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T-Mobile Phone Unlocking Lawsuit May Proceed
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Oct 12, 2007 01:02 PM
from the fight-for-your-right-to-unlock dept.
from the fight-for-your-right-to-unlock dept.
Billosaur writes "Wired is reporting that the California Supreme Court has refused to review two lower court decisions involving a class-action lawsuit against T-Mobile over their policies regarding early termination and phone unlocking. The Court rejected the reviews without comment, opening the door to the lawsuit, which aims to block T-Mobile from collecting a $200 early termination fee from users. Also on the table: an order for T-Mobile to disclose the types of phone-locking technology that may be in use on customer's phones. The ramifications if the lawsuit is successful would be to allow phone users in California to unlock their phones, and might lead to further lawsuits nationwide."
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Doesn't T-Mobile Already Allow You Unlock (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't T-Mobile already allow unlocking at the end of the contract? I've had multiple T-Mobile phones, and they've always allowed you to unlock your old phone once your contract expired.
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I have a t-mobile dash and I used a 3rd party unlock. I was surprised to find out when I called them that they would have done it for free.
Perhaps the charge only applies if you unlock, then terminate.
Re:Doesn't T-Mobile Already Allow You Unlock (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Huh? I don't think the iPhone even has UI to enter a code to unlock the phone. Am I missing something? Are a whole lot of people missing something?
Re:T-Mobile WON'T give you the unlock codes (Score:2)
There is a big difference between what marketing promises and what the company actually delivers.
Since I travel frequently and use local SIMS, I really need an unlocked phone. After the 90 day waiting period, I went through T-Mobile's submission process to get the unlock code. I got an e-mail back saying it was not available from the vendor. I tried calling their support and the only response I could get was to submit again. I submitted 2 more times with the same response.
I finally gave up and took the
Re:Doesn't T-Mobile Already Allow You Unlock (Score:4, Informative)
Warning: incoherent rant ahead...
In the UK I've had problems with T-Mobile...
Although my contract has expired, they still refuse to unlock my phone unless I pay them!
At the point where the eighteen-month contract was due to expire within three days, they informed me that they would be charging me for another month regardless of whether I wanted the line or used it. Now when I call they just redirect me to someone who effectively repeats 'terms and conditions' until one of us hangs-up.
That was eighteen *long* months, where each month involved being 'overcharged' by upto 100% due to the fine-print in their contract allowing them to basically charge me 50p per minute (including whilst sat listening to hold-music for 17mins, every time) when I called to try to resolve the problems with the (£400) partially-configured non-3G '3G' PDA-phone they sold me that couldn't and still can't receive picture messages; that allows them to exclude most of my calls and texts from the £35/month that I was paying them.
Now they're attempting to ruin my credit rating by passing my details on to a debt-collection agency to recover the £19 they believe I owe them because I refused to keep paying after my contract had expired.
Every time I questioned the fairness of their tactics, their response was 'all mobile companies in the UK do it'. Sadly, this may be true, although I've not yet experienced this (yet).
One of their favourite games is responsibility-tennis, whereby the customer service line staff (read: core company) distances themselves from knowledge-of- and culpability-for the actions of the staff in their stores and vice-versa - the outcome being that there's no way for me to get any kind of satisfaction after being sold a phone which the sales person claimed was 3G but isn't; after the sales person tricked me into taking an expensive contract by telling me that to take the PDA phone I wanted, I must take a particular contract (later revealed to be untrue by customer services); after the sales-person sold me a per-month fixed-price contract which later was revealed to exclude almost all calls/texts made by me.
This is by far one of the most evil public-facing companies I've had the misfortune to deal with. They are, in effect, organised (really well organised) crime; with a twist, they use the legal system to trick, misdirect and coerce their customers.
If they were they only mobile company, I'd rather not have a mobile.
It's particularly frustrating that they're split in to multiple companies; one side-effect being that any class-action suit in the US can't result in UK customers being treated fairly.
I'm soo tired of living in this climate where companies use every tactic available to them to screw the customer, again and again then use the system to penalise any dissent.
As a final note at the end of my rant....
At the end of my contract, they wouldn't unlock my phone because "they're not required to by law" lol. This, to me, is extremely short-sighted behaviour. Don't these companies realise that customers have memories and talk to each other? I'll be quite happy to take reasonable steps to ensure that no more of my money ever reaches them, direcly or indirectly, but that's not quite enough, is it?
Parent
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Why not go after the other guys (call me AT&T) that never unlock the phone you paid for.
Now, as for the termination fee, do people realize that the phones they get are heavily subsidised? Except for the iPhone, every other phone you buy you can get it either for
Termination Fee? (Score:3, Interesting)
What does unlocking a phone have to do with terminating a cellular contract?
I'd love to see locked phones AND cell termination fees go the way of the dodo, but this seems like an "I don't like the terms of teh service I signed up for, so I'm suing" suit.
In theory, if we could buy unlocked phones more easily, we could then choose whatever carrier we want, adn would probably be less likely to pay the cancellation fee.
Do you want to pay MSRP for phones? (Score:2)
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Cellphones aren't all that precious anymore. My wife recently got a tracphone (which has no contract) and went for the $30 model [tracfone-orders.com] - which I guess is splurging, since they have another one for $15. Her $30 phone certainly does look cheap (almost like the fake toy cellphones they make for little kids), but it works just fine.
All that buying cellphones upfront would do is
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Ignoring handset cost issues, subsidies allow phone operators to control the phones they will and won't subsidize, meaning they get to strong arm manufacturers into crippling features they don't like or that compete with other revenue streams, or force them to implement features with goofy restrictions to force uses to pay money for things that ought to be free. Some
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What, like from Motorola's MotoStore [motorola.com], Nokia [nokiausa.com] (a little more problematic, but there seems to be some), Samsung (Open/Generic GSM [samsung.com], Open/Generic CMDA [samsung.com] - ok, so there's no CDMA ones; they still list 'em as a possible). I'm sure other phone manufacturers have them too.
So...I guess the less is - go with a GSM carrier so you can get unlocked (open/Ge
I am stuck with T-Mobile (Score:4, Funny)
My phone has all kinds of interesting features, that are locked out. The phone could do these things, but tmobile places false restrictions on the features. Why does the network access break when a java app is activated?
By the time I learned about the feature locks (and the + $50 it would cost to turn them on) I was already in the contract. I tried flashing the phone, but magically got bounced from the net until it got flashed back. The phone connected for a time, so I had not removed something to allow connections.
T-Mobile unlocks during contract too (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as the 200 dollar disconnect fee, I don't agree with that with any carrier, and some use it as a bludgeoning stick to keep people continuing their service under the threat of "breach of contract".
Cellular service should be something someone can walk into, pay their bill, and walk out of without any fear of reprisal as long as they paid their bills in full.
-The Cake is a Lie!
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High time (Score:5, Insightful)
In GSM-dominated countries, swapping phone service has got nothing to do with your mobile phone. You just remove your SIM-card and put in another one. Conversely, when you buy a new phone, you just put your old SIM card in it and you're done.
The rationale for a termination fee is usually that handsets are subsidized. But a better solution is for the FCC to open up the industry so that there is a separate market for mobile handsets. This will give customers more options to buy handsets that they know will work with any carrier, and competition in the mobile handset market will bring prices down.
Carriers can still offer subsidies on handsets with contract termination restrictions - but users will then opt for it willingly - ignoring the option of other available handsets.
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I have been on 02, t-mobile and Orange networks.
ALL have locked handsets to their networks, ALL wanted money to unlock even after the contract period was
up.
The latest of these was Orange two nights ago who wanted £20 to unlock a k800i after 14 months on a 12 month contract.
The DaVinci boys are gonna get my money instead...
T-mobile does unlock (Score:2)
Unlocking Still Locked Up in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Further, as 3G rolls out, T-Mobile and AT&T's versions of UTMS totally incompatible, meaning that their next generation of phone will be naturally locked to a single provider. They didn't do that on purpose, there just isn't available bandwidth in the US to share the same band.
The real solution--rather than enriching attorneys to raise frivolous lawsuits that won't accomplish anything--is to open up the TV spectrum and insist that it actually be open, as Google has been pushing for. That would rapidly obsolesce the existing mobile networks however, leaving them open for replacement as well. Verizon/Sprint/AT&T have spent billions building out old fashioned 2.5/3G mobile service, and aren't excited about the prospect of having it all thrown in the trash can.
How AT&T Picked Up the iPhone: A Brief History of Mobiles [roughlydrafted.com]
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So that's the new spin to cover Apple's sin? Unlocking doesn't matter because of technology fragmentation?
God forbid people learn that there is no natural reason for them buy their phone from the same people selling the service. It's not like that might influence the direction of the carriers, if the neutrality of GSM caused people to resist the change to 3G.
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profit (Score:2, Insightful)
2.) Get free phone
3.) Cancel long term contract without paying termination fee
4.) Sell unlocked phone
5.) Profit
Apple? (Score:2)
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Yeah. I disagree with locking on principle (I paid for the phone, even if it's through subsidies, so why can't I do with it as I please and take it to any carrier?), but early termination fees are reasonable. The provider has subsidized the initial cost of your phone in exchange for your continued patronage. If you don't like it you can ALWAYS buy a phone at full price and avoid the contract.
Re:You signed the contract (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand though, the provider subsidy story is a little "flimsy" too, at times. For example, when I was with Verizon, I wanted one of the new Treo 650s when it was a brand new phone. Buying it with a 2 year extension on my contract, through Verizon, turned out to STILL be over $100 more expensive than buying the phone outright from some of the dealers selling them on the Internet.
The phone providers seem to like quoting MSRP as the "real price" of the phone, and then knock $100-200 off of that if you sign up for 1 or 2 years with them. Reality is, they're probably still making a profit on the phones after locking you into those contracts, because they're paying nowhere NEAR the MSRP on them.
Parent
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I ended up getting 25 bucks back after rebate on my current phone, so I know that T-Mobile didn't make any money off the sale of the phone. Service on the other hand...
T-Mobile deserves to be sued (Score:2)
The international roaming bit was service from hell. I was attempting to get my main phone unlocked in the last two weeks before returning to Manila. The secondary phone was unlocked, but there was a problem with the primary phone that
Out of the frying pan... (Score:4, Interesting)
T-Mobile has the best unlocking policy and the best customer service of any of the U.S. cellular companies, hands down. Granted, that's kind of like talking about which slave labor camp has the best dental policy, but it's the situation we're left with due to the technological, geographic, and regulatory climate in the U.S.
A few months ago I was trying to help out a friend who was the executor of a deceased friend's estate. The deceased guy had been with Cingular for years, and had a fully paid-off, very nice phone, which someone else in his family wanted (which strikes me as borderline creepy, but hey, nobody wants to let a good smartphone go to waste I guess). Cingular would not unlock it, period, even though the phone was paid off, the account had been closed, and the account holder was dead. (They even got faxed a copy of the death certificate and everything.) Every time somebody called, they just said 'sorry, we can't do that,' and then started in on their sales pitch to try and sign them onto a new plan. (Even when the person calling identified themselves as the executor of a dead customer's estate, which you'd think would be a signal to drop the sales crap.) Written communication went unanswered. Eventually I just helped the friend find a place locally that unlocked it for $15, because that was easier than dealing with the cellphone company's shit. But the absolute gall they displayed was disgusting.
T-Mobile fails mostly through incompetence and ignorance, but AT&T/Cingular fail through malice. At least T-Mobile has a fairly reasonable unlocking policy (I never had any problem getting phones unlocked through them, personally, even before I was out of contract).
And as for Verizon and the other CDMA networks, they're designed with screwing the consumer as a primary goal from the ground up.
Parent
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Didn't have to pay for a phone either.
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You are misinformed and are misleading others.
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Point #2: Your legal options to break the contract? If you can break contracts willy nilly what's the point of contracts to begin with?
Point #3: So don't sign the contract to begin with or wait another month to cancel it.
People think they have a right to get what they want from companies that don't offer it. That is one of the reasons the United States is so la
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In fact you can do this 5 months after you start your contract. I did it to my Razr that my daughter now has. Called up, lied to them, got the unlock code.
Or you can pay to get the phone unlocked at any competent cellphone dealer.
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That was about a year or so ago.
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Ah yes, I think I see your problem.
Re:Wrong company to pick on... (Score:5, Funny)
Me: Hello. Int'l support? Hi, could you help me to act dumb?
Int'l Support: I'm sorry sir, but you're already an AT&T customer. You've already shown that you can act dumb all by yourself.
Parent
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this is for a piece/service that you PAID for! Seriously, the whole point of loving the customer (!) is to let the customer be free.. if their service is really that good (with least dropped calls, blah) then wouldnt I come back?
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It did take about a week to get the call back with the unlock code, but they didn't give me any real grief.
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AT&T has a web page where you enter your phone number and IMEI number, and a week later, they email you the unlock code. I did it a few weeks ago to get my T616 unlocked in preparation for getting my iPhone. I did this for two reasons: 1. it was locked to an old AT&T "Blue" SIM, and thus wouldn't work with the iPhone's AT&T/Cingular "Orange" SIM. 2. I'm going to Europe next summer and needed to have an unlocked phone anyway.
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That in of itself is fallacy. A CDMA phone will work on CDMA networks, GSM on GSM, (and assuming you're within whatever bandwidth the phone supports). Phones are network independent and not really designed for one company*
*For the sake of argument I'm conveniently leaving out all the fancy dandy special features like 3G or whatever other bullshit that networks may offer on TOP of that, but that's more comparing feature sets rather than base functio
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Re:Unlocking phones (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Then you can buy a contract with whoever, even T-Mobile.
I really don't quite get the hoohah over this locking thing. In Europe, you buy unlocked phones, and pay quite a bit more. And it's yours. Here, m
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You are given an offer to purchase the phone at a discounted rate on the basis that you also agree to a fixed term contract.
If you buy the phone, its yours from day 1.
The issue is that nearly all cell carriers advertise phones with the OEM's model number. If you go to the manufacturers website to look at specs you get misinformed because most carriers actually disable functionality already in the phone so they can force you into buying their services.
For example my phone can actually play any MP3 as a
You do own the phone. (But you're under contract) (Score:2)
Close, but no cigar. You do in fact own the phone they sold you (or even gave you for free). It's not a rental. You aren't making payments on the phone. If you break your contract, you don't need to return the phone to them. Indeed, if you walk into a store and ask to return the phone and break your contract, they'll laugh at you. They won't want the phone back. However, they will (unhappily) terminate your service and charge you the fee.