At the moment, T-Mobile is dealing with a whole bunch of very annoyed subscribers. They’ve taken the mobile carrier to court in a class action lawsuit, pointing out that the company is charging them hidden fees, shrouded amidst government taxes, and they’re very unhappy about that.
Besides defending itself by essentially saying “everyone’s doing it”, T-Mobile hasn’t said much else regarding the lawsuit. Instead, it has chosen to preach the word of its T-Life app in more detail, telling us all about its strategy and the bright things it intends for the future of that application.
If you’ve been very loyal to T-Mobile Tuesdays, then you certainly know that until this year, it had its own application on your smartphone. There was even a regular “T-Mobile” app on your phone too. However, the carrier decided to kill both of those apps, stuffing all of their functionality into another app of theirs: T-Life. At the time, it wasn’t obvious what T-Mobile was doing since it never made a statement about that consolidation.
In the final month of the year, amid a publicized class action lawsuit, T-Mobile has decided that this is the perfect time to tell us all about the T-Life app and what it envisions for it in the future. The answer? It is meant to be a “super app” for pretty much all digital services related to T-Mobile.
For instance, the T-Life app as it is right now, has functionality related to T-Mobile Tuesdays, but it also lets you pay your bill, add new lines, track orders you’ve made, and all sorts of other account management features. I think we can all acknowledge that doing things digitally is easier than physically, in most cases. There’s probably a lot more functionality to be consolidated into T Life going forward.
T-Mobile Is Currently Dealing With A Class Action Lawsuit Over Hidden Charges
When you pay for service from a mobile carrier, the least you can expect is that the breakdown of the money you’re paying is accurately depicted to you. The last thing you’d want is to have to deal with hidden charges that you know little about being silently slid into the mix. Unfortunately, that’s what a class action lawsuit filed by 23 T-Mobile customers claims that they’re doing.
The Regulatory Programs and Telco Recovery (RPTR) fee is added to your T-Mobile charges and classified as a government tax, despite that not being the case. Sure, it is hardly a new fee, as it has been in existence for 20 years now, but the real gripe is that the company is misrepresenting it as being required by the government.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like T-Mobile cares about the plaintiffs’ worries, as they say that the RPTR fee is something that everyone else is doing. Perhaps that’s true, but Verizon went through a similar fate last year and chose to settle out of court for $100m, though it maintained a stance of no wrongdoing. Funny enough, it was only about a week ago that it was discovered Verizon will be increasing that same fee yet again.
