For many people, a main reason for being on a postpaid plan these days is the ability to finance devices. Having the cost of a phone, tablet, or other device spread out over a longer length of time, typically at 0% interest, is a lot easier to pay for than all at once up front.
T-Mobile has offered payment installments for over a decade now, since the death of “contracts”. The company has offered 24-month installments, called “Equipment Installment Plans” or EIPs, since that time. However, according to internal sources with T-Mobile, along with a temporary listing glitch on T-Mobile’s website, that could soon be changing.
Just like AT&T, who switched to 36-month installment plans back in mid-2021, and Verizon, who switched just 8 months later, T-Mobile might soon be changing their installments to a 36-month length.
Signs point to 36-month installments coming soon
Word of this change was first shared with us here at The Mobile Report earlier this week. It seems that T-Mobile originally launched an internal document detailing that 36-month EIPs were on the way for at least some devices.
Adding to this information, some Samsung Galaxy Watch devices on the T-Mobile website briefly displayed this new EIP length on the product page, as seen below.
It’s possible that T-Mobile might be planning to implement longer installment plan lengths just for select devices, or even select plans. Some plans even “guarantee” a “New in Two” for phones, so it’s unclear if T-Mobile would go against that promise.
The changes to the website have since been reverted, and indeed, the internal document was also removed. The likely scenario is that T-Mobile has delayed this change to a future date. That being said, it makes sense for T-Mobile to move towards this new length for installments.
Benefits to T-Mobile’s bottom line
T-Mobile has been working towards becoming more “carrier” for a while now, with their most recent move of getting rid of tax-inclusive plans being most noteworthy. Extending installment plans to 36 months instead of 24 makes sense as a next move for the company looking to squeeze even more profit from customers.
As noted back when AT&T and Verizon made the change, the idea for T-Mobile is to keep customers longer. Losing customers is called “churn”, and by extending phone installments from 2 years to 3, along with removing the ability to pay a phone off early while keeping promo credits, T-Mobile hopes to “lock in” customers for the long haul.
It’s likely T-Mobile will frame this as a good thing, though, and in some cases it might be.
Benefits to customers
For customers on a tight budget, spreading out phone payments over an additional year can lower the monthly cost quite a bit. If they’re not planning to leave the carrier any time soon anyway, that might work out quite nicely.
Plus there’s the fact that modern devices, especially phones, are really not changing much between each release. Keeping the same phone for 3 years isn’t as outrageous of an idea as it might have once been.
Then again, if T-Mobile does implement 3-year installments, it will effectively negate the argument the carrier made themselves just 2 years ago, when they announced “Phone Freedom”. The idea was that, alongside the new (at the time) Go5G Plus plan, customers also received the “New in Two” guarantee. It boasted that, unlike the competition, T-Mobile offers 2-year installments on their devices.
Clearly, the consensus nowadays is the “Un-Carrier” is long dead. Do you agree?
