For US$ 5.00 get cheap international calls
T-Mobile just introduced the new add-on discount for international calls. For only 5 bucks more in your monthly plan, you will get really good prices when you call your aunt or second girlfriend you just met in Europe after spending 5 hours chatting. Yes, T-Mobile has just reduced almost 1/3 of the rates in international calls. For example, to call UK (London) the regular price without the add-on is 34 cents, with the discount, it will cost now 6 cents to call a landline or 0.26 cents to call mobile. While, if you have T-Mobile@Home service, it will cost you even cheaper; 0.5 cents for a landline and 0.25 cents for a mobile. If you make constantly international calls, this add-on will be a good choice to reduce your international expense in 1/3.
Jaakko H. on October 15th, 2008 6:53 am
There’s a nasty flip side to this new “discounted international calling” feature. And that is that for some countries, such as Luxembourg (one of the most central countries of Europe, albeit a small one), the price without the plan hiked way over 500% (from about 30 cents per min to $1.64)!! .. And all this happened without Tmobile giving any notice.
And for me it just happened that some in my family moved to Luxembourg a while ago and I was stupid enough (as the Tmobile customer rep implied) to have called them without first checking the price of calling (which I had a couple of months back). .. And for a 42 minute call was charged nearly $70!!
I think this is legalized robbery _and_ holding hostage (as I can’t leave Tmobile because of the stupid 2 year contract (which in it self is another incredible oddity of the “free market” — as I haven’t even bought my phone through Tmobile and thus haven’t been subsidized by them!)
Should someone reading this know of a class action suit or any consumer action against Tmobile, please send me a note to tmobile (at) jaakkoh.info .
http://www.t-mobile.com/International/LongDistanceOverview.aspx