T-Mobile One Unlimited 55+

[aja8888]

Ok. We made our first attempt to sign up.

The good:
- confirmed it doesn't throttle till 30G.... Per user. (That last bit is important to me.... My kids' YouTube watching won't leave me hanging.)
- confirmed only one person needs to be over 55
- confirmed the $60 is all in.... Taxes, fees, etc are included in that $60.

The bad:
- the two employees already had customers. Customers that seemed to take a long time. A very long time.... We waited an hour till we were helped.
- I didn't realize you need to unlock your credit to switch phone carriers. (I froze all three credit reports a while back.) Apparently you do.... And I didn't have my PIN with me. That was problem #1.
- you also need a pin to Port your number from another carrier.

So today I went through the process of unlocking credit. (Needed to do this since we're in the market for a new car and if the financing deal is good we'll finance it.)

For ting users you can get the pins under your account status.... Bottom of the page of the second account page.

We'll try again next week.

Rodi:

Thanks for the info. We will be doing this next month. Recently, we switched CC's to PenFed last month to get the 2% deal. I had frozen all three credit agencies and PenFed said I only had to unfreeze Equifax for a day or two.

Did T-Mobile specify which agency to unfreeze?

Thanks

 

[supernova72]

I stopped by T-Mobile today and discussed my current deal with AT&T. I just over a year into a 2 yr deal on an I Phone 6. I'm paying ~$90 for 2GB which I've gone over a few times already.

The CS agent said yes it's $60 unlimited and they will buy out my early out fee? There is a limit of $375 he said. I guess next step is see what my Penalty is for opting out of AT&T. Cheers. Great post and this might save me some fun tickets (money).

 

[Philliefan33]

Does anyone know if this plan is likely to be around for a month or two? I'd like to switch, but our adult DDs are still on our plan. I would have to give them some time to switch to their own plan before pulling the plug.

 

[braumeister]

I think you'll be fine. T-Mobile has identified a big market opportunity (55+) and getting their attention will take some time. I expect the offer to be available for the foreseeable future. They're poaching customers from Verizon and AT&T at a pretty good clip.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I just got my new bill. $50 Less, (Almost Half) no taxes no fees, no gotchas, Lovin' this.

 

[rodi]

Rodi:


Did T-Mobile specify which agency to unfreeze?

Thanks

They did not and I was too lazy to call back and ask. We're probably buying a new car in the next few months - so I need to unlock anyway in case we finance. (If they have a super low rate I'll finance the car.) I wish I'd thought to ask.

Does anyone know if this plan is likely to be around for a month or two? I'd like to switch, but our adult DDs are still on our plan. I would have to give them some time to switch to their own plan before pulling the plug.

I asked this specifically and they said "It's a new plan, just started - it's not temporary... it will be here a while"

We'll tackle it again end of next week. My son is off on an eclipse trip - and we'll need his phone to swap sims... I should have the pin from transunion by then (they are mailing it to me because I lost it.) and experian (who I had the pin for) should have the form and check I had to mail them. (Since you have to pay $10 - they make you mail a form.)

 

[braumeister]

When I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile back in the Spring it was Experian I had to unfreeze.

 

[walkinwood]

Thanks to the OP. Moved over to the 55+ plan for $60 all inclusive.

We were with Vz for $85 for two lines with 2GB of data. We never hit the data limits, so it was effectively unlimited for us. However, we were careful not to stream music on our phones when not at home.

We bought two Samsung S8 unlocked phones directly from Samsung. Their current deal is $150 off, $150 for a trade-in S5 & a free SIM card and a blue-tooth headset. We thought it was a great deal because used S5s sell on ebay for less than $100. If you're wondering wi-fi calling works just fine on t-mobile with an unlocked S8.

The store said that they would credit the $25/phone fee since we got our own sims. I haven't seen it in my account yet, so may have to go back and deal with that.

Transferring over to a new phone is a royal pain! Even though android restores your apps and most settings, there's a bunch of stuff to do to get back to a fully functional smartphone.

 

[DektolMan]

Great info here but I do have a question on coverage in rural areas. I looked at the coverage map and was wondering how accurate it was. We have friends who travel months at a time by RV all over the country and they are also trying to decide if this plan would work.

 

[REWahoo]

Great info here but I do have a question on coverage in rural areas. I looked at the coverage map and was wondering how accurate it was. We have friends who travel months at a time by RV all over the country and they are also trying to decide if this plan would work.

I'm not a T-Mobile customer but as an RVer who has used Verizon, Sprint and now AT&T (Cricket), my experience is the coverage maps published by all the providers are reasonably accurate. Just be sure you are looking at the correct map (prepaid vs. contract, voice vs data, 4G vs LTE, etc.).

 

[DektolMan]

I'm not a T-Mobile customer but as an RVer who has used Verizon, Sprint and now AT&T (Cricket), my experience is the coverage maps published by all the providers are reasonably accurate. Just be sure you are looking at the correct map (prepaid vs. contract, voice vs data, 4G vs LTE, etc.).

Thank, I'll check out all the coverage maps

 

[jonat]

Also, with T-Mobile especially, your choice of device matters. Only some newer phones have the newer bands that T-Mobile indicates coverage with.

 

[Scuba]

We went to TMobile to make the change from Verizon. We have iPhone 6's that are 2-3 years old. Salesman told us we'd need to get new devices to have an acceptable experience. We priced the new iPhones and realized even with a trade-in "promotion," it would cost about $900 to upgrade phones and we'd save about $55/month.

We went home and got on Verizon's website and realized we could save about the same amount by going from a 12 gig to a 4 gig plan (still enough for us now that we're retired) and dropping the insurance on our phones. So we're sticking with Verizon for now.

Thanks to the OP for the post. It was definitely worth checking out and resulted in our saving over $50/month!

 

[shortstop14]

More thanks to the OP. I hadn't seen this pricing, and it's $30 better than the pricing I got from Verizon, improves data levels from 2GB to unlimited, and includes international usage (which costs $10 per day with Verizon).

The international data pricing of Verizon is annoying, since using the GPS application away from WiFi is so useful when traveling.

My Motorola world phone moved easily to the T-Mobile network, and we replaced my wife's old iPhone 4 with a new Samsung that will work internationally. So if everything works well, this will be a much better plan for less money.

 

[woodguy00]

We went to TMobile to make the change from Verizon. We have iPhone 6's that are 2-3 years old. Salesman told us we'd need to get new devices to have an acceptable experience. We priced the new iPhones and realized even with a trade-in "promotion," it would cost about $900 to upgrade phones and we'd save about $55/month. !

We moved our Verizon IPhone 6's flawlessly to TMobile tonight. Everything working fine.

Price is less than half of the Verizon plan we had with 10 gigs data. Love the international features and ability to use wifi calling and hotspot for the Ipads.

Loving life.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I think the salesman may have meant you had to upgrade your iPhone 6 so HE could have an acceptable experience.

Based on a tip from this forum I switched our iPhone 6's to Ting a few months ago, which uses the T-mobile network. My bill went from about $100 to $40, and is based on actual usage. My main complaint is the lack of coverage in my area. I might look into switching to somebody else since the SIM cards cost less than the first month's savings.

 

[rodi]

I think the salesman may have meant you had to upgrade your iPhone 6 so HE could have an acceptable experience.

Based on a tip from this forum I switched our iPhone 6's to Ting a few months ago, which uses the T-mobile network. My bill went from about $100 to $40, and is based on actual usage. My main complaint is the lack of coverage in my area. I might look into switching to somebody else since the SIM cards cost less than the first month's savings.

Depending on your area and your phone - you may be able to get Ting with the Sprint network, rather than T-mobile. We were on ting and 3 of the 4 phones were on sprint, and 1 on t-mobile... Sprint coverage was a bit better at home - but when we were travelling some places did better with t-mobile... and Ting lets you pick between them.

 

[audreyh1]

We went to TMobile to make the change from Verizon. We have iPhone 6's that are 2-3 years old. Salesman told us we'd need to get new devices to have an acceptable experience. We priced the new iPhones and realized even with a trade-in "promotion," it would cost about $900 to upgrade phones and we'd save about $55/month.

We went home and got on Verizon's website and realized we could save about the same amount by going from a 12 gig to a 4 gig plan (still enough for us now that we're retired) and dropping the insurance on our phones. So we're sticking with Verizon for now.

Thanks to the OP for the post. It was definitely worth checking out and resulted in our saving over $50/month!

I wonder about that salesman. DH moved to T-mobile with an early iPhone 6 over two years ago, and he had all the new-fangled features like WiFi calling, etc. Still works great.

 

[walkinwood]

T-mobile plans to deploy LTE over 600Mhz. You'll need a new phone to access that band, but as far as I know - no current phone supports that band yet.
Qualcomm confirms no existing smartphones will support T-Mobile’s 600MHz network – BGR

 

[Scuba]

We moved our Verizon IPhone 6's flawlessly to TMobile tonight. Everything working fine.

Price is less than half of the Verizon plan we had with 10 gigs data. Love the international features and ability to use wifi calling and hotspot for the Ipads.

Loving life.

When did you buy your iPhone 6's? We were told the new 6's they were selling had different "guts" than the ones we bought 3 years ago and hence would need to be upgraded.

 

[Scuba]

I wonder about that salesman. DH moved to T-mobile with an early iPhone 6 over two years ago, and he had all the new-fangled features like WiFi calling, etc. Still works great.

Interesting, thanks. We may make the switch when we upgrade our hardware but when the salesman knew we weren't going to buy anything from T-Mobile, he didn't change his story. That made me believe he was being honest.

 

[audreyh1]

Interesting, thanks. We may make the switch when we upgrade our hardware but when the salesman knew we weren't going to buy anything from T-Mobile, he didn't change his story. That made me believe he was being honest.

Something is fishy. DH bought his iPhone 6 shortly after they came out, and it was on T-mobile immediately. Ah-hah:

If you have Verizon iPhone6s, those are not compatible with T-mobile - or only marginally so in the US and won't pick up the higher speed data bands. I suspect that is your actual problem. Verizon uses CDMA in the US and T-Mobile GSM, and switching the SIM is not sufficient. There are actually two different iPhone6s produced for the different carriers in the US.

So when the salesman said you needed new devices to have "an acceptable experience" he perhaps didn't give you the detail that your Verizon iPhones were built for an incompatible network.

Verizon, Sprint, US cellular use CDMA in the US
AT&T, T-Mobile use GSM/Edge in the US

The Verizon iPhone does support some GSM bands, sufficient to use it with a European carriers SIM in Europe, but not enugh to use it with the US GSM carriers.

 

[woodguy00]

Scuba,
Our phones are just over 2 years old. Not sure about any production changes that occurred over the run .

 

[audreyh1]

Scuba,
Our phones are just over 2 years old. Not sure about any production changes that occurred over the run .

Which network were your phones bought for? I think their problem is that their phones were specifically Verizon iPhone 6s which are not very compatible with the US T-mobile network.

 

[woodguy00]

Which network were your phones bought for? I think their problem is that their phones were specifically Verizon iPhone 6s which are not very compatible with the US T-mobile network.

Ours are the standard IPhone 6, not the 6S. They were bought at an Apple store configured for Verizon