It’s no secret that T-Mobile has lost its “Uncarrier” charm over the years. The company has made news repeatedly recently for raising prices for existing customers and starting new plans without taxes included, so it’s no surprise the company is beginning to lose customers to the competition.
This loss of customers over a certain period is referred to as “churn”, and it now appears T-Mobile is planning to deploy a potential band-aid to the bleeding with a new special “loyalty” plan for very select customers.
New “Loyalty” Essentials Plan
According to information shared with us here at The Mobile Report, T-Mobile will soon launch a “loyalty” version of their standard “Essentials” plan. The plan will have the all of the same perks as Essentials but at a slightly lower price.
The interesting bit here is how this plan will be offered. The new plan will only be offered on a “reactive” basis, meaning only to certain customers that contact support wanting to cancel lines or move entirely to a new carrier. Even then, only certain accounts that are “targeted” internally will be eligible to change to this new plan.
Rumor has it the plan is even specifically designed to match AT&T’s “Starter” plan, and indeed the pricing reflects that.
This suggests the competition is starting to offer some pretty decent deals that are pulling away even the most loyal long-time customers of T-Mobile.
Not For New Accounts
The new rate plan is very much not designed for new customers, and the pricing suggests that a very limited number of existing customers would want this plan anyway due to pricing. It’s likely that customers on more expensive (and older) plans such as Magenta Max, ONE Plus, Go5G Plus, etc will be eligible.
For single lines, the price works out to $65 per month. Two lines ends up at $120 per month. Additional lines after that are an additional $12 each. All of these prices are after autopay discount, so if you don’t plan to have autopay, add $5 to each of those prices.
Notably, this pricing matches AT&T’s “Starter” plan almost exactly. 1 line on Starter is $65.99 and 2 lines is $121.98, which lends credibility to the rumor mentioned above. It’s also a far worse deal than the current Essentials plan pricing with the exception of single-line plans. You can actually snag 4 new lines on Essentials right now for a special price of just $100 per month (though it’s not clear if that promo will still be around by the time this new loyalty plan rolls around).
Then there are the restrictions. Not only is the pricing weird for this new loyalty essentials plan, but this plan is also completely ineligible for third line free, BOGO free line, insider discount, and any other free line promotions. The Essentials plan typically isn’t offered these perks anyway, but if a customer is coming from another plan with these perks, they most likely won’t want to switch. The plan also has a maximum line count of 8. There’s no 9+ line version of the plan here.
There is, however, a possible incentive for some customers.
Extra Perk Over The Standard Essentials Plan
Given the pricing, you may be wondering why anyone would want to switch to this over the base Essentials plan. Well, there does appear to be a bonus perk that the regular Essentials plan doesn’t have. Customers on this new loyalty plan will receive the higher trade values for phone promotions, probably similar to other standard plans on T-Mobile, perhaps even as good as the Experience More plan. That’s a never-before-seen type of perk for the “budget” rate plan.
Existing device promotions on a customer’s account will also migrate as-is to the new loyalty plan.
As of the time of publishing, the new Loyalty Essentials targeted plan is set to become available on Thursday, May 15th. It’s entirely possible things change by then, though, so we’ll be sure to update if we learn more.
Keep in mind that this isn’t for most people, so unless you’re on an older, more expensive rate plan with no perks worth sticking around for, there’s no need to rush over to support to try and get this new plan.
Oh, and don’t forget, most of the plans potential switchers may be on include taxes and fees, while this new loyalty plan will not.
