T-Mobile canceled some longtime subscribers’ free-line promotions as part of a forced migration to new rate plans, spurring complaints from customers yesterday. T-Mobile admitted the problem and blamed it on technical errors that it is trying to fix.
The forced plan changes were controversial to begin with, particularly as many longtime users are being hit with price hikes of $6 per line. The unexpected loss of free lines for some of those users could raise prices by a much higher amount if the change isn’t reversed.
There is good news, though. T-Mobile told Ars today that it was a mistake and that the company is working to fix the problem. Of course, it’s not always easy for telecom customers to get the proper resolution even after a company admits to an error publicly. But given T-Mobile’s statement today, we hope the firm will fix the problem for all impacted customers with as little hassle as possible.
“Our priority is to ensure customers keep the promotions, credits and benefits of their current plan,” T-Mobile told Ars today. “We’ve identified technical issues affecting a very small number of customers and are working quickly to correct them. For some of those customers, free line promotions were not reflected correctly following migration due to a delay in applying promotional discounts. Those free lines remain free, and we’re restoring the discounts, backdating them where needed, and reprocessing accounts to ensure customers receive the benefits they were promised.”
T-Mobile acknowledged that this isn’t the only billing problem related to its mass migration of plans. “We’re also investigating reports that some people were incorrectly billed for Hulu following migration and are actively working to identify the cause. We apologize for the confusion and will make it right for our customers,” T-Mobile said.
T-Mobile recently announced it would eliminate its older plans and automatically move customers to different rate plans that are more or less equivalent in price and features. “Some customers will see no change to their monthly bill, while some will see a modest adjustment,” T-Mobile told media outlets in late June. “Every customer moved to a new plan will keep their current benefits while gaining improvements in network and service experiences.”
Free lines lost in transition
The promise that customers would “keep their current benefits” was broken, according to people who say free lines were removed from their accounts. In addition to complaints on Reddit, the Mobile Report news site wrote today that it heard directly from a few users who said their free lines were not migrated to the new plans.
Besides the elimination of free lines, another problem “that some customers are seeing is a mysterious extra hotspot data add-on on their new plans,” adding as much as $15 to monthly bills, The Mobile Report wrote.
T-Mobile handed out free lines at various times through promotions that let paying customers add another phone line to their accounts at no additional charge. During a March 2025 promotion, for example, customers who had kept their accounts active for at least 10 years could obtain a free line if they already had at least two paid lines.
Some users apparently accumulated a bunch of the free lines during their long tenures as T-Mobile customers. In a Reddit post yesterday, one said they previously had three paid lines and six free ones for about $50 a month.
“Just received my first bill today after being migrated to Experience Signature and bill is >$300. The bill breakdown did not include any free lines carried over,” the post said. Experience Signature is one of the plans that T-Mobile is automatically applying to the accounts of customers on retired plans.
Another person who reported losing free line promotions said it resulted in a $200 increase in the bill. One person said they contacted T-Mobile support about the loss of a free line, and the support rep was unable to restore it.
“One free line was invalidated because it was apparently ‘ineligible’ with the current plan. They gave me a year’s worth of credit for that one line and said sorry they couldn’t do anything else,” the person wrote.
T-Mobile ended lifetime price guarantee in 2024
Given the 10-year condition on last year’s free-line promotion, it seemed to be a way to reward T-Mobile’s most loyal customers, those who stuck with the company since its days as the smaller “Un-carrier” fighting the AT&T and Verizon duopoly. But since T-Mobile completed an acquisition of Sprint in 2020, the US has had three major nationwide wireless carriers of roughly equal size.
While T-Mobile says the loss of free lines is unintentional and will be fixed, the carrier refused to reverse another change that unexpectedly raised customer bills two years ago. Specifically, T-Mobile abandoned one of its key Un-carrier promises in 2024 when it announced price hikes for customers who signed up for plans during promotions that promised their price would never change.
Customers were irate and expressed outrage by filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission and a class action lawsuit. The class action is still pending, and T-Mobile is trying to force the plaintiffs into arbitration.
This year’s price hike for longtime customers is bound to impact some of the same customers who felt betrayed by the 2024 end of the lifetime price lock. Kathleen Odean, a T-Mobile customer who we interviewed in 2024, told us this week that she received a text message from T-Mobile stating that her plan is being retired and that prices would rise “up to $6 per line per month.”
Odean and her husband switched from Verizon to get the lifetime T-Mobile price lock in 2017, signing up for a two-line plan specifically marketed to people ages 55 and over. They are now set to receive their second price increase since 2024.
Odean, who is in her early 70s, told us she is furious about the latest price change. She said she complained to the company and “just got a generic email in reply.”
T-Mobile trying to simplify back-end system
T-Mobile COO Jon Freier told staff in a leaked email last month that the carrier is removing about 1,100 legacy billing codes from its systems in the process of eliminating old plans.
“Nearly half of these customers won’t see their price change at all by the time this migration is complete,” Freier wrote. “For those who do, It’s up to $6 per line. We’re reaching out to anyone—including employees—whose new plan includes a price adjustment.”
Freier’s email said plans originally sold in the 3G and 4G eras had stricter restrictions on smartphone and hotspot data, little or no international roaming, and a video resolution cap of 480p. Customers being moved to new plans will “get more premium data, more high-speed hotspot [data], and better international coverage,” plus a five-year price guarantee, the Freier email said.
A Fierce Network report said the elimination of 1,100 billing codes will leave fewer than 100 codes in T-Mobile’s system. With a smaller number of codes that reference various products and rate plans, T-Mobile is attempting to greatly simplify its back-end system.
“These are not 1,100 different price plans; they’re codes in the billing system that tell the network what to allow and not allow,” Fierce Network wrote. When T-Mobile adds a feature or capability to its website or mobile app, “it has to run it through all these codes to make sure it’s backwards compatible.”
It’s clear that in this mass migration of plans and reduction in billing codes, old service offerings weren’t always replaced with close equivalents. If T-Mobile lives up to the promise it made today, customers should at least get the missing free lines back and have their bills cleared of any erroneous charges. But the $6 per-line price increases are here to stay.
