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Beware T-Mobile pre-paid

Zohar127

Member
May 28, 2011
72
20
If you're like me, you bought a Nexus 4 with the intention of using the Walmart exclusive 100m/Unlimited Text/5GB 4G data pre-paid plan.

Well let me tell you something to watch out for...

If you use this plan, DON'T sign up for Auto-Renew and be VERY careful about fees and minutes. They will screw you in a very cynical way. DON'T add money to your account balance with a debit/credit card. ONLY use refill cards, which you can buy at Walmart.com

-I ran up my 100 minutes of talk time and my phone service deactivated, rightfully so.

-I refilled my account using my debit card, and the next day I had my phone service back.

-Something went wrong in their system and they ended up charging me $1.50 in extra fees for talking, even though I was unable to make or receive calls. I am not sure what happened, but I do know that it was 100% not my fault. The refill bill I got was $32.58, so there's no possible way I ended up with an even $28.50 on my account from calling fees.

-Something got overridden SOMEWHERE and even though I applied the correct amount of money to my account, they revoked my phone service.

-I now have an account balance of $28.50, no phone service, and they only accept payments of $30 on this plan.

I now have two options:

Pay them $10 (the minimum you can add at a time) so I can apply the minimum amount of $30 to my plan. This will put me in an endless cycle where no matter what I do they get to keep the $8.50.

Or I can drop the plan altogether and use their pay-by-the-day plan. I have to use the $3/day plan so I get decent data. Once I switch to this, there's no going back to the $30/month plan.

Once my $3/day plan reduces my account balance to less than $3, I'm switching to AT&T.

I would have considered staying on T-Mobile anyway, since $8.50 really isn't much money to care about, but their service sucks in my area and I get absolutely no coverage at my jobsite so I have no reason to try and stick it out with them. Plus if I end up with a Nexus 5 someday, I want AT&T's superior LTE coverage. In Connecticut T-Mo's LTE doesn't exist anywhere in my daily travels. (I've done the LTE hack to confirm this).

The plan was great, as were the savings, but as soon as you get any fee whatsoever (and we all know how phone companies like to ding you with bullshit fees) you get stuck in a cycle where you end up with a significant amount of money in your balance that you cannot access due to their BS pricing model. It reminds me of Xbox Microsoft Points, where no matter what you do, you have MS Points you can't use.

So it just goes as they say "You get what you pay for."
 
What likely happened is that you went over your 100 minutes during a call. Rather than cut off the call right then and there, they charged your account the overage rate (10 cents per minute). This put your account at -$1.50 cents for going over by 15 minutes. So when you added 30 dollars, you had to pay off your negative balance and left you short. It's for this reason that I purposly leave my account overloaded by a couple dollars just in case I go over my minute amount.

AT&T's prepaids are no different with data if you go over your cap.
 
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What likely happened is that you went over your 100 minutes during a call. Rather than cut off the call right then and there, they charged your account the overage rate (10 cents per minute). This put your account at -$1.50 cents for going over by 15 minutes. So when you added 30 dollars, you had to pay off your negative balance and left you short. It's for this reason that I purposly leave my account overloaded by a couple dollars just in case I go over my minute amount.

AT&T's prepaids are no different with data if you go over your cap.

I don't see how people even use this plan with an LTE smartphone. I don't even talk much but can rack up 200 min a month easy. Price aside I wouldn't consider this plan 70$ unlimited ftw.
 
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What likely happened is that you went over your 100 minutes during a call. Rather than cut off the call right then and there, they charged your account the overage rate (10 cents per minute). This put your account at -$1.50 cents for going over by 15 minutes. So when you added 30 dollars, you had to pay off your negative balance and left you short. It's for this reason that I purposly leave my account overloaded by a couple dollars just in case I go over my minute amount.

AT&T's prepaids are no different with data if you go over your cap.

I figured that is likely what happened but the people on the phone made it very...ambiguous haha. Hopefully this can provide a tale of caution of future users of this plan. :rolleyes:

I didn't think I would use 100m but those things add up FAST. The way they bill it is not very forgiving.
 
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I don't see how people even use this plan with an LTE smartphone. I don't even talk much but can rack up 200 min a month easy. Price aside I wouldn't consider this plan 70$ unlimited ftw.

I have google voice forward all calls to either my office phone. At home I use Hangouts to make/receive calls. I also have Groove IP if I really need to make a call on the go.
 
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Pay them $10 (the minimum you can add at a time) so I can apply the minimum amount of $30 to my plan. This will put me in an endless cycle where no matter what I do they get to keep the $8.50.

You can use the $8.50 if you ever need to go over 100 minutes in a month. T-Mobile charges at $0.10/min after the 100 minutes, assuming you have any funds in your account. So just leave that as a buffer. That's 85 minutes you can use in a pinch.
 
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I don't see how people even use this plan with an LTE smartphone. I don't even talk much but can rack up 200 min a month easy. Price aside I wouldn't consider this plan 70$ unlimited ftw.

It is specifically on a smartphone with fast data that the 5GB of fast data is appealing. If you were fine with an older phone or slower data, things like Page Plus, Virgin Mobile, etc, become more compelling with their greater (much greater) minutes but slower data.
 
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Just another experience, I use the TMobile app to pay, and it allows me to specify the amount of credit I want to add. It doesn't need to be $30 increments. When I have a few bucks extra and the next payment is due, it defaults to the minimum amount needed for the next month. I believe the website works similarly.

The other thing that might have contributed to OPs problem is tax is in addition to whatever credit amount is selected.
 
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