T-Mobile has been losing customers left and right, with the company reporting a 5 basis point increase in customer churn year-over-year. This report came in the company’s first-quarter earnings report for 2025, and it refers to the number of customers who canceled service.
Rising prices on older rate plans, coupled with publishing plan prices that didn’t include taxes, are some of the potential reasons why customer dissatisfaction with the uncarrier is growing.
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Unfortunately, current and future T-Mobile customers may soon get some more bad news about the company’s policies. This time, the issue is not with the cost of the monthly plans that consumers have to choose from, but is instead related to T-Mobile’s payment installment programs.
These programs allow consumers to finance smartphones, which most people choose to do because the upfront cost is simply too high. T-Mobile has offered installment plans on phones for over a decade, dubbing them “Equipment Installment Plans” or EIPs.
But now evidence suggests the phone carrier is planning to change how these plans work, a move that could wind up being very unpopular.
T-Mobile may be changing the way you finance your phone
Since T-Mobile began offering phone financing, the company has always allowed customers to pay off their phones over a 24-month period. But a listing glitch on the company’s site, coupled with information from internal sources, suggests that this will be changing very soon.
According to The Mobile report, an internal T-Mobile document revealed that at least some devices would soon shift to a 36-month EIP. The website also temporarily showed a 36-month EIP plan for certain Samsung Galaxy Watches on the site’s product pages.
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Both the internal document and the website changes have been removed, but they are still fueling rumors that longer payment plans are on the way.
Of course, stretching out the financing time for phones and other devices would help the company to keep its customers for a longer period of time. When you finance a phone, you can’t leave the carrier until the device has been paid off, unless you come up with the cash. This means T-Mobile could effectively lock in plan users for a whole extra year.
While the change may be good for the company’s bottom line and could offer cheaper prices for those financing their equipment, there are also some big downsides for users.
T-Mobile will lose a competitive advantage
If T-Mobile makes this change, the company will undermine the value proposition it offered to consumers years ago with “Phone Freedom,” which allows customers more flexibility in what they do with their devices.
A key part of “Phone Freedom” was a “New in Two” guarantee, which promised customers that they would be able to upgrade their devices every two years on select plans. If T-Mobile makes financing a phone a three-year commitment, users will not be able to upgrade the device or leave the carrier as quickly.
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A T-Mobile shift to a 36-month financing plan would bring the company’s policies more in line with competitors, as both Verizon and AT&T lock users into financing their phones over 36 months. AT&T made the change to longer financing periods in mid-2021, and Verizon followed along eight months later.
It remains to be seen whether the new T-Mobile policy will eventually go into effect, or if the internal document and website glitch were just test cases. It’s also unclear whether this change will apply to all devices — some plans do offer the New in Two promise, so the company may honor that commitment.
More Retail:
- Costco quietly plans to offer a convenient service for customers
- T-Mobile pulls the plug on generous offer, angering customers
- Kellogg sounds alarm on unexpected shift in customer behavior
Ultimately, making this big change might give customers another reason to be dissatisfied. Of course, they may not be able to act on that anger if they get stuck in one of the new 36-month contracts that lock them in for the next three years.
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