T-mo to all users of unlock smartphones withOUT data plan... FU

[liggy 0]

So yesterday my aunt went up to her daughter(my cousin) to complain about a $50+ charge that was on my aunt's phone bill. This $50+ charge was on my niece's phone line( who is 13). Automatically we assumed she was being a teenager spamming phone calls and text to her BFF or some shit. Before just giving in to just paying the $50+, we decided to call T-mobile to find out what was happen and we found out something pretty shocking..

Apparently T-mo was charging my niece's phone for Data usage per Mbs. The catch was she has no data plan and is ONLY using WIFI (at home, at friends, etc) on jb iphone 3g i gave her.

Here's what my cousin posted on FB
"T-mobile started to charge $1.99 per MB for using a wi-fi with a iphone. I asked support "Are you telling me my mother have to pay you for using MY wi-fi when she is at MY house?" He said "Yes" and I think there was a 10 seconds silent after that... than I said "Whyyyyy....?" He said "Sir, it is because she have a unsupported T-mobile phone with a T-mobile simcard in it".

From what i can tell.. if you have a Tmo sim card with a smartphone that can access internet, you can actually use the data plan for FREE! and play it off as saying its wifi. The rep basically said "we can't distinguish between data usage and Wifi, so we are going to automatically charge you for using any type of internet to deter fraudulent usage."

They said its a new thing that they are starting. we called them out saying you gave us no notification, no letter, no msg. of course they waived the charge.

If this isn't something new, my bad. Its news to me and i thought that was pretty screwed up that we have to pay for addition fees for using our own wifi that we paid for. We told the rep "since you are charging us to use our AT&T services(cable/internet), we shall switch over to them for our phone services. Now my cousin has an excuse to get a new iphone.

PS. IF YOU DON'T HAVE UNLIMITED DATA PLAN WITH T-MO AND USE WIFI ALOT CHECK YOUR BILLS, i assume this applies to non-unlimited users as well since they are just tracking your MBs usage only (just going on what the rep said to us)

[jmc]

Are you 100%, absolutely certain that the iphone is not "ghosting" data while not on a wifi connection?

Because my sister has a rooted android phone, with a t-mobile sim in it (no data) and its set up so the phone cannot connect to t-mobile data connections. So she can only use data on wifi, and there have been no data charges in the last 7 months she has had the phone.

[aurik]

Guessing that the phone actually used t-mo network resources, you just don't know what the fuck.

[liggy 0]

Are you 100%, absolutely certain that the iphone is not "ghosting" data while not on a wifi connection?

Because my sister has a rooted android phone, with a t-mobile sim in it (no data) and its set up so the phone cannot connect to t-mobile data connections. So she can only use data on wifi, and there have been no data charges in the last 7 months she has had the phone.

you should ask her to check this months bill and see

i've used the phone prior and had no ghosting issue. Regardless of if it is ghosting or not the rep said, "Sir you are using an iphone, we realized you could probably are just using WiFi, but we can't verify that...". basically he flat out said since this is a potential loop hope to free data usage and we don't know if you are just using wifi only... its in our best interest to just charge you.

This is suppose to be a new service charge, policy, w/e you want to call it

[aurik]

CSRs are by rule retarded and you can literally discount 100% of what they say as utterly, totally, and completely uninformed.

[jmc]

you should ask her to check this months bill and see

i've used the phone prior and had no ghosting issue. Regardless of if it is ghosting or not the rep said, "Sir you are using an iphone, we realized you could probably are just using WiFi, but we can't verify that...". basically he flat out said since this is a potential loop hope to free data usage and we don't know if you are just using wifi only... its in our best interest to just charge you.

This is suppose to be a new service charge, policy, w/e you want to call it

There is a HUGE issue with Wi-Fi calling going on, in which individuals cheating the t-mobile@home service into getting free long distance calls. T-mobile caught wind, and started retroactively charging people for scamming their systems. Find out what your niece was actually doing on her phone, because im looking at my sisters bill right now and its showing 0.0 MB of data used and no charges.