See you always justify your 30 dollars as your subsidizing advertising, discounts for others, etc.... Yes your money goes to run the business. Regardless of discount or no discount.. You're going to have to pay for your usage and it's going to be used in some way to better benefit the business.
This isn't about benefiting the business - but if we're going to have to benefit the business, customers should be doing it equitably - not equally, but equitably. That is, everyone pays the same price for the same plan. And as I have been saying for a while (somehow people on the other side of the argument just tend to conveniently ignore it), the businesses - i.e. the carriers - have been deciding for a while now that employee discounts don't benefit them much anymore.
Just like I said by your logic I am subsidizing you am I not? You pay 30 for access to T-Mobile whereas I pay 70 dollars.. So am I not helping T-Mobile's costs so you can have a cheap prepaid plan?
Absolutely not. I don't get what you get for your postpaid $70 plan. I'm not sure if you have the grandfathered unlimited data plan or the new 5GB (with 5GB of tethering) plan, but either way, here is a list of things you get that I don't:
- Minutes: I'm limited to 100 minutes; you have unlimited. Unlimited minutes just by themselves cost an industry standard of $40-$45.
- Domestic data roaming.
- International roaming for free for text and data, and calling from international areas for any price (you get it at $0.20 a minute).
- Conditional call forwarding, or any forwarding for voice mail at all.
- Tethering.
You are not paying a penny to subsidize me. I am paying less because I'm getting less. People who are on corporate discount plans are paying less, but are not getting less.
When employees get employee discounts do you think the business just takes that cost? Nope. Passed to me and you.
No, employee discounts for employers of a given business are different. Because yes, businesses ultimately pass down all labor cost to the consumer, but that includes wages, benefits, etc. In case of an employee discount within a company, the employer is taking the hit and then passing it on to their own customers. In case of corporate discounts on cell phone plans, your employer is giving you a benefit and passing the cost onto me - who's not their employee or their customer. Because they are giving you a benefit without spending the money themselves - if they were, that would be completely fine.