T-Mobile USA Inc. has been hit with a class action lawsuit that alleges it misrepresented its “no contract” service plans and illegally charged customers a termination fee when they leave T-Mobile, in violation of Florida consumer protection laws.
“T-Mobile attracts customers by touting ‘no contract’ cell phone service plans without any hidden fees,” the T-Mobile class action lawsuit states. “In addition to service contracts, customers typically have a device contract for the financing of the cellular device. When a customer leaves T-Mobile, T-Mobile has a practice of unlawfully seeking the entire amount under the device contract as immediately due.”
Plaintiff Moshe Farhi claims that this practice is essentially an unlawful termination fee that violates the device contract. The class action lawsuit asserts that T-Mobile’s attempts to collect this fee from its customers are in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act.
According to the T-Mobile class action lawsuit, T-Mobile launched a media campaign that promises to do away with lengthy cell phone contracts and termination fees. However, the company allegedly misrepresents these “no contract” plans and charges termination fees when a customer chooses to leave T-Mobile.
The T-Mobile hidden fees class action lawsuit states that consumers who purchase the service are entering into two agreements: to purchase the actual device by paying for it in installments and to use the phone by selecting a service plan.
Farhi claims that T-Mobile does not prevent customers from leaving it for other providers, as it has promised in its advertisements. However, once a customer chooses to leave T-Mobile, the company sends bills for the entire amount of the device, even though the agreement allows customers to pay in installments.
“When T-Mobile attempts to recover the entire accelerated amount, it knows it has no right to seek this amount,” the T-Mobile class action lawsuit states. “Thus, T-Mobile has a practice of illegally accelerating contracts and attempting to collect illegal charges from consumers that are not owed.”
According to the T-Mobile hidden fees class action lawsuit, Farhi purchased four iPhones in June 2015 for personal and family use. Farhi entered into a device agreement with WebBank, borrowing a total of about $2,600 for the phones, payable in 24 monthly installments. WebBank immediately assigned its rights to T-Mobile, which claimed that no changes would be made to the terms of the loan. Farhi also entered into a month-to-month service agreement with T-Mobile.
Farhi cancelled his service after about two months because he was not satisfied with the cell phone service. T-Mobile subsequently sent him a letter seeking a payment of $2,271.52, the entire amount owed under the device agreement. Farhi never agreed to this accelerated payment plan, and asserts in the class action lawsuit that T-Mobile is leveraging the device agreement to “essentially penalize” Farhi for terminating his service agreement.
The T-Mobile class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of Farhi and a proposed Class of Florida residents from whom T-Mobile attempted to collect an accelerated amount due under an equipment installment plan loan agreement that was not actually owed.
Farhi is represented by James. L. Kauffman of Bailey & Glasser LLP and J. Dennis Card Jr. and Darren Newhart of Hicks Motto & Erlich PA.
The T-Mobile Hidden Fees Class Action Lawsuit is Moshe Farhi, et al. v. T-Mobile USA Inc., Case No. 9:16-cv-80580, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
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54 thoughts onT-Mobile Class Action Says ‘No Contract’ Plans Have Hidden Fees
Let me know how I can join in I also feel the same way about being screwed with hidden fees excess charges
I have the same problem with AT&T. I was on a 1 year service agreement and 24 months installement agrement for my iphone. Every month they were charging me $15-$45 for additional data charges stating I habe used the monthly plan fata amount which was $3 gb and I was 90% of the time connected to Wi-Fi ( I am either at work or home where I use wifi). I had a month-to-month service plan with T-Mobile before switching to At&t wich included 1,5 GB of data per month. Never went over that amount. I looked at the details of the monthly statements and was shocked when I saw that a huge amoumt of data usage was happening at night when I was home sleeping in my bed commected to my home Uverse account… I called multiple times to AT&T addressing this issue and trying to get some assistance. They were giving me some lame answers which would not make any sense to me and never really do anything to help me have the issue resolved. My monthly payment was around $100 and for a single mother with only one source of income it was a huge amount of money to pay for a cell phone that I hardly even use because I am either at work or at home where I have a landline. Once my frustration with At&t service )and customer service has reached itslimit I switched to Sprint in the middle of billing cycle (9 days after my billing cycle began for that month). Sprint offered me to pay out the outstanding amount I had on the installement plan for my iphone as a promotional offer for becoming a new customer and all I had to do to receive a reward AMEX card to pay out the total outstanding amount on my installement agreement wasto upload the final At&t bill reflecting that amount. The final bill came late and included a late fee and! $15 fee for additional data claiming that I have used the monthly data amount of 3 GB after 9 days of using the phone and the total amount for the whole billing period and not a pro-rated amount for the 9 days. I tried calling different customer service representatives asking to make adjustments to that bill but they were not willing to cooperate and couple of them just simply hung up on me… They did not care about anything I said or asked because I was no longer their customer and told me I had to pay the whole amount asap otherwise they would put me on collection and make a damage to my credit report/score. At&t was the worst experience and the worst service that I ever had for a cell phone provider.
I am tired of the prices.
I know this is a dumb question, but does anyone READ the EIP contract they are given BEFORE they sign it? On the last page, but before your signature, it CLEARLY says: “Default: Except where prohibited by law, if you commit any substantial default under this contract, we may declare the remaining unpaid balance of the contract immediately due and payable. You agree to maintain a T-Mobile voice service plan for any device purchased under this contract and any termination of that voice service plan will be a substantial default under this contract and we may declare the remaining unpaid balance of the contract immediately due and payable.” This is not an ETF, its the entire amount of the device you have financed, and it becomes due in full if you terminate your service before the device is paid in full. Another case of someone trying to get something for free.
I agree…the device is to be paid off or turned in (pro rate) at termination. It clearly says this. I’m surprised this case has legs at all.
How about where you are paying a month in advance right, life happens, you need an extension but technically your are paid for current month, you just havnt paid the month in advance. So we have been lied to multiple times by this company since day one. long story short as possible since tmobile im sure has someone looking at this, they change the rules of their game n payments and payment plans set up with alerts without any warning. I got injured and even had the bank change our card one time and first alert, i took like a week went in fixed it made a payment. second card failure got the text message I went in within a few days paid what I needed. 3rd card failure because sometimes I dont know if I will have the money in that card yet or not I got a text message thought ok I got at least about 3-4 days because i was actually busy that day to deal with it I wake up on day 2 and phones are suspended……just for being paid through current month Im in….not really past due but to them it is even though you have used nothing or not even used what you have paid for yet, well it went directly to t mobile and we needed it extension because I was getting over surgery but i was at work and I said whatever ill try to find 100 bucks by 11th just connect it so the bastards charged an extra 40 by playing games. So of course we dont get paid till like 4 or 5 days after the 11th like I originally told them so my husband calls and they try to say we cant extend it and I had already been told a supervisor could so husband gets ticked cuz of the extra charges and games and finally they give the extra couple days extension. Well something happened where they wanted like the 100 plus the rest so we got the 100 paid, and of course since they want a month in advance we were already a few hundred past due (1 Month bill). So it sends me a stupid alert like a day or two after we pay what we figure was up to date enough at least till the next week since we wer in the month advance payment part. within 24 hours of that alert to set up another payment…mind you we are technically current, at midnight no service. They actually had shut off our phones and disconnected them, not just suspend them out so I guess after using my home phone the rep says oh, a machine decides if its going to suspend, disonnect, give 1 day 2 days a week aftr an alert apparently…….nice of them to at least let the consumer know in difficult times, but I was told they cant tell what will happen next if an accidental payment is missed because a few of those times the bank sent us out a new bank card except the last less than 24 hour notice….but it does not state anytime line it just says soon or may be suspended……not disconnected. So the company would not turn the phone back on until we were able to pay almost 400 with reconnect and suspension fees for a total of 80 and we did that within 4 days I think and we had called and told them we would pay for it but had to wait till payday in a couple days…….stupid because we were forced to pay in advance for not having any service. then we turn it back on we get this 910 bill which is the rest of our equipment total, we turned our service back on what the hell, we r on payment plan and I verified everything would go back to normal, well we have paid over 1000 in 2 months, with he equipment back in payment plan, paid for another 2 months then as soon as we paid 630 and was totally up to date, paid through may 18….suddenly we are another 400 past due…..part of that 630 was 148 for a cell spot that was supposed to of been replaced but we kept getting emails it was reactivated, account credited. so really we have already paid for almost 3 months, then we get another for 522 2 months after the 630 bill where we are actually paying for crappy cell spots that they hadnt sent return labels, was supposedly supposed to sent us return kit and new ones but we would get email cell spot activated account credited, then deactivated then activated…….so finally I figure out that since we turned our service back on we keep getting considered late and get late charges because of the just equipment bill of 910 that should have went away because we were making monthly installment payments with our regular bill. I sent those cell spots back and our bill just keeps changing to where we are always past due but paid for crap returned and it wasn’t our fault they didn’t do their job and refused to credit our account until they got this one cell spot back where were were supposed to get a replacement so this dang company keeps changing our bill and keeps charging us late fees keeps lying to us because I asked over and over ok so we are current, everything is back in order…oh yes then bam two days later we r 400 behind again?? how do we pay like almost 1000 just for regular account and still are getting charged late fees? They also lied when we signed up, we were supposed to get a 15% discount because of our job and we have a business and sales guy said yeah sign yup here we will do that. Well months go by no discount and that was part of the cost breakdown after our phones paid off. I call so tmobile says oh yea, we will have to figure what we need to credit and call back….few more months then their excuse is, you would have to change plans to a more expensive one …yeah that was the issue they said, yeah you want to do that then we can give you discount…………A BUNCH OF LIARS DO NOT GET SERVICE WITH THIS COMPANY!!!! AND THEIR COVERAGE…… oh we were shown we would have great coverage, showed us the computer screen……we have one bar that breaks up all the time and generally sucks all the time. lied to stolen from, no business ethics so either their reps are extremely misinformed AND stupid or they are just plain stupid and dont care that so many people are getting screwed over. Personally I think when my husband got pissed off and yelled at them because they were just lying to him thats when we suddenly had even more problems and charges…..guess what t mobile……….I hope you like payng out the arse cuz I got you by the ballz with records.
To add to the confusion; T-Mobile has a new network, which they advertise as “Enhanced LTE with 4x better indoor coverage”. The band this network is on is a very small amount of airwaves; formerly owned by Verizon. They are not compatible with most iPhones (often out of contract). There is no way to try the coverage on the network without also entering into a Equipment Payment Plan Contract. Even if it works the day someone enters into a contract, those airwaves become quickly overloaded in metro areas. It’s a very small amount of airwaves in that band. T-Mobile has no network quality guarantees.
Anyone who has worked in the wireless industry knows that phone purchases often come with contractual obligations to pay for phones. Still, T-Mobile needs to do a better job letting customers know the payment plan is only valid if if a requisite requirement of service is met first. It’s a risky deal because in the event service is cancelled, payments are accelerated and the entire balance would become due. T-Mobile doesn’t offer any way to return the phones or devices after the 14 or 30 day testing period for credit.
How do I join the class-action against T-Mobile? Was a Fl. resident from 11/14 until Jan. 16, which is where I opened my T-Mobile acct. There was a class-action against T-Mobile earlier this year, in which a lrg. # of customer had their info compromised. Was informed I was in that class. Also, wondering about payment late fees ?
Yes I feel the same way have Complained to TMobile about there lies & false advertising about no hidden fees & all the extra charges & automatically putting on your credit report what you owe on the so called 0$ down on phone.before your first payment. With no missed payments setting customers. Up for failure