T-Mobile has agreed to reimburse New York customers whose phone bills rose after the company sold them plans with a price-lock promise. Attorney General Letitia James announced the deal on Oct. 20 and valued the relief at “up to more than $38 million” for New Yorkers. T-Mobile will also pay $98,000 to the state.

The plans at issue were called Price Guarantee Plans. According to the attorney general’s office, about 252,957 New Yorkers were enrolled in plans whose bills went up starting in 2024, by about $5 per phone line.

New York customers who signed up for a Price Guarantee Plan and saw the monthly price rise after 2024 are the group covered. They should check whether T-Mobile has contacted them with the options, which depend on whether the account uses a 4G phone. The release lists no claim form or deadline and says T-Mobile “must provide” the choices. Customers can read the full terms in the state’s agreement with T-Mobile.

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What T-Mobile promised, and what happened

T-Mobile launched the Price Guarantee Plans in 2017 and advertised them to 4G customers from 2017 to 2019. The ads promised to “never change the price you pay,” the attorney general’s announcement says, and T-Mobile’s chief executive said the offer “abolishes price hikes.”

The state’s case is that terms buried in fine print let the company raise rates anyway. Starting in 2024, it did. “New Yorkers deserve clear and honest prices, not misleading offers with hidden fine print,” James said. She added that T-Mobile “misled hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers” and that her office is “getting New Yorkers their money back.”

The timeline runs in a straight line. The plans launched in 2017 and were advertised through 2019. The $5-a-line increases began in 2024, and the settlement was announced Oct. 20, 2026. Customers who stay with T-Mobile get a price freeze that runs to 2029 at the earliest. “Consumers shouldn’t have to pay the price for a misleading sale,” James said.

The choices for customers on 4G phones

Customers whom T-Mobile identified as using 4G phones get two options under the agreement. They can cancel the plan and receive a refund of their last monthly payment plus a $25 gift card. Or they can stay with T-Mobile and get a free $250 5G phone, or a $150 credit toward a more expensive model.

Those who stay get a price guarantee. Their plan price will not rise until at least 2029, according to the attorney general. For a household paying an extra $5 per line, the choice is between ending the plan with a refund of one monthly payment and a gift card, or keeping a frozen rate and a new phone or credit.

Everyone else on a price-lock plan

Customers who are not on 4G phones, including people who have since upgraded to 5G, have a narrower set of choices. They can cancel and get their last monthly payment back, or keep their plan with the same price guarantee through 2029.

T-Mobile also has to honor its current and future price guarantees and clearly disclose any limits on them, the attorney general says. That requirement covers promises T-Mobile makes in the future as well as the ones it made in the past.

What the $38 million figure means

The “more than $38 million” is the attorney general’s valuation of what the relief is worth to New Yorkers. It is not a fund that customers split. The announcement says “up to more than $38 million in value,” which counts refunds, gift cards, phones and credits that depend on which option each customer picks.

The $98,000 is a separate payment. T-Mobile will pay it to New York, not to customers, so it does not add to anyone’s refund. The release also says T-Mobile will pay “nearly $100,000,” and later gives the exact figure as $98,000.

Noah Popp, an assistant attorney general, and Kate Matuschak, senior enforcement counsel in the office’s Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau, led the investigation and the settlement talks. New Yorkers with a complaint about a bill can file one with the office through its complaint page.

Is the bill higher than the promise?

For T-Mobile customers who joined a plan years ago, the question is simple to state and harder to answer from a bill. The promise was a locked price, so the test is whether the per-line rate today is higher than the rate when the plan began. The agreement is between T-Mobile and New York, and the release does not describe relief for customers in other states.

The size of the increase is easy to calculate. At about $5 per line, a four-line account paid roughly $20 more a month after 2024, or about $240 a year. A bill from before the increase and one from this month, set side by side, show whether a particular account was hit.

Bill higher than the price you were promised?

A price that rose $5 a line after a price-lock promise adds up across a family plan, and a customer who takes the refund and gift card without comparing plans first may not have priced the alternatives.

Lower Your Phone & Internet Bill is a 12-page guide that goes through reading your bill line by line and marking what to keep, question or remove. It also compares carrier 55+ plans from T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon and gives the retention call word for word.

Get the T-Mobile bill worksheet and retention-call script for comparing plans →

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.