Everything is expensive. One thing customers like is a company that never increases their prices, and at one point T-Mobile was such a company. Their “Price Lock” and “Un-Contract” guarantees suggested they’d never raise rates.
That obviously didn’t hold too true since the company raised prices on some older plans last year, but overall T-Mobile has raised rates a lot less often than the competition.
We reported a few weeks ago that T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert implied during an employee call that legacy customers would be seeing price increases yet again sometime this year. We’re now seeing signs that it could indeed be happening as soon as Thursday.
Based on what the CEO said, we’re likely to see price increases hit legacy customers sometime this year, just like last year. The question, then, would be exactly when these increases will hit, who they will impact, and by how much bills will increase.
So far, we don’t know for sure the answers to anything. We do, however, have some hints. Note that everything below is speculation. We make no claims of the accuracy of anything posted. We are simply making educated guesses.
Suspicious staffing moves suggest something bad
First, there are reports that T-Mobile is increasing incentives for support employees specifically on Thursday. The company has also reportedly approved all overtime for the rest of the month of March.
On its own, this points to something happening on Thursday, but we also have previous experience with such moves. Two days before the last price increase in May of 2024, the company did the same thing: increased staffing throughout the week in preparation for customer complaints.
That answers the “when” question, but what about the “how much”? We can only speculate on that one.
How much will prices increase?
Last year, the overall price increase varied depending on the plan the customer was on. However, the price increases were per line, so the more lines you have the more you’ll pay.
If the increases match last year, customers could see as little as $2 increase in cost per voice line, or as high as $5 per voice line.
In addition, last year, customers saw a $2 increase in non-voice lines as well, such as smart watches and hotspots. This could also happen again this year.
Of course, T-Mobile could completely change how the increases hit this time around. It’s really an anything could happen situation.
Who will be impacted?
This one’s tough. Last year, customers as far back as Simple Choice plans and as recent as Magenta plans were impacted. However, not every customer on these plans were impacted.
Ignoring the complications around “Price Lock” and “Un-Contract” guarantees, it’s still unclear, to this day, how T-Mobile chose the accounts that would be receiving the price increases. Based on this, we can guess a few possibilities.
First, T-Mobile could target all customers who are on these legacy plans that did not face price increases last time. It’s entirely possible the company decided to eventually hit everyone on older plans, and they split up the increase into two batches roughly a year apart. In this scenario, if you received a price increase last year, you wouldn’t this year, and vice versa.
Another possibility is the same customers could be hit once again. If some kind of complicated Price Lock/Un-Contract legal stuff prevented certain customers from receiving an increase last year, then that same legal stuff could prevent it once again. That would leave only the accounts hit last time as ones eligible for yet another increase.
Again, all of this is pure speculation at this point, because T-Mobile is keeping this stuff close to the chest. We’ll only know for sure once the price increases actually hit.
Final thoughts
If you’re here just to know the most likely facts, here it is: We are highly confident (but not 100% sure) that price increases for existing customers is coming tomorrow, March 13th. We don’t know to who, and we don’t know how much, but we’re pretty confident it’s happening.
If and when price increases do hit, we’ll be sure to spread the word. For now, all we can say is prepare for the worst.
