T-Mobile is making two of its best deals unavailable to its users

T-Mobile customers have had a rough few weeks, and the carrier isn’t exactly changing the mood music with its latest move. after confirms that some legacy plans are retired and moving to newer options, T-Mobile is now capping two of its long-standing switcher deals so that existing voice customers can no longer use them when adding a line.

as detailed by Mobile ReportT-Mobile is changing the terms of its Keep & Switch and Family Freedom promotions starting tomorrow. The carrier’s own support pages (here and here) as of July 9, state that both promotions are “open to new customer accounts only” and existing accounts are not eligible.

Keep & Switch and Family Freedom are similar offers, both giving switches up to $800 per line to pay off debts owed to a previous carrier. Keep & Switch is the version that lets you transfer your existing phone to T-Mobile, while Family Freedom is all about trading in your old phone and getting a new one from T-Mobile. Until now, existing customers could also use them when adding a new line, making them a useful option for someone joining a family member’s T-Mobile plan from another carrier. That all changes tomorrow, though accounts with only Home Internet or T-Satellite service may still be eligible.

It’s not hard to see why T-Mobile opted for a new setup. Rather than adding another line to an existing family plan, the new account is cleaner and potentially more valuable to the carrier. Again, this obviously makes the family use case less attractive to customers if the switcher has a phone balance to pay off elsewhere.

The change comes just days after T-Mobile confirmed it was canceling some older 3G and 4G era plans and moving affected customers. newer ones. The carrier said some customers will see a “modest adjustment” to their bills, later clarifying to us that the average adjustment will be $4 per line, and that the changes will begin with the next billing cycle in mid-July.

In isolation, stricter promo rules might not seem like a big deal. But coming on the heels of news of a forced migration, it’s a customer-friendly change at a time when T-Mobile probably didn’t need it. However, knowing that news of this latest switching promo could cause a few more grumbles, perhaps the carrier decided to take all the potential negative PR hits at once and hope it doesn’t. lose a lot of work in the process.