As with most services with monthly payments, T-Mobile charges late fees when bills are paid past the due date. This fee is to encourage people to make sure they pay their bills on time, or in T-Mobile’s case, encourage the use of auto pay. It appears T-Mobile is planning to slightly increase these late fees starting later this year.
According to a document shared with us here at The T-Mo Report, embedded below, T-Mobile’s late fee will soon become as follows:
Beginning October 1, 2022, the late fee will change to be the greater of 5% of your applicable monthly charges or $7 where allowed under state law.
This means that if a customer has a $200 per month bill, their late fee would be about $10. It also means that anyone with a bill of $140 or lower will see a late fee of $7, as that would be greater than the 5% fee.
There are two changes in this new late fee statement that differ from the previous statement. Previously, the fee was defined as follows:
“A late fee of the greater of $5 or a variable percentage allowed under state law is applied to an unpaid past due balance not paid by the due date on your invoice.”
Essentially, for customers with bills under or equal to $140 per month, the late fee is going from $5 to $7. For customers with bills above $140 per month, the late fee will be 5% (unless forbidden by state law). It’s unclear what “variable percentage” meant, but that wording is removed from the new statement.
T-Mobile made headlines over the past year for promising not to increase customer bills due to inflation. Their competitors AT&T and Verizon both raised prices for existing customers over the last 6 months. T-Mobile launched their “Price Lock” marketing campaign back in April to make it clear they won’t raise prices. That being said, inflation is real and likely hurting the bottom line. Raising this late fee, even by $2, will likely increase their profits from fees by a lot. It’s unfortunate that late fees often affect the less fortunate who have issues paying bills in the first place.
Customers who have had late fees in the past 6 months will receive text messages informing them of the changes between now and August 4th. The changes will apply to both T-Mobile and Sprint customers and will take effect October 1st.
