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

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

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

Keep & Switch and Family Freedom are similar offers, with both giving switchers up to $800 per line to help cover what they still owe their previous carrier. Keep & Switch is the version that lets you bring your existing phone over to T-Mobile, while Family Freedom is tied to trading in your old phone and buying 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, although accounts with only Home Internet or T-Satellite service can still qualify.

It’s not hard to see why T-Mobile might prefer the new setup. A brand-new account is cleaner and potentially more valuable to the carrier than adding another line to an existing family plan. Still, it makes the obvious family use case less appealing for customers if the person switching still has a phone balance to pay off elsewhere.

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

In isolation, tighter promo rules might not seem like a huge deal. But coming right after the forced migration news, it’s another customer-unfriendly tweak at a time when T-Mobile probably didn’t need one. That said, knowing that this latest switching promo news might cause a few more grumbles, perhaps the carrier decided to take all the potentially adverse PR hits at once and hope it doesn’t lose too much business in the process.