[jeena]

I'm really confused when reading articles like this because it sounds like a different company to the one I know which was formed out of "Deutsche Post" during the 90ies and patronizing and shitting on its customers ever since, at least in Germany.

The biggest thing with them this year was their 384kbps Speed Throttle[1], where after your family consumed 75GB of data (download and upload) the speed of your DSL (flatrate) will go down to 384kbps for the rest of the month.

Ok you could say "this is Deutsche Telekom, the parent company, but T-Mobile is very different!" but sorry, that is not the case.

I wanted to buy a Alcatel One Touch Fire with Firefox OS when I was on holidays in Poland this year so I went to a T-Mobile store and well, there was advertising and everything and they even sold them there. But only together with a contract, which I didn't want (because I can't use it in Sweden where I live). They send me to another store so I went there, they told me the same and send me to a third store where they told me that they only sell a couple of them without a contract and only in the main cities.

I mean wtf? They have been doing advertisement all over the place that they sell it for 404 zl without a contract, even in those shops, but they wouldn't sell them to me, or they would but only with a two years contract which ended up costing around 1200 zl. So I gave up.

At home again I checked their website[2] again, and yep, there they still (and to this day) advertise it for 404 zl.

I later found out that if you have a polish ID you can order one for 404 zl from their website which I did with help of my fathers ID.

So they were just fucking with me, again, and yeah, this was not the first time. I had big time problems back then when I still lived in Germany and chose a different DSL provider after being very disappointed with T-Online. Basically they didn't send a technician for two months who would fix the tech so the new provider could provide me with internet so I was without internet for two months. That is kind of a big thing if you're working from home.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-teleko... [2] http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-s...

[jrockway]

T-mobile in the US has basically nothing to do with T-mobile in Europe. You can't even use a European T-mobile Wifi hotspot if you are a US T-mobile customer.

[hack_edu]

T-Mobile US is almost entirely independent from the larger company in it's services and day to day operations.

And the bar is pretty low in most regards when you're up against Verizon and AT&T's business practices...

[josh2600]

So, shitty real answer:

It's not profitable for T-Mobile to sell you that device at $404 if they can get someone else to pay $1200. Yes, that's shitty, but from an economic perspective it doesn't make sense for them to sell that equipment to you. The equipment, even unsubsidized, is a loss leader for the service.

In short, it would be a good customer experience if they should you the phone, but it doesn't make economic sense.

Also, sort of unrelated, but I really don't understand all this T-Mobile love. The carriers went from eating a $400+ subsidy on every phone to eating $50 or less to acquire a new subscriber. The plans aren't THAT much cheaper, and they're still a joke compared to the cost of delivery (but I digress!).

I think T-Mobile is pro-consumer the same way AT&T is pro-consumer. They just happen to do a better job marketing it.

[jeena]

I wouldn't mind if they didn't advertise it for 404 zl (ca. $130) in the shop, on TV, the radio and in newspapers.

[bsimpson]

I bought a 1 month unlimited plan the last time I was in Germany, but went through 100MB in less than 3 days (and I was trying to be fairly conservative with my usage); the remainder of my trip had speeds so slow I could basically only use e-mail.