T-Mobile is continuing to face backlash over the reversal of its pricing guarantee, this time in the form of a class action lawsuit.

T-Mobile announced in May that it was raising prices on some legacy plans, including those previously covered by the company’s price guarantee. In some cases, the price hike was as much as $5 per line per month, as well as $2 per line per month for connected devices.

The magenta carrier is now facing a lawsuit claiming that it reneged on its promises:

Based upon T-Mobile’s representations that the rates offered with respect to certain plans were guaranteed to last for life or as long as the customer wanted to remain with that plan, each Plaintiff and the Class Members agreed to these plans for wireless cellphone service from T-Mobile. However, in May 2024, T-Mobile, Unilaterally did away with these legacy phone plans and switched Plaintiffs and the Class to more expensive plans without their consent.

The lawsuit then goes on to quote then-CEO John Legere’s promise to customers when the Un-contract price guarantee was introduced in 2017 (before being replaced by Price Lock in 2022):

Today, T-Mobile introduced the Un-contract for T-Mobile ONE — and notched another industry first with the first-ever price guarantee on an unlimited 4G LTE plan. With the Un-contract, T-Mobile signs, and the customers hold all the power. Now, T-Mobile ONE customers keep their price until THEY decide to change it. T-Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T-Mobile ONE plan. When you sign up for T-Mobile ONE, only you have the power to change the price you pay.

Given T-Mobile’s marketing surrounding its pricing guarantee, the BBB’s National Advertising Division (NAD) recommended that T-Mobile stop using “Price Lock” to describe its plans.

In each of the challenged advertisements, the description of the “Price Lock” policy appears in text below the claim and states, with some variation, “Get your last month of service on us if we ever raise your internet rate.” NAD found that a disclosure that “Price Lock” does not lock the price but gives consumers one month of free service if certain conditions are met contradicts the main message of the “Price Lock” claim.

Following our initial coverage of the NAD’s decision, a T-Mobile spokesperson reached out to WPN to share a statement disputing the NAD’s conclusion:

We believe the challenged ads clearly communicated our generous Price Lock benefit, which offers customers on eligible rate plans the opportunity to get their final month’s service charges paid by us if their price changes and they let us know they’ve chosen to leave. We will continue to offer Price Lock to customers but will take the NAD’s recommendations for clarifying the offer into consideration.

While that may be T-Mobile’s current explanation of what the Price Lock guarantees (and the plan has changed over the years) , that is most certainly not what Legere vocalized in 2017, nor is it line with some of the company’s other statements.

“Wireless consumers pay Billions extra every year in added surcharges, taxes, monthly fees and carrier price hikes. It’s reached epidemic proportions! And, the carriers just keep inventing new ways to make their customers pay. So, the Un-carrier’s putting an end to it,” said John Legere, then T-Mobile president and CEO in a company press release.

T-Mobile’s marketing and stance was very clear: Other companies hike prices, but we won’t. What customers didn’t realize is that promise only applied until it didn’t.