T-Mobile may be walking back a controversial plan to move some long-time customers to more-expensive service tiers.
The company has pulled several documents outlining details of the plan from a company intranet called C2, which customer support representatives rely upon to provide information to subscribers who call or visit stories with service-related questions.
The documents, which were leaked online two weeks ago, outlined a plan by T-Mobile to move some customers of its T-Mobile One, Simple Choice and Magenta plans to new Go5G plans, which offer comparable perks but come with a higher monthly price tag.
Documents associated with the migration were first leaked on the social platform Reddit. They were confirmed separately by a writer for the weblog The Mobile Report, which covers T-Mobile on the regular.
The company planned to migrate older customers to the new Go5G plans automatically, and notify affected subscribers via text message and email of the switch. Customers would be given an opportunity to opt out of the migration, even after it was finalized, but they would have to contact T-Mobile customer service by phone or social media in order to switch back to their older plans.
In a statement, a T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed the leak, saying it was intended to benefit a “small number of customers on older rate plans” who would see new “enhanced features” on the new tiers of service.
But the plans also came with a price bump of anywhere from $5 to $15, depending on the original plan. And that price increase is what set some T-Mobile customers off, who complained that the phone network that reinvented itself as the customer-first “Un-Carrier” appeared to be prioritizing money over everything else.
This week, there were signs T-Mobile might be retreating. In addition to pulling the migration-related documents from C2, customer service representatives received an email urging them to continue reviewing subscriber accounts while reinforcing that no changes have been made just yet.
“At this time, there have been no rate plan changes made to customer accounts,” according to the e-mail, a copy of which was reviewed by The Desk. “For customers inquiring about changes to their rate plan, please continue to offer an account review and reinforce that all customers will receive notification prior to any rate plan upgrades.”
T-Mobile says it will send customers advanced notice of any rate changes in the future.
