There are actually two direct links.

I am prepaid and was able to visit the links directly to bypass their decision to break the website for us for no technological reason.

This one should redirect you to the right page after you log in to turn off two of the "features".

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

But "for some reason" there is an entirely separate page for "Do Not Sell my Personal Information".

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

I can confirm that despite being a T-mobile customer continuously for 10 years and definitely repeatedly turning this nonsense off that it was all back on (and do-not-sell was turned back off, I assume "on" means "do not sell" but obviously it's an intentionally deceptive pattern).

Combined with their decision to force prepaid customers to suddenly call them every stupid time that you want to check anything or change anything when before it worked perfectly fine on their website... I'm thinking T-Mobile is getting Sprintified and am very sad that it really doesn't seem likely that I'll be able to keep using them. I used to think they were the best, back when they were trying...

They were always a bit warty, if you ask me.

I got stuck with a $300 cancellation fee with T-Mobile after using their Starbucks Wifi service. When I told them I had specifically signed up for only one month's service, I was told over the phone that they had "decided that I wanted a one year contract instead."

The reason I even bothered to pay for wifi at Starbucks? This was before the 'free wifi' was common and standard. Almost 20 years ago. I was homeless and needed an internet connection to get things done during the day on my laptop before I found another place to stay.

The only option I was given was to continue using the Starbucks/TMobile Wifi service or pay an early termination fee. The rep said "since you have one nearby, I don't see why you couldn't keep using it."

The closest Starbucks, after I relocated, was a 30 minute drive. No public transportation. And I didn't have a car.

All carriers are bastards.

All I can say is that the only real options at the time seemed to be T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. Sprint had a tiny network without reasonable coverage.

It was a bad choice, but still an obvious one. They were infinitely better than the others even if they weren't as good as say, Iceland.

Lack of competition doesn't help this market...

I was a Sprint customer and now have TMobile thanks to the merger. Sprint wasn't customer heaven, but TMobile is in fact much, much worse. In just three months, I've a had to deal with:

* A phone turn in where they did not credit my account. That cost me $200.

* A defective phone where the screen stopped working (no damage) about 60 days after purchase. Getting the phone fixed was a nightmare.

* I've been told "sorry, if you don't have the add-on insurance, we can't service your phone. You'll have to buy a new one" (the phone was 2 months old)

* I've been asked to "step outside" by a store employee when trying to get my phone serviced at a local service center after support sent me there.

* I was also told that they couldn't help because I was a "Sprint Contract" even though I bought my new phone at a TMobile store, switched to a TMobile SIM card (at the sales rep's reccommendation) and bought after the merger was official.

* It took 3 hours on the phone with their business services people to get my phone exchanged. The person who helped me was actively looking for a new job (I'm in the HR Tech space)

It's a dystopian hellscape at TMobile and I cannot wait until my contract is up. And I'd suggest that anyone avoid TMobile like the hellspawn of coronavirus, ebola and your favorite STD. I genuinely feel bad for the employees. At every step they were in fear of losing their job for the slightest action that was against policy.

It doesn't seem to work for prepaid T-Mobile customers.

The menus at prepaid.t-mobile.com are slightly different, and don't seem to have the necessary options.

Prepaid customers definitely seem to be second class customers at T-Mobile.

First, the T-Mobile app doesn't work for us. It says "Sorry we're not ready for you yet. We're working on improving your app experience" and tells you to use the website. It's been doing that for several years now.

Second, they don't support paying with Apple pay.

And now, it looks like we don't get the same privacy options that postpaid customers get.

I don't understand why they have this separation.

I am prepaid and was able to get these to work.

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

https://www.t-mobile.com/content/t-mobile/corporate/privacy-...

For me, I can login when I go to that first link, and then it redirects to an error page. If I try going to the link again, it says it needs to verify my and asks to send a code by text or email. I picked email, got the code, entered it--and it tells me to enter a valid code.

Were you ever T-Mobile postpaid? I was, and it appears that their prepaid and postpaid systems are partly shared, partly separate. I suspect that this leads to parts of their site getting confused.

I get this url https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/prepaid/privacy_noti...

which just jams.

This url from elsewhere in the thread works. or at least loads. I have no idea if it actually does anything.

https://my.t-mobile.com/account/profile/privacy_notification...

It is interesting that the one that you say works is the exact first link in my post. So it didn't work but then did work?

Sounds like they've got some screwy cookie and redirect stuff going on. For full context, I logged in to my account, and then clicked on those links (which I still had to log in again for, but maybe it made a difference?).

I was, and I am pretty sure I had to create a new account when I switched.

I did have to enable some cookies... maybe try a less secure browser?

Yup, it's not just you. I've been receiving that same sorry message in the app ever since I switched from T-Mobile regular to T-Mobile prepaid last year.

During the switch, I had to provide all my information all over again even though I was with T-Mobile for many years. The customer service rep said it's because they are "two different systems".

Even though it is supposedly "two different systems", they still manage to interact in annoying ways.

First, you can't use the same email to sign up with the prepaid system that you used for the postpaid system. I'm not sure what people do who only have one email address.

Second, assuming you keep the same phone number when you switch from postpaid to prepaid, once you login with your second email to you prepaid account and associate that phone number with it, you can no longer login to the postpaid account.

If you try to login to the postpaid account by phone number, it knows that is no longer a T-Mobile postpaid number, so it does not work. If you try to login by email, that works, but then you get stuck at a screen asking you to provide your T-Mobile phone number (and it means T-Mobile postpaid phone number).

Frankly, if I had known this beforehand I probably would not have went with T-Mobile prepaid. I probably would have went with Mint, which is a T-Mobile MVNO. My T-Mobile prepaid plan is $15/month with 2 GB of data. If you pay for a year at a time, Mint has a $15/month plan with 4 GB of data.

The only reason I went with T-Mobile is I assumed that since I was going from T-Mobile to T-Mobile, there would be no need to change SIMs and port my number. I'd just be billed differently.

Nope, new SIM and a number port.

Mint also handles data better than T-Mobile as far as I can see.

I've got WiFi at home, and most of the places I go to when not home either have their own free WiFi or there is an Xfinity hotspot near which is free to me since I have Xfinity internet, so almost never use even a gig of cellular data.

But it is nice to have as a backup. Last summer, for example, there was an accident that messed up lines on a nearby utility pole, taking out my internet. It took a couple days for Comcast to get that fixed and I relied on my mobile phone hotspot.

As far as I can see with my T-Mobile prepaid...once I hit 2 GB in a month, that's it. There doesn't seem to be any way to purchase additional data. With Mint, you can by extra data.

In short, T-Mobile prepaid is essentially like a T-Mobile MVNO, but not a very good one (no mobile app, can't add extra data on demand), and due to their systems sharing some data with T-Mobile postpaid, switching to them is harder for T-Mobile postpaid customers than it is for customers of any other carrier.

> I'm not sure what people do who only have one email address.

A bit of a tangential point, but most systems ain't smart enough to know that [email protected] and [email protected] are aliases of one another. Handy trick for keeping spam isolated; if you start getting unsolicited marketing emails from [email protected], then it strongly suggests who was naughty with your personal info :)

> smart enough

Isn't this just a Gmail thing? It isn't necessarily an alias for any given email provider.

It ain't exclusively a Gmail thing - other mailservers support it, too - but Gmail was indeed an early adopter of it, I believe.

I have a prepaid T-Mobile account that was reporting the wrong name for caller ID. They flat out refused to fix it because apparently managing telecoms is too difficult for them.

I was able to make the election for my prepaid account.

Direct link for anyone lazy like me :)

https://www.t-mobile.com/account/profile/line-selector/adver...

Thanks for that! I tried logging in and navigating to the page, but kept getting errors at the "Privacy & Notifications" page (maybe because I'm on an old pre-paid plan?). That direct link worked fine, though. (Though who knows if it will actually take effect, or mysteriously lose my preferences.)

There should, and I realize this is a bit pitchfork-EY, a limit on number of clicks to find one of these opt outs.

Agreed. Even with the nicely supplied shortcut URL it was still 16 clicks for me to turn everything off for 4 lines.

I have had these off for a couple of years now since it was talked about on a non-official subreddit for tmobile.

They better not re-enable it in April.

EDIT: I just checked again, those fuckers re-enabled it on my account

This setting is per-line as well; I had several lines to opt out.

I tried over 10 reloads and every time I get

    "We are currently having trouble with your request. Please wait a few minutes and try again."

So much for T-Mobile respecting my privacy.

Edit: That error appears 100% of the time. To workaround, login as usual, then go to https://www.t-mobile.com/account/profile/line-selector/adver...

thanks for the workaround. The privacy settings edit page is the one and only thing on their whole website that is "broken" for me...