Most of you reading this article are aware of the recent news that T-Mobile is planning to automatically migrate customers on certain older plans to newer ones. The company’s internal documents stated that select customers on older plans will be moved to ones with “more benefits”.
Rumors have swirled over the past week, along with a lot of misinformation. Many customers were led to believe all sorts of things, like that T-Mobile had already made plan changes, or that customers had to opt out before October 17th. All of that is incorrect, and it seems T-Mobile is trying to clarify the facts for their frontline staff to handle customer questions.
New messaging for employees
A document was sent out to frontline teams across the country late Monday evening clarifying how the migration is going to happen. That document is embedded below.
T-Mobile is clearly aware of the confusion and frustration surrounding the automatic migration plans, and has decided to make new documents to help employees explain what is going on.
In addition to the above document, The Mobile Report has seen other communication that claims only about 1% of T-Mobile customers are impacted by this change. If this is accurate, it likely means only a small set of customers on the impacted plans are set to be migrated, and not everyone on those plans.
This is clearly much different than what we previously thought. The original documents implied that everyone on the listed plans would be moved, but it seems that may not be the case.
We’ve also confirmed that the original internal documents previously shared here on The Mobile Report have now been removed from internal systems. It’s likely these will be replaced with new, more concise documents.
T-Mobile dropped the ball, and lost customer trust
Many readers may consider internal documents being leaked is unfair to T-Mobile. The documents are for employee use, and could be missing key information. That’s a fair argument, but it doesn’t excuse how T-Mobile has handled the blowback over the past week.
We first broke the news a week ago, on October 10th. The news quickly spread online, from other news sites to TikTok to Facebook. T-Mobile had plenty of time to issue a statement or make a news post clarifying these changes, especially if only 1% of customers will be impacted. They chose not to, instead opting for a vague statement, provided to a few news outlets, simply indicating a “small number” of affected customers.
We’re always looking for ways to give our customers more from our services so we’re moving a small number who were on older rate plans to newer plans that will deliver them enhanced features.
T-Mobile statement to CNET
As a result of the confusion over the last week, customers no longer trust that T-Mobile has their best interests in mind. What will prevent T-Mobile from making changes to other plans? Will the carrier force former Sprint customers onto newer, more expensive, plans next? Only time will tell.
“I predict this is just a first step to see how badly it rocks the boat with their customers. If they get the increased revenue they want from this and the fallout isn’t too bad, they will announce another round next year.”
Customer quotes sampled from Reddit
“How long until they just force you off without a choice? 1 year? 2? Pulling a VZW/ATT seems inevitable at this point.”
“This is not the company T-Mobile was supposed to be. They’ve gone from Carrier to Un-Carrier to Super Carrier.”
Even if this “small number” of customers are affected, the fact that T-Mobile is making the changes automatically, requiring a proactive “opt-out” from the customer, indicates that the company can and will make changes to loyal customers’ plans without asking.
What happens next
So what happens next?
As of right now, it appears only a very small number of customers on the plans previously mentioned will be sent a notification informing them of a pending plan change. Those customers can then choose to opt out of the change by contacting support.
We still highly recommend you do not contact T-Mobile to opt out unless you receive a notification of a pending plan change.
These plan changes will not happen until November. After the change takes place, customers will still have time to opt-out and move their plan back to the way it was, though we do not yet know how long of a window that will be.
We expect to see more information shared over the course of today and this week, so we’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
