T-Mobile is frustrating customers by enforcing a harsh policy | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

T-Mobile (TMUS) has slowly been developing a rocky relationship with some of its customers over the past few months, especially after it implemented a significant price hike last month.

The phone carrier officially increased the monthly price of some of its older phone plans by $5 on April 2. This comes after it increased prices for older phone plans (One, Magenta, and Simple Choice) by $2 or $5 per line last year.

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Shortly after facing backlash from customers for making the change, T-Mobile began offering select customers free voice lines as a peace offering.

Now, it appears that T-Mobile is once again in hot water, and this time it’s for making it harder for customers to stay on their older phone plans, which are generally cheaper than the newer ones.

A shopper looks over a display of Apple Inc. iPhones at a T-Mobile US Inc. store in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, Oct. 21, 2016.

Image source&colon; Bloomberg/Getty Images

T-Mobile customer flags a major problem

In a recent Reddit post, a T-Mobile customer flagged that the phone carrier “accidentally” booted them from their original Magenta Max phone plan and put them on a Go5G Plus 9L plan without their consent.

To make matters worse, the customer was told by customer service that the change could not be reversed.

“As of today, you cannot go back to your old plan if T-Mobile accidentally changes you to a newer plan,” said the customer in the post. “Context: I got a BOGO offer which I decided to take. Customer service ‘accidentally’ switched me to Go5G Plus 9L without my consent. When I called to switch me back to Magenta Max (my original plan), they said they could no longer do that, as the codes were removed from the system as of today. They even escalated to a supervisor.”

The customer later provided an update claiming that they ended up contacting T-Force, where the representatives in that department switched them back to Magenta Max.

However, representatives did confirm with the customer that T-Mobile recently limited their ability to reinstate older phone plans, and only supervisors and other higher-ups will be able to make this change going forward.

In response to the post, one Reddit user, who claims they are a T-Mobile representative, seemed to confirm this policy.

“I had a call where someone changed their mind about changing plans, and we escalated up to our senior manager, and we still weren’t able to get it changed back,” wrote the rep. “They’re in the background systems for billing, but we cannot change them back to old plans once they’re removed.”

One former T-Mobile customer also responded to the post, claiming that this policy was the last straw that made them switch phone carriers.

“I was a 12 year T-Mobile customer locked in my old rate plan they tried to screw me with these new plan saying my old plan is no longer available so I took my 8 lines went to Verizon and I’m paying 50 bucks a month less and got 3 new upgraded phones for free that T-Mobile wanted to charge me for,” wrote the customer.

T-Mobile CEO has harsh news for customers

The move from T-Mobile comes after its CEO Mike Sievert said during a recent earnings call that some of the company’s older phone plans (also known as legacy plans) have “outdated” pricing, and rates for those plans will increase this year.

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“There are legacy rate plans out there that are very outdated that we still can address at scale,” said Sievert during an earnings call in January. “And so we began this program last year. It went very successfully, and we’ll continue it this year.”

T-Mobile recently generated a record-high net income of $11.3 billion last year as it added 3.1 million new postpaid phone customers.

During the last few months of 2024 alone, T-Mobile increased its net income by 48% year-over-year. It also raked in total service revenues of $16.9 billion, a 6% increase compared to the same quarter in 2023.