It was back in March T-Mobile made waves in the mobile industry after officially announcing that they would be doing away with their Classic rate plans — and device subsidies in the process — in favor of new, contract-free, Simple Choice plans. Sure, making monthly payments on your new phone made them just about as expensive as the other guys, but the fact that you could BYOD (bring your own device) and pay a substantially lower rate for monthly service was liberating.
Originally, Simple Choice was a move that affected only first-party T-Mobile retail locations — not 3rd party retailers like Best Buy, Target, Walmart, or Sam’s Club. These 3rd party retailers were free to continue offering the old Classic plans and discounted devices on-contract, but it looks like all of that is about to change.
According to a leaked memo obtained by TMoNews, T-Mobile will be retiring their Classic plan option at 3rd party retailers, getting them on the same page as 1st party stores. Changes are said to go into effect on November 1st, and although it wasn’t mentioned in the leaked doc, we suspect this might have something to do with phase 3 of T-Mobile’s “Un-carrier 3.0″ plans for later this year. No way to say for sure.
3rd party retailers will begin sending their post-paid devices back to HQ, with support for device exchanges and buyers remorse to be handled at the wherever the device was originally purchased. It will be interesting to see what T-Mobile has up their sleeves. We know they aren’t going to leave partners like Walmart hanging for very long.
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