T-Mobile Pays Up NYC Fine

While the fine only totals $135,000, the fact that T-Mobile did pony up the money to the Department of Consumer Affairs is a nice admission that cellphone advertising is terrible. The DCA claimed that T-Mobile, along with Nextel and Sprint, was misleading consumers by the way their print advertising communicated offers. For instance, the really awesome parts of the offer would be in large print, but then the fine, legal print would give the caveats, making the awesome offer not so awesome anymore. The ads ran in the NY Post, NY Times, Newsday and Daily News, and there's a $500 maximum fine with each ad...so that means there were 270 offensive print ads. Unfortunately, the DCA cannot do anything about the Catherine Zeta-Jones ads or celebrity Sidekick ads.