T-Mobile has eliminated overage charges and its brash CEO John Legere wants everybody to know about it.
Legere has a reputation for being a corporate provocateur. His past escapades include crashing an AT&T party and trashing competing carriers on-stage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas while wearing a bright pink T-shirt and holding a Red Bull.
In January, the company offered to pay early-termination fees for people who broke their contracts with Verizon and AT&T. T-Mobile also experienced some blowback after it ran a promotion trying to get BlackBerry users to switch to the iPhone.
Now Legere is starting a crusade against overage charges, which are the penalties and higher rates people pay when they exceed their data limits. Other carriers often warn customers if they are getting close to their data limits, while T-Mobile slows access to data instead of charging extra for it.
In a blog post, Legere announced “a broad social campaign to abolish domestic overage penalties and begin a national conversation,” a process that apparently includes a Change.org petition calling on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint to follow in T-Mobile’s footsteps.
Legere painted a mental picture of what might happen next:
Imagine the smile on my face as I watch millions upon millions of Americans flipping the bird to the insanity and pain of the past and joining this consumer revolution — while I sit back and watch the competition flounder.
NBC News is unaware of whether Legere was stroking a cat while his assistant wrote this, or if he was tenting his fingers like Mr. Burns.
