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When is a Price Lock Not a Price Lock?

There has been an unwritten rule applicable to some cell plans: Your monthly rate will not go up as long as you keep your current plan. Certainly, this is not true for all plans and all companies, but many people have benefited from this traditionally.

As some companies began raising rates, in May 2022, T-Mobile, the “uncarrier,” introduced Price Lock to formalize their policy.

In January 2023, here is how T-Mobile advertised “Price Lock.”

Price Lock

Even the fine print was pretty straight forward.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Price Lock fine print

If you were in most of their major plans, your monthly rate would stay put. Period.

Now, in 2024, T-Mobile decided to redefine what it means by “Price Lock” for new customers or people switching plans.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Price lock fine print 2024

The policy now says if they raise your price and you decide to switch carriers, they will pay your final bill, as reported here.

So to answer the question posed in the headline of this story, “When is a price lock not a price lock?” Answer: When T-Mobile offers it.

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FTC Says TurboTax’s Free, Free, Free Ads Were False, False, False

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission issued an Opinion and Final Order against Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax, the most popular brand of tax preparation software, saying it had engaged in deceptive advertising practices. It had accused the company of running ads for free tax prep services for years but it appears the majority of those who signed up were not eligible for those free services. [See complaint.]

In some ads, like the one below, the word “free” is mentioned perhaps 20 times in a 30-second commercial.


*MOUSE PRINT:

The virtually unreadable fine print says that the free version is for simple returns only.

Under the FTC’s final order, Intuit has to make disclosures abundantly clear in its advertising about the limitation of their free edition.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The Commission’s Final Order prohibits Intuit from advertising or marketing that any good or service is free unless it is free for all consumers or it discloses clearly and conspicuously and in close proximity to the “free” claim the percentage of taxpayers or consumers that qualify for the free product or service. Alternatively, if the good or service is not free for a majority of consumers, it could disclose that a majority of consumers do not qualify. [Emphasis added]

Sure enough, last week Intuit began running new TV ads for TurboTax Free that unambiguously say that only about 37-percent of people will qualify to use the program free.


Whether the new ad is satisfactory to the FTC is for them to say, but it is refreshing to literally hear a company’s disclaimer rather than having to catch it in a too-quick and too-small-to-read footnote.

Since this was an internal administrative proceeding where the FTC cannot assess financial penalties, Intuit got off easy. Nonetheless, they have appealed the decision to court.

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Verizon to Refund $100-Mil for Hidden Fees

Verizon Wireless has tentatively settled a class action lawsuit that alleged the company advertised a price for cell plans but then jacked-up consumers’ bills with hidden administrative charges.

*MOUSE PRINT:

The complaint specifically alleges:

The Administrative Charge is not disclosed to customers either before or when they agree to purchase wireless service from Verizon, and in fact the Administrative Charge is never adequately or honestly disclosed to customers.

The current amount of the Administrative Charge is $3.30 per line per month—a more than 8X increase from the original amount of the Charge [40 cents].

The first time Verizon customers can possibly learn about the existence of the Administrative Charge, or the amount of the Charge, is on the customer bills… [but] Verizon’s paper bills fail to mention the Administrative Charge at all, stating instead that a customer should “[c]heck your online bill for all surcharges, taxes and gov fees.”

[F]or years, Verizon explicitly and falsely stated on its monthly bills that the Administrative-Charge is a surcharge imposed on subscribers to “cover the costs that are billed to us by federal, state or local governments.”

For its part, Verizon has denied the claims, but says it has changed the way it describes those fees.

Verizon customers who purchased postpaid cell or data plans from the company between January 1, 2016 and November 8, 2023 are eligible to share in the $100-million proposed settlement. The maximum payment is $100, but that could be reduced based on how many consumers file claims and for how long they were a customer.

Claims must be filed by April 15, 2024 at the settlement website. Most customers were just notified via postcard of their eligibility to file a claim and were given a notice ID and confirmation code to enter on the website. If you did not receive that, here is the official claim form.