Yeah, sure: T-Mobile says those forced plan 'upgrades' were just a test

T-Mobile drew the ire of many people when it emerged that the company planned to force subscribers on old plans to move to newer, more expensive plans. In a consumer-hostile move, users could keep their old plans only after being “upgraded, but you’d need to call customer support to revert to the previous plan.

Now, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert has sent out a company-wide email (h/t: The Mobile Report) asserting that this move was merely part of a “very small” test.

Sievert added that the test hadn’t launched yet:

When it does [launch – ed], we would reach out to a small subset of consumers who are on older rate plans (some up to a decade old) to let them know they have an opportunity to move from their existing plans to newer, better plans that will offer more features and more value relative to what they currently have.

The executive added that eligible customers will get a text or email before any account changes take place. He notes that these users will be allowed to choose whether they stay on the older plans or switch to the new plans. There’s no mention of whether these users will have to jump through a hoop and call customer support in order to keep their old plans.

Either way, users on super-old T-Mobile plans might want to keep an eye out for any texts or emails from the carrier. But it might not be a bad idea to shop around for other cheap plans.