Last week, T-Mobile started their three days of Uncarrier. On Wednesday and Thursday they announced a new $40 Simple Starter plan which included unlimited talk and text along with 500MB of data, afterwards your data is cut off until the next month, so no throttling. They also announced LTE Tablets for Wifi prices, and that you’re getting 1.2GB of data for free each month for the rest of this year. Pretty cool announcements there, especially for T-Mobile customers. Now on day 3, John Legere has started a petition to abolish overages from the other carriers. Since T-Mobile already abolished them. The petition is over change.org, and we can only hope that this will get the attention of Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. In fact, at the time of writing this, it already has more than half the signatures needed. The Petition reads:
“In 2013, more than 20 million Americans were hit with punitive overage charges by U.S. wireless companies, and all Americans have known the fear of wireless bill shock. Overage penalties from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint take more than an incredible $1 billion out of consumers’ pockets every year. It’s time to show these companies that we’re not going to take these outrageous fees lying down anymore.
Traditional wireless plans start with a low monthly fee for a fixed amount of domestic minutes, texts or data. Once consumers go over those limits – even by a little – they’re hit with dramatically higher rates and extreme penalties. These plans seem purpose-built to drive customers over that invisible line into massive overage charges.
This is just plain wrong, and it must end. I’m laying down the challenge to AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to follow T-Mobile’s lead and abolish these overages once and for all.
Sign this petition to #AbolishOverages and send a message to the old guard wireless companies that bill shock and overage fees are no longer acceptable and no longer welcomed in this industry.”
I’ve already signed the petition, what about the rest of you? You can find the petition right here. How many of you are sick and tired of the overage fees that your carriers charge you? Let us know in the comments below.