T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert announces Netflix partnership (GeekWire Photo/Kevin Lisota)
The internet has been all over the news about T-Mobile forcing customers on older rate plans into newer ones since we broke the news over a week ago. There’s been numerous updates since, and now the CEO of T-Mobile has sent an email to all employees clarifying some of the key points.
As shared with us here at The Mobile Report, CEO Mike Sievert sent a company-wide email today in an attempt to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the leaked documents we shared back on October 10th.
In the email, posted below, Sievert clarifies that the automatic plan migrations were part of a “very small test”, and reiterates that no one’s plans have been changed yet.
Apparently, the plan was that a small test group of customers would be alerted by text and email that they were “eligible” for a plan migration. Those customers then have plenty of chance to opt out of that change.
Sievert says these kinds of small tests are typical for T-Mobile as a business, and they help guide future promotions and plans for the company. Clearly, the visceral reaction of the public to this news should be a sign that this particular test has failed, but that remains to be seen.
Such moves would probably be seen with a more positive outlook if they didn’t come with price increases. If T-Mobile were automatically upgrading people’s plans and keeping their prices exactly the same, that’d be an entirely different story.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the public backlash to this news would have been avoided if T-Mobile had released an official, and importantly public, statement on the matter. Even this email is being shared with you now due to it leaking to us, and isn’t public.
Hopefully T-Mobile learns from this going forward, and perhaps they’ll be a bit more specific in internal documents too, just in case they leak. For now, if you do end up getting that email or text, you can learn how to opt out here.
