Longtime customers of T-Mobile often look forward to the occasional free T-Mobile Tuesdays physical item. The company gives physical items, from seat cushions to beach balls, about once a month as of late.
Unfortunately, T-Mobile is making a change to which stores will actually carry the freebies for you to pick up, and it starts with next week’s free flashlight.
As seen in the internal document below, shared with us here at The Mobile Report, T-Mobile’s third-party locations will no longer be handing out the free physical items offered in the T-Life app.
As of September 17th, which is the date the free flashlights will be available, customers will only be able to pick up their freebie at corporate-owned T-Mobile stores or Metro by T-Mobile stores.
T-Mobile’s T-Life app has also updated to mention this fact, stating that “Your free flashlight might be at a different store on Tuesday” as seen below. You can find this in the T-Life app now, on the Magenta Status page under “Next Tues”.
Third party retailers, or “TPRs”, are an often-covered topic here on The Mobile Report. Back in July, we covered how Arch Telecom, among others, had shady sales tactics and often scammed customers by adding items and services to accounts without permission.
It’s possible that the decision to remove the freebies was done due to TPRs using them as an excuse to examine customer accounts for potential “deals”. While it’s understandable for an employee to verbally offer promotions and devices to customers picking up their freebies, that should be the end of it.
Unfortunately, employees have been known to require customers to give permission for an account audit in order to receive their freebie.
On the other hand, this could simply be a way to reduce the amount of stock T-Mobile has to buy ahead of time to supply to stores. The less stores that carry the freebie, the less of them they have to buy (not to mention the savings on shipping the items to stores).
Overall, this is likely to be a big blow to some customers. Third party locations are often the only stores available to customers for miles, which means this change could lead to customers basically being unable to ever claim their free item.
You can check if your local T-Mobile store is corporate-owned by using the new Tuesdays online store locator.
Metro by T-Mobile locations can be searched for using their online store locator.
These changes are basically already in effect, and customers will be required to visit corporate-owned T-Mobile stores or Metro by T-Mobile stores starting with the free flashlight next week.
