The price lock at T-Mobile was one of the more popular selling points for the company over the last decade. The company promised never to raise rates on existing customers, and then later if they did, they’d cover your last month’s bill.
It wasn’t all positive. Infamously, they raised rates on grandfathered plans twice in the last year. That being said, it was still one of the more impressive things about T-Mobile. Some customers went as many as 8 or more years without a single price increase. That ends today.
As T-Mobile begins their “Experience” era, one thing is notably absent: Price Lock.
5-Year Guarantee
The new plans feature a 5-year price guarantee, which is great! But that sets a hard limit of how long you’ll maintain the price of your plan, and price lock is officially over.
Here’s how it works. For new customers on one of the Experience plans, you get to keep your price the same for 5 years, as long as you don’t change your plan in that time.
The guarantee is account-level, which would mean that if you add a line later on, that line joins the rest for the remainder of your guarantee, and does not start its own 5-year time limit.
Once that 5 years is up, you’re no longer protected from price increases. We would guess that T-Mobile will automatically raise your line prices to match the current pricing at that time, and from then on your rates would match the current rates.
Price Lock
As for existing customers with plans on Price Lock, you’ll retain that moving forward. Today is the final day of Price Lock for new customers, though.
Below is a document shared with us here at The Mobile Report.
It’s the main document detailing Price Lock, it’s variants, and Un-Contract. It was updated today to show that today was the last day Price Lock would be offered. That coincides with the release of the new plans, and the retirement of the Go5G plans.
Moving Forward
Only time will tell how T-Mobile handles the price increases once 5 years is up. As we said above, we would assume that prices would auto adjust to match the current rates, just like your cable internet prices jump up once your promo rate expires.
Oh, and if for some reason you were thinking of signing up for T-Mobile and want to get a Price Lock instead of the 5-Year Guarantee, you’ll need to sign up today, April 22nd.
It’s unfortunate that Price Lock is no longer around. Clearly the glory days of Un-Carrier are over, but if you managed to snag a plan with Price Lock in the past, you’re probably better off.
