T-Mobile charges $60 per month for a single mobile phone line with 3 GB of LTE data. The same service is $20 per month per line on a 6-line family plan (2.5 GB LTE data per line). Why then are there individual phone subscribers? Assume six single people who happen to be at least casual friends and all of whom want to use the same carrier. Why wouldn’t they form a family of 6 and then cooperate to pay the joint bill?
17 thoughts on “Stupid mobile phone service pricing question: Why aren’t there are a lot of fake families?”
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Too much hassle. They would all have to want the same thing. There would be a single bill, so one of the six would have to pay the $120 bill (plus excess consumption), then work out who owes what, collect the money, chase the people who haven’t paid, etc.
How would you suggest you handle the freeloader problem in this scenario? It’s probably not worth ruining a friendship over a cell phone bill, but that would be the expected outcome IMO.
What’s the best way for six unrelated people to form a family?
Too much of a pain in the butt. Good luck collecting $20/month every month from your five “friends”. And who made that $12 call to Ghana?
There are already organizations (MVNOs) who will agree to in effect act as your “family” or as an intermediary between you and T-mobile for a fee and they take care of collecting $ from your “family members”. For $40/month, Ptel will sell you 2GB of T-mobile LTE data.
Lack of billing (thus, usage) privacy comes to mind.
I agree–that is what I do with a few other people. You do have to have someone who is willing to manage the arrangement, but the savings are pretty substantial.
Sprint came out with something like this last year… Don’t know if it is still available.
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2014/01/07/sprint-framily-plans/
Many international students from my university did exactly this. Most of the US-based students were on a family phone plan with their parents, but the internationals would form groups of 4-5 and purchase a family plan.
My guess is that college students have more time, and less money, to make such an agreement work.
My initial thought is that anybody stable and responsible enough to cooperate successfully in such a scheme is probably motivated (out of a sense of playing by the rules) and able (sufficiently well-off, through regular employment or otherwise) to pay full freight.
Didn’t you have housemates in college? In the pre-cell phone era, many of us shared the landline. Nobody who lived with a bunch of broke college students arguing over the phone bill would consider another family plan – even with their own family.
Who told you there are not a lot of fake families?
My brother is (or was) in a fake family with his old roommate. As in similar scenarios in a real family, you need to trust the members and know they are going to pay you.
I had a joint credit card with my sister-in-law. It made sense to me (we were eating a shared meal with our combined children at least three times a week). People who learned about it seemed to think it was a recipe for disaster. It was never an issue.
T-Mobile’s pricing is strange. Several years ago, the advertised price from T-Mobile for a single line w/2G or so of data was $45/mo. But then at checkout a pop-up appears: $30/mo w/Unlimited data. The only catch was only 100min/mo of talk time.
T-Mobile’s “un-carrier” offers are great, but aren’t holding up so well financially.
I’ve been on a fake family plan for about three years now. We lost one person to a different family plan, so now we are down to three. I think most people don’t realize how easy it is, or how much money you can save. It is a bit of a pain to set up the billing, but now with electronic payments being so easy, it is very manageable.
I think the OP is pointing out that cell carriers are essentially ripping off customers. Restaurants don’t triple the bill when a group asks for separate checks, why should the phone companies do?
@presidentpicker: and a cell carrier does not prevent you from including a none-family member on the plan — as far as I know there is no such contract from any cell carrier.
I have had cell phone for about 10 years now and over the years, I added family members such that now for over 5 years, my AT&T 10 line plan with 10 GB shared data covers my family, my brother’s and my parents. In all, it cost me just $270 a month (with a small discount from my employer that AT&T honers).
We are a close-net family, I simply pay the bill, watch over the plan, decide on the features, etc. no questions asked.
And in case you are wandering, yes we take advantage of other amenities in life that we can share to save on time, money, etc.
It would be silly to get $20 each month from five people. Anybody who couldn’t write one $240 check once a year wouldn’t be a good candidate for the arrangement.
Many people do, and it’s neither illegal nor discouraged:
1. It gives great pricing discrimination. An engineering making $100k per year won’t do this. A college student making $20k per year will.
2. It’s a great way to bring people on board. If I’m on Sprint, and want to save money, I can do it if I convince 3 friends to join. Especially combined with early termination, phone subsidies, etc., it’s a great way to maintain and grow userbase.