A lawsuit alleges that customers have to pay money if they cancel a T-Mobile no contract plan.
T-Mobile has attracted many customers with its unlimited streaming features such as Music Freedom and Binge On. However, not all T-Mobile customers are happy with the carrier's policies.
Moshe Farhi, a T-Mobile customer, has filed a lawsuit on April 15 and is seeking a class-action status. The plaintiff alleges that the company's no-contract plans are deceptive.
The carrier advertises that its plans do not have any hidden fees; however, the lawsuit says that there is an early termination charge.
According to the lawsuit, customers purchasing mobile phones and no-contract plans via T-Mobile get into two separate agreements: one for the phone and the other for a service plan. If a customer cancels a service plan agreement, T-Mobile wants the customers to pay the balance of the full price of the handset they purchased along with the service plan.
Farhi claims that T-Mobile did not make this fact clear to him when he purchased four handsets and signed for a monthly service plan from the carrier in June 2015. Farhi says that the cost of all the four phones was $2,600, which he had agreed to pay via 24 monthly installments.
In October 2015, the customer canceled the service plan and he was presented with a $2,270 bill as the balance amount for the four handsets.
"When T-Mobile attempts to recover the entire accelerated amount, it knows it has no right to seek this amount. Thus, T-Mobile has a practice of illegally accelerating contracts and attempting to collect illegal charges from consumers that are not owed," the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit alleges that the carrier has violated Florida consumer-collection laws and the state's deceptive and unfair trade act by demanding the entire payment of the devices before the due date. Farhi is calling upon other T-Mobile customers in the state who have or are facing the same problem with the carrier.
According to the lawsuit, Farhi is still paying the monthly installments for the four devices purchased in June 2015.
T-Mobile has filed a motion highlighting at the fine prints of the device agreement fine print, which clearly states that loans for handsets will be in default if customers do not keep up with the service plan with the carrier.
This is not the first time that T-Mobile has come under the scanner for its ads. In December 2015, Eric Schneider - the Attorney General of New York - also started looking at T-Mobile's advertisements regarding no-contract system after receiving complaints from a customer advocacy group.
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
