T-Mobile Lets Furious Sidekick Users Break Their Contracts For Free

T-Mobile’s initial apologia to Sidekick users grieving their lost data was a joke. A month of free data service? To access what? Now they’ve manned up, giving affected customers something they might actually want: A way out of their contracts.

An exasperated tipster who just spent some quality time across the phone from an equally exasperated T-Mobile rep told us what he was offered:

• I’m released from the contract if I want (Yeesh, of course I better be. I can’t believe I had to ask).
• I can get a G1 for $US129 (not sure if that’s the normal contract renewal pricing or not; doesn’t sound like a great deal to me).
• They also suggested Blackberries etc, but I didn’t get the pricing (since those are design disasters compared to SK or iPhone).

So to break it down, your options are to accept about $US20 off a G1, which you, an avid Sidekick user, probably didn’t want anyway, move onto a BlackBerry, or to leave. Sidekick users are a dedicated bunch—there’s a good chance they came to T-Mobile just to use a particular handset—so I wouldn’t be surprised if people take them up on the offer.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of official announcement from T-Mobile regarding how they plan on dealing with their no doubt angry mass of Sidekick subscribers, but it’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out: Remember, even though these people all bought their phones and service from T-Mo, the actual data loss is Danger’s (read: Microsoft’s) fault. It’s already clear that T-Mobile’ is going to bear the brunt of the angry mob, but aside from getting very sternly talked to by nervous carriers, is Microsoft going to get out of this scot-free? —Thanks, guy!