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T-Mobile customers demand traditional paper bills (sorry, trees)

Posted 1:00 PM 09/16/09
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T-Mobile's done a U-Turn. The cell-phone company has discovered that some of its customers want to keep paper records of their bills and other financial documents, and they don't want to pay a fee for that privilege.

After announcing a plan to charge its 33 million customers $1.50 per month to get a paper copy of their bill in the mail, T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom (DT), was inundated with complaints and legal threats. To its credit, it quickly reversed its plan, the AP reported.


T-Mobile announced on its Web page that, upon reflection, it would not impose the fee "for now." The statement elaborated: "Instead, we'll be taking more time to determine the fairest way possible to encourage people to go paperless."

Was T-Mobile really trying to conserve our environment? New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wasn't buying it. "My office will not sit back and let a company change its prices under the guise of 'going green,'" Cuomo said in a statement.

And T-Mobile, Cuomo added, can't legally levy new fees without giving customers the option of bailing out of their contracts early. Stay tuned for T-Mobile's next "green" initiative.
Sam Gustin

Sam Gustin

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Senior Writer

Sam Gustin is a Senior Writer at DailyFinance, covering general business news with a particular focus on technology, finance, digital media, government regulation, and other topics. Previously he was a Contributing Writer at Conde Nast Portfolio, and a reporter and columnist at the New York Post. His work has also appeared in Wired.com, The Times of London, and the Village Voice. He is a graduate of Reed College and Columbia University.

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