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Recently, a T-Mobile outage affected thousands of customers nationwide, and depending on your choice of words when conversing with a service representative, you were compensated anywhere from $10 to $80 in bill credits. Fun, right?
Had I still been a part of the magenta family, I likely would've experienced the frustration of my in-laws, who were outside a concert venue that day, waiting to regain any bit of signal to validate their tickets in the 90-degree weather.
Also: Hit by T-Mobile's outage? You can get up to $80 in credit - here's how
Instead, I had already switched to Mint, a smaller but more humble conglomerate, after more than a decade as a T-Mobile customer. The decision was easy, and the lower price wasn't the only reason. Here's why you should probably change, too.
The big carrier traps
When it comes to picking a mobile service provider, big carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T seem like the obvious choices. The extensive marketing budgets, from billboard ads to celebrity cameos in TV commercials, the BOGO phone offers, and the switch-now deals are hard to ignore. The thousands of neon-lit stores don't make things easier.
Also: How I use Samsung's secret Wi-Fi menu to seriously improve my connectivity
But those same deals and promotions are what lock you in, whether it's a three-year contract that charges you fees if you decide to terminate things (this is in the fine print, but how many people are actually reading it?), the "bill credits" that can be viewed as free money or compensation but really only exist to retain your membership, or the inability to unlock your phone until months, if not years, after consistent usage.
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