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Limit data usage

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C

This is the most common thread on the subject of family allowances for well over a year now.  It's almost a useless feature to be able to restrict phone usage when it doesn't apply to data.  The home wifi is restricted for the kids to not be able to use it late hours.  But they can just transition over to TMO data.

 

You are probably aware that your competitor who's name starts with an A and ends with a T has a far more flexible "SmartLimits" feature.  It costs a few bucks per month, but well worth it to keep the kids off the phone when they should be sleeping for school the next day.....

 

I honestly don't know how TMO can justify a "Family Allowances" feature that completely ignores data usage in this day and age.

I cannot believe that parents are relying on everyone else to control their children.   First off if your child is not responsible enough to know when to go to sleep then it's your responsibility to do something about it or get a house phone. 

tmo_chris
Rank
Userlevel 4

These are all great questions. At this time, we do not have a way to block specific services like hotspotting or tethering and family allowances does not block data usage. Short of removing the data feature from his line, there is no other way to prevent the line from using data besides the "old fashioned way"

tmo_chris
Rank
Userlevel 4

We definitely appreciate the feedback! I think it would be a great service to offer as I have seen others request kind of the same thing.

M

So... what you're saying is I should cancel my childs account and go find them something cheaper with just voice and text. 😊 (It seems kind of silly to disable the data and still have to pay the same cost for the line)

tmo_chris
Rank
Userlevel 4

Hey, all! We're going through older posts with this feedback and making sure that everyone gets a chance to take a peek at our new family program, FamilyMode, launching today 6/29. You can read our blog about it here and learn more in the Resources list at the bottom: https://support.t-mobile.com/community/community/news-updates/blog/2018/06/27/meet-t-mobile-familymode-the-digital-ally-parents-need -- thank you for sharing your opinions with us!

K

family allowance = useless, family mode = useless, problably going back to ATT because of this issue. During the summer we did not care that much, but during school time this is unacceptable. we need to control data on our kids, we do not want to be the phone police every night. About one week left in T-Mobile  

M

P.S. 15 minutes later... I'm going to try Ting.com for my kids' phones. SIM cards are on sale now and I think this may be a better way to go for managing their phone usage.

M

Oh yeah! This looks easy to use => Mobile usage alerts – Ting Help Center

Ting can do it, why not T-Mobile?

M

T-mobile !!

Are you listening to us?  You have multiple responses on an obscure internal thread (read as purposefully sought out and people taking the time to log in and respond) demanding a service your competitors have and threatening to leave.  Your re-branded "circle" product is easily defeated and adds a significant cost to already high monthly bills.  Your current solution is only viable pre-smartphone circa 2004.  AND you seem to refuse to acknowledge that controlling our children's device on your service that we buy each month is not a fundamental issue in this era of digital content overload.

Start listening to your customers or lose them!!

barcodeable
Userlevel 4

Allowing a user to set data restrictions on the lines under their account... would be a new service (if) T-Mobile decides to go that route. Im 100% sure T-Mobile will charge a monthly service fee for this new service. $1.99 per month, maybe $4.99 per month....  im sure it won’t be free.

N

I just switched from Consumer Cellular to T-Mobile:   Consumer Cellular has this ability to turn off your child's data  -  though it is a manual stop/start button.

An automatic timer to turn off/on data should be standard.

I am also up-voting this feature request:  I hope that someday, T-Mobile will offer the level of parental control offered standard by Consumer Cellular - and maybe even surpass it !

- NaviBean

PS - I have not yet explored T-Mobile's FamilyMode feature, as a way to manage this.   Apparently, T-Mobile service reps also have not explored it:  Yesterday, I had a LONG conversation with a T-Mobile service rep, who said there is no way to achieve this basic functionality of turning off your child's data access.   She never mentioned the FamilyMode feature. 

J

Ok, Chris, thanks for the help 😊

 

If there is somewhere to "upvote" a feature like this I'd happily do it.

 

Clearly this can be done on the backend somewhere since you guys can limit data by amount, and you can also throttle speed.

 

I get it's not easy, believe me 😊 but it'd be a great thing to have.

 

For now then, I'm going to use my Circle with Circle Go to do this. Putting this in not as a plug for Circle, but so that other folks know there's a solution.


Note, if you can get a hold of a product person's ear, I'm willing to pay another company for this service, so it's valuable.


Thanks again!

 

Ricardo

Folks,

 

Looking for a way to block data usage at certain times for my kid. We have unlimited data, and he uses it late into the night.

 

Yes, I know the old fashioned way of taking the phone away would work 😊 , but he stays up later than me and I don't mind that, but I want him in bed by say midnight, and I want to cut off his data usage.


Family Allowances DOES NOT stop data usage as far as I can tell. I already have that turned on.

 

I may have to go back to limited data since at least that would stop him.

 

Barring the above, is there a way to turn off his hotspot/tethering? There seems to be a way for T-Mobile to do this centrally since they can control the data limit for it...

 

Thanks in advance!

BUT with Family Mode the child/teen has to keep his/her VPN on. When it's turned off, Family Mode does not work.

M

Over two years people have been complaining about this and still T Mobile is so willfully ignorant or tone deaf that they wont fix this, or are just too damn stupid to figure it out. How hard can it be to figure out letting parents control the hours and amount of their kids data usage in 2019? Pathetic - you truly have a clueless technical organization.

N

I agree completely:   I have only been with T-Mobile about 7 weeks, and I am amazed that ...

1)  They have never mastered Parental Controls. 
     ...and...

2)  It took them 3 weeks and 22 phone calls with me, to finally transfer my family's lines from my previous carrier. 
3)  In only 2 of those 22 phone calls, did I speak to a T-Mobile rep who had mastered English!   T-Mobile should realize that America is a pretty big market, and therefore should hire reps who speak English as their first language.  I was always grateful to get their Charleston office, which is staffed with people who speak English well. 

       I am not waiting for T-Mobile to fix any of this.  As soon as I get around to it tomorrow, I will become T-Mobile's next former customer. 

M

T-Mobil,   you need to do the right thing.

N

Y’know, life is just too short to tolerate ineptitude: After just 7 weeks, I bailed on T-Mobile, for a different carrier.

I am a serial entrepreneur: I’ve started businesses from Quality Assurance consulting, to Renewable Energy. I am obviously a devoted Capitalist: The Marketplace speaks loudly when companies fail to meet customers’ needs.

As customers, we have a responsibility to leave any firm that does not meet its customers’ needs. And to spread the word to our networks of friends, family, and associates.

2

Have there been any updates to this? We recently switched over to TMobile thinking that I would have the ability to turn off my kid’s data when needed, like when we are home and force them to stay on my fkltered WiFi and limit their phone usage at night. I am so disappointed that this doesn’t seem to be possible with T-Mobile yet....

barcodeable
Userlevel 4

I like T-Mobile 😊

I have 11 lines (5 voice lines and 2 Wifi Hotspot lines and 4 tablet lines) for under $215 dollars a month.

I wouldn’t dare bail on my account just because T-Mobile don’t have the best parental controls available on their network.

Consumers should ponder all available options before just listening to biased comments on this forum.

This is a T-Mobile Forum created for T-Mobile current, past, and future customers to connect and find answers to any questions or problems they may have relating to everything T-Mobile.

As you stated you left T-Mobile after 7 weeks for another carrier, but yet you are in a T-Mobile Forum. Im guessing the new carrier you went to does not have a forum of its own. Maybe you can persuade your friends, family members and associates to visit the T-Mobile Forum as well to learn more about what T-Mobile has to offer. You will never be happy in the T-Mobile Forum because you are nolonger connected to T-Mobile. Or maybe you are hanging around until you see a killer deal to draw you back as a T-Mobile customer. Just my opinion.

N

Thanks for asking:     I'm not "hanging around a T-Mobile forum".   Rather, I was replying to a question posed to me.    And if my comments have been biased, they have only been biased by my experience w/ T-Mobile.     So far, T-Mobile has not suggested that they have any plans to improve their dreadful customer service  - so no, I do not foresee returning.   But I appreciate your thoughtful invitation.    Enjoy your weekend.

barcodeable
Userlevel 4

After i re-read my own post, I was hoping you wouldn’t get offended by what I wrote. My comments seemed too opinionated, and I didn’t realize you were merely responding to someone’s question, sorry ( I thought you were Trolling on the forum).

T-Mobile has alot of room for improvement, I agree.

And I also had horrible experiences but they were all rectified by T-Mobile... usually after I spent countless hours on the phone with customer service.

You wrote that T-Mobile don’t have Unlimited Data yet... and that’s why you left...  so what Plan did you have? Almost all of T-Mobile Plans are unlimited 2G/3G after you use up your alloted data and If you have an unlimited plan you won‘t get throttled until you reach the 50GB if there is congestion on the network in your area.

You tottally missed out on the T-Mobile One International Plus Plan.... because that plan was truly unlimited... they discontinued that plan I believe last year. You and your family would of appreciated it. Maybe T-Mobile will restart that Plan again... then you may become a T-mobile customer again.

N

Thanks for your note. No offense taken.

Yes, T-Mobile seems to offer unlimited data across all of its plans. My previous carrier (before my switch to T-Mobile) did not offer any Unlimited plans.

I had an amazingly good experience with T-Mobile - a long time ago: When ‘T’ first started, I worked in Germany every day with their tech crews, teaming up to launch a hot new dot-com in Frankfurt.

T (for Deutsche Telekom) defined great service.

Fast forward 20 years: Only their name is the same.

K

It's great that Tmobile offers everyone in the family lines with unlimited data.  But all I want for my kids is call and text.  It's too much to give kids unlimited data.  We need better options for controlling their use of data.  I'm really trying to figure out what to do without having to suspend my child's number.  And I really don't want to use a paid service app for monitoring the phone.  In the management features, I'd love to see an option for just turning off data on certain phones, so I get cut out phone internet without cutting out call and text communications. 

P

Is there anyway to block or turn off my son hot spot from my phone? We have androids. It's school night & he uses his phone hot spot to access the internet. He phone shuts off at certain time at night but he keeps his hotspot on so when his phone locks he still can keep his hotspot on. Any idea would be helpful. Next step is to temporarily cancel his phone. 

K

The only solution that I have personally found to this problem is to logon to tmobile app on my phone and turn off my kids data plan on the fly when I want to temporarily disable their data.  From what I’ve found, when I disable the data it occurs pretty much instantly.  I agree with all the other very unhappy parents who are want to be able to automate and/or schedule this on/off switch.  From the looks of these very old message board posts people have been asking for this for years now.  I moved from ATT to Tmobile and this feature was offered by ATT at no extra charge without any need to download an extra app on your kids phone.

A

Up until very recently I was able to toggle between the one plan and no data for one of my lines. Suddenly this is not an option. What happened?

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