Harbor Mobile, a T-Mobile Business Reseller which gained a loyal following by selling individuals the equivalent of postpaid mobile service at sub-prepaid prices, is about to relaunch as an AT&T reseller.
Harbor, launched over a year ago selling individual lines of service starting at $30/month for unlimited talk and text and 2.5 GB of data. The same plan with 4.5 GB was $40 and unlimited talk, text and data was available for just $50 per month. There was also a 5 GB tablet plan for $15/month. Those are great prices for prepaid but Harbor plans also included the perks of T-Mobile postpaid plans including free international 2G data and text roaming, call forwarding and Music Freedom free streaming music.
If that sounds too good to be true, it probably was. Since July 8, Harbor has not been activating new lines of service. Customer service representatives and a cryptic message on the Harbor website have blamed the inability to sell service to new customers on website updates.
Anyone who knows anything about web development or business continuity knows you don't stop accepting new customers for a month to update a website. I suspect what really happened is that T-Mobile cut them off. Harbor appeared to be splitting up multi-line business plans and selling single lines to individuals. I doubt this is allowed by T-Mobile's reseller agreements. Two other T-Mobile resellers that had a similar business model selling single lines, 35orLess and MobalFreedom, also shut down abruptly and it looks like Harbor met the same fate.
SERVICE UPDATE: As you can see we are going through some changes. Harbor is built on transparency and our relationships with our customer. That being said we need to get you all up to speed with what is going on internally.
Good news: We are transitioning to become an AT&T Platinum Reseller!!
So so news: We are no longer signing on new T-Mobile lines.
Please don't hesitate to reach out with questions, concerns or comments -- through facebook, instagram, twitter, google+, website, email or phone! Our team is here to help.
Will the AT&T plans be as inexpensive and offer the same perks as the T-Mobile ones did? I doubt it, AT&T charges more than T-Mobile across the board. It also doesn't have any equivalents to T-Mobile's Music Freedom or extensive (over 120 countries) free data and text roaming. However, Harbor AT&T customers might get the free Mexican and Canadian voice, text and high speed data roaming that AT&T's GoPhone and Cricket customers do.
Will current Harbor T-Mobile customers get to keep their plans and service? The Facebook post doesn't actually say they will, only that they will get the same level of customer service. However 35orLess and MobalFreedom customers were able to keep their T-Mobile service and plans after those companies stopped activating new lines. I think there's a very good chance that Harbor customers will also be grandfathered.
When will Harbor start selling AT&T service? I don't know but the Harbor website promises "Updates" next Monday, August 17.
Whatever happens, I hope Harbor Mobile can successfully relaunch on AT&T with new offerings as affordable and disruptive as their T-Mobile based service was.
Its 18th already.. No updates yet..
Don't blame T-Mobile. Harbor is being run in a very fly-by-night way at this point. The way they have handled their web page is strictly amateur hour.
The requested URL /pcc-customer.php was not found on this server.
And they have missed the deadline on their "Plans" page.
This is real basic stuff, a jr high kid could fix these pages in 15 minutes.
First T Mobile drops Red Pocket and now this. Maybe T Mobile is looking to drop a few MVNOs that compete with their own MetroPCS brand.
To avoid confusion in the confusing world of wireless. The (t) should be changed to (a) in the news by carrier column.
T-Mobile may indeed be slowly changing strategies. I'm curious to see what happens with SimpleMobile. Will T-Mobile drop them?
No. I don't know what happened with RedPocket but Harbor was likely violating the terms of there agreement with T-Mobile. I've seen nothing to indicate that Simple is in violation of their T-Mobile contract.
Plus, Simple Mobile is part of TracFone which is almost certainly T-Mobile's biggest customer with millions of lines. T-Mobile isn't going to cut Simple off, losing TracFone's would drop them back in fourth place.
sounds like a bunch of cheats who were hoping to hide behind a safe "harbor" before they got caught and are now trying to seek refuge in another "harbor" before they get booted out again.
Customer beware, after their poor communication and service/website bungles.
They need to indicate a new attitude to go with their new base carrier. Who wants to sign up with them without assurances that the broken web site problem won't happen again?
I don't think that they will be able to offer plans that are as good on AT&T. AT&T would be concerned about cannibalizing of their customers.
AT&T always seems to have half the data in the plans for the $$$, compared to TMO. Which events out with having twice the covering of T-Mobile.
Does 35orless customers still pay the same price for their discontinued plan?
Not Exactlly, grandfathered 35orLess customers plan $35/month, which includes all taxes and fees, for unlimited voice, messaging and data, with data throttled for the rest of the month after 1 GB has been used. Before they started accepting new customers, 35or Less charged a variable price which changed every month but was always less then $35, typically $27.50 to $30.
Total charge for me is $33.. there is $2 discount on $35..
I'm actually sad to see this change in Harbor Mobile. I hoped T-Mobile would continue letting some companies through the back door, signing up customers to re-sold business lines to get their numbers up. I signed up for Mobal Freedom as soon as I heard about it from prepaidphonenews.com, and landed on their $19.99 plan. I mostly get around their 100 anytime minutes by using conditional forwarding and taking incoming calls on a Google Hangouts number (you get 500 minutes of conditional forwarding, versus the 100). Getting Music Freedom, and unlimited texting and data is 120 countries makes this $20 plan a complete steal. Which is what T-Mobile is balking at I guess.
Please note all plans will include UNLIMITED talk and text.
There is a pending Tablet plan that will be available as well (not sure if it will be upon launch).
Any further updates can be obtained by reaching out to us more towards the end of this week. We look forward to hearing from you at that time.
Thank you for choosing Harbor Mobile and have a good day.
Very similar to Cricket Wireless pricing structure. I am a current customer of Harbor Mobile. Apparently all the existing customers are getting grandfathered in to their old plans. Customer Service is not allowing me to change my old/ existing plan as of now. With no differentiation in their pricing structure versus Cricket, I am wondering about the relevance of Harbor Mobile in future. Also a little mad at T Mobile since they tout they are the "open and non-skimming" company.
Check you rmath. Harbor is less expensive than all the Cricket plans, even after you sign up for Cricket autopay. All Cricket users can dump the throttling, junk fees and poor CS and switch to Harbor.
The only junk fee I am aware of with Cricket is the hotspot fee, which is new. The CS from them has been great for months now, and the web site is highly effective and useful.
Harbor for a while has had terrible CS: with misleading answers and its broken web site... for months. They even broke their promise to level with customers by a Monday deadline. It's VERY shaky at this time. Harbor needs to get its act together. Very fly-by-night for a while. Visit their web site and you will find out.
As for me, I'd lose a lot of data by going from Cricket to Harbor, in the plan I have now. As for everyone else, "buyer beware" ... if they can't even get web site basics right, and are not living up to promises, what else are they badly bungling?
Also... the price schedule given was "tentative". I'd not put a lot of stake in it. It seems unrealistic to have massively higher value than every other AT&T service reseller, or even AT&T's own prepaid division. It doesn't quite add up, especially with how the company is so flaky this year. Don't count your pre-paid chickens until Harbor officially hatches them on a stable web site.
The T-Mobile reseller I use undercuts T-Mobile prepaid, so it's not out of the ordinary. For example, I pay $20 for the line I have. The reseller gets it from T-Mobile for $10, and then they pocket the other $10 in pure profit. That's what T-Mobile objects to: they're losing $10 a month from me. I don't expect my reseller to continue much longer now that T-Mobile is in third place. They already stopped offering lines to new customers publicly.
Customer service makes all the difference in whether we use a specific business again, and whether we tell or our friends and neighbors about it! In our business, it's even more important!