T-Mobile Adding Serious Restrictions On Device Promotions Moving Forward

One of the big reasons many people stick with postpaid cellular plans over prepaid is the ability to finance devices. Typically, that financing even gets a generous discount on a new device every year or two. Unfortunately T-Mobile is making a change to their device promotions that is likely to make that process a bit more difficult.

As detailed via documents and claims from internal sources, T-Mobile is making two major changes to how device promotions work for customers.

The first change is pretty unusual. In a move that is likely to make switching to T-Mobile a bit more cumbersome, T-Mobile is reducing the number of times you can take advantage of a specific promo per account from 4 to 2.

Second, T-Mobile will no longer allow most free lines to take advantage of device promos moving forward. This includes existing free lines for existing customers.

Lets dive in to each of these changes.

A new limit of two promo uses per account

Beginning today, April 2nd, most device promotions on T-Mobile can only be used twice per account.

For example, let’s say there’s a promotion that offers $800 off an Apple iPhone when you trade in an eligible device. If you’ve got a larger family account with many lines, and everyone wants to upgrade at once, you’d previously be allowed to use this promo up to four times. Now, that limit is reduced to two.

In my opinion, this seems like a pretty silly move, because this limit is likely to be most problematic for new accounts. Lets say a family of four is switching from Verizon to T-Mobile. Until now, that fit perfectly with most of T-Mobile’s promotions. Everyone gets a new iPhone!

Now, though, customers (and store representatives handling their migration) will have to get a bit creative. Perhaps two of the four family members get an iPhone On Us with port-in. That would leave the other two family members with only a trade-in promo for an iPhone (or a Samsung, etc).

This change launches today alongside an entirely new set of promos that are, from what we’ve seen internally, a lot worse than previous promotions. For example, a promo offering up to $1,300 off a Samsung device with any trade on Beyond has ended, and the next best thing is a promo offering just $800 off.

Some lower-value promos, like $300 off with trade, will still be limit 4 per account, but the higher-value promos (the ones most people will want to use) will have the new limit of 2 per account.

No more promos for free lines

The other big change with device promotions is that, moving forward, most free lines will not be eligible to receive them.

This one gets a bit messy, because there are exceptions, but for the most part all free lines are now stuck paying full retail if they finance on the line.

Customers who have Yearly Upgrade on their line are exempt from this, as well as free lines that are part of the “Third line free” promo. In addition, if you add two lines as part of a “Buy One Get One” promo, both lines are able to take advantage of device promos at that time. However, later on when it’s time to upgrade, only the paid line out of those two lines can do promos.

Below is a graph showing the details of this new rule. Do note that, as of now, it appears all “Line On Us” promos from the past decade are included in the category of “Targeted Free Line”.

Yes, this new rule is retroactive to existing customers moving forward. If you currently have a device promo on a free line, you’re fine, but it’s the last one it’ll ever get.

Another document shared with us explains that during the upgrade process, if the line being upgraded is a free line that isn’t eligible for promos, device promos won’t even be presented at all to the customer.

It’s also worth noting that there’s a pretty easy bypass for this. Customers can still do device promos on paid lines, and simply use the free line’s number/SIM on the new device.

T-Mobile is not (yet?) restricting the number of device promos a single line can have, as long as you aren’t trading in a device that’s still getting recurring credits (because you’d have to pay that device off and lose the remaining credits).

What comes next?

This is, obviously, a bad move for customers. Some of it also doesn’t make much sense in my opinion.

Sure, T-Mobile might save a little money on those high-end device promos by limiting them to two, but it’s also going to make customers on competitor networks think twice about switching.

Also, restricting free lines is going to mostly be a mild inconvenience. Existing customers (especially the savvy ones) know that you can finance a device on any line and then put any other line’s number on that device, and it’ll work fine. So what’s really the reason for doing this?

The new rules are set to take effect today, April 2nd.