T-Mobile's Price Unlock

Here’s how T-Mobile used to describe its old Price Lock guarantee (thank you, Archive.org):

Price Lock is our guarantee that we won’t raise the price of your qualifying rate plan for new accounts. You can rest assured that T-Mobile won’t raise the price of your regular monthly rate plan price…as long as you’re a T-Mobile customer and keep your plan.

As of today, new subscribers can receive something that’s still called Price Lock, but the terms are different:

Starting January 18, 2024, customers activating or switching to an eligible rate plan get our Price Lock guarantee that only you can change what you pay—and we mean it! To show just how serious we are, if we were to make a price change and you decide to leave, just let us know within 60 days and we’ll cover the cost of your final month’s recurring service charges.

The old Price Lock was purportedly a passive guarantee. Subscribers allegedly didn’t need to do anything to keep the rates they started with.¹

The new Price Lock (1) doesn’t lock in prices, and (2) requires active involvement from anyone taking advantage of it. Most people don’t memorize or monitor the detailed terms of their phone plans. If T-Mobile raises prices on plans covered by the new Price Lock policy, I doubt many customers will remember they’re eligible for a bill credit if they leave.

The new policy is fine. But it needs a name change.

Footnotes

I say “purportedly” and “allegedly” because T-Mobile flirted with weaseling out of this sort of guarantee. T-Mobile recently toyed with automatically migrating subscribers away from price-capped plans unless they actively opted out. The company ultimately backed down.