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The huge U.S. mobile carrier announced a very daring move recently. John Legere said the company plans to launch a new program that will put a smartphone or other device in the hands of anyone, as long as they pay their bills on time, however. If you pay your bills on time and have been a long customer of T-Mobile, the company will no longer check your credit history when buying a new smartphone or tablet.
T-Mobile recently announced that it will no longer perform credit checks for people who wish to buy new smartphones. T-Mobile is the fourth largest nationwide mobile carrier in the United States and it can be considered the most daring move from the company. However, for you to be able to buy a new smartphone and for the company to ignore your bad credit, you must be loyal to the company and pay your bills on time.
T-Mobile announced its new plan to kill off credit checks for customers that deserve this recently, just some time after they revealed the new roll-over program for unused data called DataStash. The company calls this new strategy Smartphone Equality and it’s meant to make the lives of users who have stayed loyal to the company and paid all their bills on time lot more easier. T-Mobile claims in a blog post that numerous surveys show that at least 60 percent of all Americans do not have a credit score, so this is a pretty important step taken by the mobile carrier. AT&T, Verizon and Sprint translate bad credits into deposits; T-Mobile will soon ignore this fact.
Thanks to this new Smartphone Equality program from T-Mobile, anyone who has been loyal to the company and have paid their bills on time will be able to take advantage of the company’s best deals on iPhone and other smartphones they offer. The program isn’t just for newer models and can also be used to purchase older smartphones as well.
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T-Mobile announced that all users, even those with bad credit, that are loyal and have a clean history of payments for at least a year will also be able to take advantage of the zero down fee and offers with zero interest for iPads, iPhones and other smartphones or tablets. T-Mobile won’t check for credit history if you qualify and they will save your credit score from damage.
John Legere, the CEO of T-Mobile described the bold move in his own blog as being an act of mercy towards people with bad credit. He also wrote that the payment history in the company is far more accurate in getting an idea about whether users will pay their bills or if they won’t. Legere said that by analyzing payment history, T-Mobile will learn a lot more than by using a credit check. That’s probably true; however, it doesn’t reflect the whole tale. T-Mobile actually grew their share of the market regarding smartphones and other tech devices by appealing to a different sort of customer.
All the ads from T-Mobile seem to portray young people fresh off the benches of collage. Usually, young people have made some mistakes with their credits already and they are pretty confused by it as they didn’t have any contact with credit history in the past. T-Mobile is attracting these people with their lack of credit checks and it solidifies the relationship with young smartphone buyers. As these people age, T-Mobile will still hang on to them as they are a lot more loyal than others who switch to T-Mobile from other mobile carriers.
It’s also worth mentioning that T-Mobile and its subsidiaries have made a lot of efforts to attract less rich smartphone users. This month, T-Mobile also revealed the new Simply Prepaid program that provides users with a good amount of data for a very low cost. People who benefit from this Simply Prepaid plan won’t receive the same extras as the users who opted for the post-paid plans but they are offered a decent smartphone at a low price which they can easily anticipate every month. Along all this, it is a good way to encourage people who have been using services from T-Mobile for a year to consider other plans from T-Mobile which include the greatest and latest smart devices.
The true test, however, will come after the implementation of the new program and will decide whether T-Mobile made a smart move or not. If the company is wrong about their decision to stop checking the credit history of its users and if this won’t lead to building a loyalty for the company among users this may end up being a bad thing for the mobile carrier and it may cost them a lot more than they claim they will get from people who paid their bills on time for at least a year.
Legere wishes to change the industry on a very high scale but for this to happen, other carriers will have to reveal similar programs to stop checking for credit history of customers and avoid analyzing their financial activities.
Legere’s personal blog doesn’t exactly say when the Smartphone Equality program will be put into place, however. We believe that T-Mobile plans to use the new program immediately. For the moment, T-Mobile is still offering $0 packages for the new iPhone and a lot more smartphones and devices.
The new initiative called Smartphone Equality announced by Legere seems to be a pretty great thing for people who use services provided by T-Mobile. With some luck, this will become a new trend and other companies will adapt to it. We’ve seen companies such as Verizon and AT&T change their views over the past years on upgrades, phone prices after these kinds of initiative made the news and after T-Mobile attracted new customers. This may prove to be a lot more problematic than it seems but it will help people who can’t afford new smartphones and tablets get connected with the rest of the world, as internet use has become more and more important these days. We aren’t exactly sure at this moment if T-Mobile will ignore bad credit or not so we won’t get our hopes up but kudos to T-Mobile for their great effort.
