T-Mobile to start charging $1.50 for the pleasure of slaughtering a tree in cold chlorophyll
[Via Phone Scoop]
[Via Phone Scoop]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Derek @ Aug 11th 2009 8:49AM
A little late on this, huh? They've been charging extra for paper bills for awhile, now.
StAlfonzo @ Aug 11th 2009 8:57AM
Wait when banks in the US get to the 20th century, so you'll end up as we in Europe: getting your monthly bank statement in paper costs you. Phone operators and banks have been doing this for the past 10 years, so it's nothing "new", just inevitable.
Abdullah @ Aug 11th 2009 9:03AM
Hmm..not my bill. Just checked it, nothing about it. I believe i got a letter with the bill a while back to opt out of the charge.
wako @ Aug 11th 2009 10:01PM
i dont know the exact date, but people who have been with tmobile for a while dont get charged the fee for paper billing. However you would see the fee if you opted for paperless and then switched back. So keep your paper billing until they absolutely force you into paperless billing! (which may even mean a breach of contract on their part that would allow you to break your contract!)
Jeff @ Aug 11th 2009 9:27AM
They haven't started charging me for this yet. When they do, I'm switching carriers. I'm not into them switching the burden and cost to me. Oh, and anyone that thinks they are doing this to save the environment is just being silly. They are doing it to save money, plain and simple.
TrueEddie @ Aug 11th 2009 10:08AM
Yeah they save money, and you help save trees.
What is there to complain about!
Jeff @ Aug 11th 2009 10:51AM
What there is to complain about is that I need these bills printed and saved for tax purposes. That means that trees are not being saved because if I don't want to pay a silly fee then I have to waste my time, ink, and paper to print them out instead of having them automatically delivered to me.
T-Mobile must be taking some hints from the airlines with these fees.
Chad @ Aug 11th 2009 12:55PM
So you will switch to another carrier and most likely be paying more for a similar plan rather than pay $1.50 and stay with T-Mobile? Yeah I've done similarly dumb things just for spite too. I usually regretted it later though. Are you also saying that you don't have a printer at home you can print the invoice out on? Or is it still the whole spite thing I mentioned before?
Jeff @ Aug 11th 2009 1:28PM
Chad, are you saying that T-Mobile is unquestionably the cheapest carrier out there? I haven't looked yet, but that is quite a statement. Also, I never stated I didn't have a printer at home. Quite the opposite, I said that I would have to use my own printer, which I don't want to do. It is a pain to remember to go onto T-Mobile's site and print out the statement every month. Something that used to be simple is now a monthly inconvenience thanks to T-Mobile. Maybe you are into inconveniencing yourself in order to make a wireless company a little extra money, but I do not find it to be that much fun.
Andrey @ Aug 11th 2009 3:17PM
Well, from an eco point not everybody is in your boat. For one of you who is screwed by this there are 100 others who just get the bill every month and throw it out, and are just too lazy to sign up for e-bill. Sorry that you have to take a hit for this, but on my tree-hugger side, this great. Will save a LOT of trees considering the client base, and if they make money off of this, I really hope they spend it on planting trees.
Sux about your situation tho... sry
doubleu606 @ Aug 11th 2009 9:40AM
I read the title as 'cold chernobyl' and was seriously sitting here for 2 minutes thinking 'wtf!!' ugh....
mike @ Aug 11th 2009 10:43AM
Catherine Zeta-Jones surcharge?
Chad @ Aug 11th 2009 12:58PM
"This is my wife.....technically"
LOL My wife gives me a dirty look every time that commercial is played.
I get this evil little grin and fight not to laugh.
just4onepost @ Aug 11th 2009 11:12AM
Ok, so nothing new is being added, they're just charging for a service that used to be free. Maybe they should try giving those who opt for the ebill $1.50 off their bill instead.
Dave @ Aug 11th 2009 1:09PM
"Kill a tree? We'll kill your wallet."
Don't you think that a tad melodramatic? If $1.50 is that big of a deal, you shouldn't be spending money on a cell phone anyway.
@Jeff - so save each electronic statement as a PDF and save the PDFs.
youngcalihottie @ Aug 11th 2009 10:47PM
i have a toshiba laptop with 1ghz and 1gb ram.
my bill is usually 300 to 400 pages.
not only does it take about 10 minutes just for the file to open and load,
but if i try to go to the next page or scroll to a different page it takes about another 3 minutes to change.
this is not a feasible way to view a bill.
and im certainly not going to print it on a home printer.
average ink cost per page is about 10 cents.
not to mention the price of the paper.
and before you decide "well then pay the $1.50,"
why should people have to start paying for something that was free when the contract was signed?
if they want to start charging new customers for paper bills,
then that is fine. as long as the customer is told about it when they sign up.
but they should not be able to just go back and start charging existing customers who never agreed to the charge.
Eddie @ Aug 11th 2009 1:06PM
If they're applying this retroactively to customers currently under a contract, then that should be grounds to get out of the contract without a termination fee. They are modifying the contract, and so their only options are to allow you to opt-out and revert back to the old contract, or cancel the contract without any termination fees.
youngcalihottie @ Aug 11th 2009 10:46PM
when AT&T started charging $1.99 for paper bills, i called and told them that "detailed billing" was an included no-cost feature for the plan i selected and signed my contract. i told them if they were going to start charging for something that was included when i signed up then they are changing my plan, which violates the contract. i said i would cancel and not pay them the etf, and if they tried to bill me for it i would take them to arbitration at their expense. they put me on hold for about ten minutes and all of a sudden had figured out a way to remove the charge. this was maybe a year ago. haven't seen the charge since then. maybe this will work for t-mobile too?
the only two benefits customers get from contracts are subsidized handset pricing and guaranteed plan prices. i dont think its right when they try to change elements of plans that contracts were signed for. they certainly love to charge customers for getting out of the contract, so why should they get away with it?
Jeff @ Aug 11th 2009 1:33PM
I love people that go online to complain that other people shouldn't have a problem with wasting money. Since you don't care about another $1.50/month, how about you send it to me? I'll give it to T-Mobile and quit complaining about them tacking on BS fees. After all, if you can't afford to give me $1.50/month then you shouldn't be on the internet anyways, right?
See how stupid that logic is?
Jeff @ Aug 11th 2009 1:35PM
Oops, that was in reply to Dave up there...
Dylan @ Aug 11th 2009 2:19PM
Chis, nice article. I wanted to add that for those who are tired of constantly being overcharged by cell companies via surcharges and gimmicks, there is relief. I work for the consumer advocacy division of the company Validas, where we electronically audit and subsequently reduce the average cell bill by 22 percent through our website, http://www.fixmycellbill.com . Put simply, Validas guards against frivolous and unnecessary charges that inflate your cell bill more than it should be for your usage. You can find out for free if fixmycellbill.com can modify your plan to better suit your needs by going to the website.
For more info, check out Validas in the national news media, most recently on Fox News at http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/consumer/conlaw/lower_cell_phone_bills_072409 .
Good luck to everyone reading on cutting your wireless costs. My email address is dylan@fixmycellbill.com for anyone who wants advice about achieving fair cell phone rates.
Dylan
Consumer Marketing Manager, FixMyCellBill.com
Andrey @ Aug 11th 2009 3:20PM
Giving out your email on a blog site. Dude, you're brave. Good luck with all the SPAM.
CMC @ Aug 11th 2009 2:43PM
The big issue with TMO is that their billing is very slow. It takes 10-12 business days for their invoices and call detail to post to their site. I'm recently divorced from them, but I would get a paper bill in the mail several days before any detail was available on their site. And the paper bill wasn't that quick to arrive. If the online site is 2 or 3 days after posting, that is reasonable, but their is a minimum of 2 weeks.
That really has nothing to do with their tacking on other fees (just like airlines), but to make it easier to digest, they really should devote some attention their billing system's response with actually issuing invoice in a timely manor.
Albert @ Aug 11th 2009 3:29PM
There is a point here that people are missing, and it's a HUGE point. The fee for printing the paper-based bill has always been included in the monthly bill, they just didn't mention that we (the customers) are already paying for it. Companies wouldn't go print out bills and send them to their thousands of customer at no extra cost, they always want to make money out of it. So it's basically a bigger scam to add an EXTRA cost for printing bills and make the customer pay for it....again!
Wouldn't it make more sense if companies started giving $1.50 OFF (discount) from the bill for those customers who want a paperless/electronic bill? Think about it, we have been already paying the hidden fee for printing those bills for decades, now they want to charge us MORE for printing just because it's now mentioned in the bill by sugar-coating it with this green-initiative!
Common sense says if a company isn't printing bills anymore then they are saving money per bill (per customer) and those savings SHOULD be passed to those customers who aren't getting the paper-based bills. It's as simple as that!
youngcalihottie @ Aug 11th 2009 10:48PM
exactly!
or at the very least, the people who are getting e-bills yet aren't getting any discount should balance out any increased fees in printing bills. so instead of charging people who do get a bill an extra fee, that fee seems like it should be covered by all the savings from the people not getting a bill.
Vic De Zen @ Aug 12th 2009 11:39AM
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it discourages paper waste but I'm really not a fan of handing over extra money considering the ridiculous SAF fee.