what's up with T-mobile removing autopay discount for credit cards?

ChuckG1973 wrote:

UN-CARRIER no longer, now just acting like one of the other big cellular companies.  Oh wait no your not, your worse, because AT&T and VZW honor Autopay discounts with credit cards because they understand it helps keep their customers protected.  I am looking for a new carrier that will do what they say and say what they do!!!  Goodbye Big Pink!!! 

Att is doing the same thing. I have them and tmobile, they're knocking my atuopay credit down to $5 from $10. 

Vsamano wrote:

MagicalWingLT wrote:

My family will be switching to someone else. Not going to use my debit card or bank account info especially since a T Mobile employee had stolen my credit card number. I was able to get the money back since it was the credit company's money not my own... With a debit card it will be impossible to get the money back if the debit card number gets stolen since it doesn't have the same protection as a credit card... So since my info was already stolen once by these idiots we will be switching to another company now.. This is what happens when you screw over your customers.... It's insane... And T Mobile had 3 data breaches already... 

Mint Mobile here I come after 13 years as a loyal customer of T-Mobiles I am leaving along with my 4 lines. Always paid on time via my credit card and this is the thanks T-Mo has for loyal customers? I can see if they did this with new customers but to do this to long standing customers is just stupid business.

I needed new phones anyway..by Felicia

Tmobile is in the process of buying Mint. Also if you switch to Mint you will lose domestic roaming and a couple of other features not offered to MNVO's.

MagicalWingLT wrote:

My family will be switching to someone else. Not going to use my debit card or bank account info especially since a T Mobile employee had stolen my credit card number. I was able to get the money back since it was the credit company's money not my own... With a debit card it will be impossible to get the money back if the debit card number gets stolen since it doesn't have the same protection as a credit card... So since my info was already stolen once by these idiots we will be switching to another company now.. This is what happens when you screw over your customers.... It's insane... And T Mobile had 3 data breaches already... 

Mint Mobile here I come after 13 years as a loyal customer of T-Mobiles I am leaving along with my 4 lines. Always paid on time via my credit card and this is the thanks T-Mo has for loyal customers? I can see if they did this with new customers but to do this to long standing customers is just stupid business.

I needed new phones anyway..by Felicia

I’ve been a loyal customer with 4 lines.

With all the data breaches, there is no way I’m going to provide my bank or debit card (linked to a bank account).  

Instead of forcing customers to do this, they could have partner with Visa and brand their own credit card.  

They could have also grandfathered in customers that have been with T-Mobile for lets say 2 years or more.
Unfortunately, this is going to force me to go to another provider, most likely Verizon. 

This is not a great way to keep customers.  

GeekX2 wrote:

I once worked a job where I encouraged a customer doing a 2000 site rollout to use external modems but they wanted to use internal because the hardware vendor was going to charge $6/month extra on support contract for external vs internal.  Although I understood the math of the situation I strongly suggested they should be calculating in the cost of having to take down their site central servers in a reboot because that was the only way to reset an internal modem as opposed to simply resetting the external modem.

T-mobile should be calculating the cost of lost goodwill and loss of customers rather than just the difference (if any) between debit and credit card fees they pay.

Really like your tech analogy.  Companies (and their bean counters) sometimes don't see the complete picture, but probably T-Mobile has considered the potential loss of customers, and calculated that the additional $5 gained from each line will more than make up the loss.

gramps28 wrote:

S-Davis wrote:

$5.00 at 3% = 15 cents. And this is not a new charge, T-Mobile has been paying that CC processing fee since inception of this program. I think there is something else going on. 

If you're plan is $100 the cost to process it at 3% is $3.  The $5 autopay fee discount isn't what's processed it the plan total.

For one subscriber $3 may not be much but with thousands or millions it adds up.  I still think they should eat the cost or even reduce the discount if it is really costing them more for credit card fees than debit rather than eliminating it.

I once worked a job where I encouraged a customer doing a 2000 site rollout to use external modems but they wanted to use internal because the hardware vendor was going to charge $6/month extra on support contract for external vs internal.  Although I understood the math of the situation I strongly suggested they should be calculating in the cost of having to take down their site central servers in a reboot because that was the only way to reset an internal modem as opposed to simply resetting the external modem.

T-mobile should be calculating the cost of lost goodwill and loss of customers rather than just the difference (if any) between debit and credit card fees they pay.

keyteck wrote:

I just received a text notice of the discount terms and highly discouraged by such action and would have liked to know about the change sooner. My credit company lets me know if there are changes in reoccurring billing, this does not happen with banks. My friends and family were fed up with billing issues like extra charges and changing bills and so forth ... most of them ended up changing providers.

It is not correct to say banks don't send alerts on Debit cards.  It is correct to say it is not the default (nor is it for credit cards) but generally you can setup alerts for many things.   I get alert for any debit card use and a plethora of other things based on the settings at my bank.

Of course I’m still not going to give my Debit or Bank account number to T-Mobile but did want to point out what you wrote had that one bit of misinformation in it

ChuckG1973 wrote:

UN-CARRIER no longer, now just acting like one of the other big cellular companies.  Oh wait no your not, your worse, because AT&T and VZW honor Autopay discounts with credit cards because they understand it helps keep their customers protected.  I am looking for a new carrier that will do what they say and say what they do!!!  Goodbye Big Pink!!! 

VZW does not allow discounts for using a CC card unless its their OWN CC card..

from the VZW forums

 

vzw_customer_support

Representante de Servicio al Cliente

‎02-25-2023 10:13 AM

UN-CARRIER no longer, now just acting like one of the other big cellular companies.  Oh wait no your not, your worse, because AT&T and VZW honor Autopay discounts with credit cards because they understand it helps keep their customers protected.  I am looking for a new carrier that will do what they say and say what they do!!!  Goodbye Big Pink!!! 

This is not a good solution.  There is much more protection for the customer when paying by credit card in the event T-Mobile is hacked.  This change indicates that T-Mobile really doesn't care about their customers. We do do not like this change at all.