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Good news for T-Mobile users: The carrier is backpedaling on an idea to migrate legacy users to newer, pricer plans, at least for now.
Earlier this month, a leaked customer service document at T-Mobile revealed the migration plan, which would have forced some users to pay $5 extra per month unless they called the company about opting out. Naturally, the potential price increase ticked off consumers. But on a Wednesday earnings call, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said the carrier is ditching the idea.
“We had planned it. We had planned it as a test cell, and then we aren't doing it because I think we've got plenty of feedback,” he said.
Sievert argued that news of the migration plan was inaccurately reported by the press from the outset. According to him, the migration effort was merely meant to be a small-scale test to help T-Mobile better understand how to price its service tiers.
“In this case, we had a test cell to try to understand customer interest in and acceptance of migrating off old legacy rate plans to something that's higher value for them and for us,” Sievert said. “And we had planned to test and did some training around that. And then it leaked. And it leaked as if it was a broad national thing, and it kind of wasn't.”
The negative backlash was bad enough that T-Mobile is also abandoning even testing the idea of migrating legacy users to the company’s newer tiers. “And I think we've learned that particular test cell isn't something that our customers are going to love,” T-Mobile’s CEO added. “Now, exactly none have rolled out.”
That said, T-Mobile is leaving the door open to conduct other price-focused tests, ideally one that won't tick off users. “We conduct tests and pilots all the time...and we will continue to do so because we still think there's opportunities both to deliver more value for customers in a bunch of different ways but also look for opportunities to simplify our overall portfolio,” T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Mike Katz said in the same call.
Sievert added: “Although that particular test cell doesn't need to be executed now, we remain very interested in rationalizing our legacy rate plans for IT purposes, simplification purposes, revenue realization purposes, customer satisfaction, and retention purposes. So, we're going to stay at it. But that particular idea is, you know, we'll probably do something different.”