T-Mobile to penalize tech-inept with BS paper billing fee

Time to drop T-Mobile. A couple more months on my TiMo cellphone contract, and I’ll be switching to the iPhone and AT&T. T-mobile should prepare to lose customers.

If you’re reimbursed, what is the problem?

Do you remember back in the day when gas stations had different per-gallon prices for cash and credit cards? Now that the majority pay with credit card, the gas stations just make a little bit more off the cash-paying customers.

No, but your insurance company does.

Is it really? Or are they just going to try to convert me to paperless?

Point overlooked is that it wastes YOUR time to have to log into the (often slow) t-mobile site to find out how much your bill is. If they emailed me a PDF I’d be all over this, but it’s going to cost me 5-10 minutes each month to find out how much to pay, that’s time they’re taking from me. Just logged in and not only was the site slow, it said the billing system was down and couldn’t show me my bill. Grr.

I should be able to bill them $5-10 each month for my extra wasted time. (See http://critique.org/bcs.ht for example on the cost of your wasted time.)

when tmobile changes their contracts, sometimes you can get out of your 2year deal and go month to month when they do is this one of those cases? some said they were able to do that when the price of text messages went up.

T-mobile is full of it. They try to dupe suckers who think it’s all in the name of green but this selfish generation who support this (I’m no old guy–I’m 30) and the greedy ceo’s behind this move are not fooling me. It’s not anyone’s business to ask what reason someone wants a copy of their bill for. There could be a multitude of reasons as I just thought of a few myself. I just got my bill & noticed this & decided to go googling to see if others were noticing this. I had specifically opted to continue receiving my bill each mth(even though in the back of my mind, I knew T-mobile would eventually force this on to those who opted out). I have been unhappy with lame excuses that T-mobile gives when I complain about dual text msg charges in which I did not make or only sent one text msg & how they are way behind on providing OS updates to their phones so impulsive buyers will upgrade to a phone that is not that much more faster or powerful than their existing one. They just want to collect money & not really have to do any work for it. Businesses make these kind of moves to save money…point blank– no other reason, so they will use the guise & rally cry of a greener planet. It boils down to the ceo’s and their managers getting really outrageous bonuses & not rewarding any of their “lower” employees. I don’t know if other cell telcos are using this forced billing method but it is a symptom of the craziness that corporations are being allowed to get away with. I plan to start shopping around to see if I can find a better deal than T-mobile in my area. I will notify the FCC & T-mobile as the original poster suggested & hope others do as well. Hopefully they will get the message if there is enough outcry. People wake up & notice these trends of the business world and don’t believe their insidious, so-called beneficial reasons.

“Do cops give rewards for driving safe?” Are you serious? How about an apples to apples comparison. You are required to drive safe…it is the law. Your reward is not going to jail or given a ticket. You get the priviledge of driving a vehicle. T-Mobile is suddenly charging for something that they’ve never charged for prior to this. My company requires a hard copy original for all invoices. A computer print out does not work for reimbursement. Our company is already talking about dumping our contract with T-mobile, based on this cost alone. Yes, it’s only $1.50, but times that by the 300 phones we have on contract and that’s $5,400 per year. Just like with the G1 and its anti Outlook programming, T-mobile does not want to cater to business entities. We are all about going green and protecting the environment and have taken major steps to do so, going paperless whereever possible. The IRS requires us to conform to certain practices and its just not worth $5,400 per year. T-Mobile is penalizing people for not agreeing with their standards of environmental concern.

Since this is an obvious change in terms of service, they should be giving the people they’re hoisting these fees in an ‘opt-out’ period in which they can cancel their accounts without penalty. Unfortunately, TMobile is not giving people an opt-out option even though they are changing the terms of service.

i set up paperless along time ago then i added my military discount they told me i cant have paperless billing on corp discounts. so looks like i might as well by some Vaseline cause there sure as heck not gonna give me any when they fork me 1.50. HMMMMMM……

I feel for the thousands off people (your customers) who do not have computers. Such discrimination! You have the most costly billing I have ever seen and I am sending to you a mock up of a billing reducing you four page bill to two pages, which gives me everything I need. Your can also cut costs by dropping the return envelope, I will gladly supply my own. Be on the look-out for my envelope addressed to the president.

You are an idiot and get paid to say this.

Write Richard Dotson, T-Mobile CEO, at rdotson@t-mobile.com. Sample letter:

Mr. Dotson:

I have received notice that T-Mobile would be adding a $1.50 per month charge to my account for receiving a paper bill, and I wish to register my dissatisfaction with the company’s unilateral decision. Prior to September, T-Mobile provided paper bills to its customers; this normal cost of doing business was covered by the monthly fee for service. Therefore, the new, additional fee of $1.50 amounts to an increase of the monthly service fee, as it covers no new service provided by T-Mobile to its customers. Among these reasons that T-Mobile has put forth for the new fee are:

> Increases in postal charges and printing costs. From one year to another, postal charges, especially in bulk business shipments, such as those for mobile phone bills, have not increased by more than a few pennies, at a maximum; the same is certainly true of printing costs — much likely less, in fact. Clearly, these are not a valid reasons for charging the new fee.

> An interest in preserving the environment. This is certainly a noble cause. However, if T-Mobile were truly interested in promoting environmentally-friendly action, it could simply encourage paperless billing by sharing the associated cost savings with customers; imposing a confiscatory fee is disingenuous in this regard, with T-Mobile providing nothing of its own toward the stated noble end while reaping considerable profit from its customer base. Would you be lobbying for a new fee on US businesses to promote recycling if this fee did nothing to provide T-Mobile with a competitive advantage and there was no means of recouping this fee? Again, charging a new fee for this reason is certainly invalid.

> T-Mobile employees will also be paying the fee. This is virtually meaningless, as these T-Mobile employees are simply a subset of T-Mobile customers. Would you be happy to accept the above-noted recycling fee simply because government agencies were similarly forced to pay it? I think not, and using this as a support for charging your customers a new fee is rather pitiful.

T-Mobile used to be a company that prided itself on its customer relationship. The unilateral imposition of the paper bill fee is a decided step in the opposite direction of this philosophy. I suggest that you direct your company to reconsider its choice in this matter.

Sincerely,

T-Mobile customer

I’m pretty sure I picked up the vundo trojan from opening my tmobile bill. I’ve switched back to a summary paper bill.