After 10 years, I just canceled my T-Mobile account. Here’s why

For the last 10 years, T-Mobile has been my cell phone carrier of choice. I’ve been on a family plan with my partner, parents, and grandmother (with two lines for myself), and it’s been a good experience for all of us. T-Mobile’s coverage is reliable, 5G speeds are fast, and extra perks like weekly gas coupons and discounted streaming services have been nice cherries on top.

However, after a decade of being a loyal T-Mobile customer, I’m canceling my account and switching to another provider.

Why? It’s something that’s been boiling for a while, though anytime I’ve thought about switching, I shrugged it off and decided to stay. That is the easier choice, after all. But T-Mobile’s latest price increase pushed me over the edge, and after 10 years of use, I’m officially moving on.

For the last few years, my T-Mobile bill has ranged anywhere from $173/month to $183/month, depending on whether or not I have active LTE service for my Apple Watch. That’s for six lines on a mixture of the old T-Mobile ONE and ONE Plus plans. Not too bad at all.

I haven’t been thrilled with everything else surrounding T-Mobile (security breaches, degrading customer service, etc.), but with my bill largely staying the same, I never felt compelled to jump ship. That changed with my most recent bill generated at the end of last month.

As announced in March, T-Mobile increased the cost of legacy plans by $5 per month per line. As such, my bill, which is usually $173 or $183 per month, jumped up to $212. My grandma’s portion of the bill increased by $5, my parents’ went up $10, and my partner and I were looking at a $15/month increase — with nothing to show for it other than more money leaving our pockets.

Is an extra $15/month make-or-break money? In our situation, no. But it’s still extra money we’re paying without gaining anything in return. As a self-proclaimed penny-pincher, I wasn’t a fan of that.

But there’s more to it. If this were the only issue we’d had with T-Mobile in the 10 years we’ve been customers, I’d probably be willing to stomach the cost and remain subscribed. But having been a customer for so long, I’ve witnessed firsthand a constant degradation in the service we’re paying for.

What kind of degradation? The mobile app is a prime example. For the longest time, T-Mobile had separate applications for its various services. There was a main T-Mobile app to manage your account and bill, plus another T-Mobile Tuesdays app to get your free goodies each week. They weren’t anything spectacular, but they were good, reliable mobile apps.

In 2024, T-Mobile retired those applications and replaced them with a new, singular T-Life app. On paper, this is a swell idea. In practice, it’s been awful. The app constantly throws pop-ups and survey requests in your face. Important details like bill history and payment methods are hidden below giant banners to remind you of your Magenta Status. The app regularly logs me out of my account even when I’m actively using it, and on multiple occasions, it’s failed to process a bill payment.

It isn’t just the T-Life app, though. Customer service used to be one of T-Mobile’s biggest advantages over other major carriers. Remember when T-Mobile made a big push for its “Team of Experts” program? The pitch was that all postpaid TMO subscribers had a small, dedicated group of customer service agents to help them out, and you’d always talk to a real person and never a bot.

Yeah, not so much anymore. The last few times I’ve used the live chat feature in T-Life, I’ve had to first talk with T-Mobile’s “AI-powered Virtual Assistant.” And, like any good AI customer service chatbot, I have to type “customer service” and indicate I want to talk to a real person to get the help I need. It’s a mess.

What else? The quality of freebies from T-Mobile Tuesday has decreased dramatically over the years. In 2023, T-Mobile removed autopay discounts if you had autopay set up with a credit card, forcing you to link your bank account or debit card to keep that discount. And that’s not to mention the (at least) nine major data breaches T-Mobile has had since 2018.

If only one of these things were true, we’d be having a different conversation. But the fact that all of this has happened — and T-Mobile is now asking me to pay more money for a significantly worse service — I’m at my breaking point.

If things have been so bad, why have I stayed with T-Mobile for so long? Because it was easy. I don’t have an allegiance to the company or anything like that, but if you’ve switched carriers before, you know how much of a hassle the process can be. But after months and years of mounting frustration, throwing a price increase on top of everything else finally got me to call it quits.

Does all of this mean T-Mobile is the worst carrier out there? One you should avoid altogether? No. If you’re OK with the price increase and happy with your service, you may not need (or want) to switch.

However, if you’re a longtime customer like me who hasn’t made a change in a while, and you aren’t thrilled with the trajectory T-Mobile is heading, use this as your sign to start searching for something new. That’s what I’m doing, and as time-consuming as searching for a new carrier may be, I think it’ll be well worth it in the end.