complaints Redditors have been talking about for the past couple of weeks, which means that this issue is unlikely to go away (completely) for months and maybe even years to come.