"No disclaimers of any type were attached to the press release," Schlatter wrote to the FCC. "T-Mobile should be required to honor the pledge made in the press release."
The advertising industry's self-regulatory group this month determined that T-Mobile's Price Lock claim was misleading, although the ruling wasn't directly related to mobile service. As we reported, AT&T filed a challenge against T-Mobile over ads for 5G home Internet service that mentioned the Price Lock guarantee.
BBB National Programs' National Advertising Division (NAD) agreed with AT&T, finding that T-Mobile's Price Lock ads conveyed the misleading message "that the price is locked for monthly service as long as the consumer wants the service." T-Mobile's disclosure wasn't good enough because "a disclosure cannot contradict the claim it qualifies," the NAD said.
T-Mobile agreed to follow the NAD's recommendations for future ads related to its home Internet service, but that doesn't help mobile customers who are angry about the price increase.
“If there were a class-action suit, I would join”
While Odean said she and her husband can afford the $10-per-month increase, she pointed out that it would be difficult for people on fixed incomes. T-Mobile's explanation that it has to raise prices to cover its own rising costs doesn't sit well with her, either.
Odean said that one of the times she called T-Mobile to complain, "I talked to a very nice guy who said, 'They're not giving us any leeway here.' And he said, 'You know, I'm hearing from a lot of distressed people.' First they give you the 'Oh, my bill's going up too,' as if somehow that makes it OK. And then they give you the 'Well, you know, prices have gone up.' And I thought, well, they knew in 2017 that prices would go up, so that just seems like no argument at all to me. I mean, I knew prices would go up. That's why I wanted this plan."
Odean pointed to a T-Mobile earnings announcement that boasted net income of $2 billion in Q4 2023 and $8.3 billion in calendar year 2023, with "industry-leading growth of 221 percent." T-Mobile also reported $63.2 billion in service revenue in 2023 with "industry-leading growth of 3 percent."
"Certainly if there were a class-action suit, I would join... they're trying to weasel their way out [of a promise], and this is a company that's making a lot of money," Odean said.
At least for now, Odean hasn't changed carriers. "I don't really want to plunge back into these carriers every couple of years and compare plans," she said.
Moody said he and his family left AT&T for T-Mobile in 2016 and then switched to different T-Mobile plans in order to get the price lock in 2017. They had years of customer service problems with AT&T, and T-Mobile seemed to be "trying to operate business differently than the legacy carriers," he said. Now Moody is on Verizon, having cycled through the three major carriers.
T-Mobile service "was good for years until they started having all these data breaches, and now my Social Security number's all over the dark web, so that was the beginning of my frustration," he said. "The straw that kind of broke the camel's back was them breaking their agreement for the price-lock guarantee and saying that they were going to increase our rates anyway."
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