T-Mobile’s whistleblowers were right, so what comes next?

Some time back, multiple employees at T-Mobile reached out to us to let us know what the carrier was planning. They alleged that the company’s insistence on everyone using its T-Life app for everything meant two very sinister events were about to occur.

First, T-Mobile would start laying off its employees en masse. It would also start making working conditions more and more unpalatable to drive employees away by their own volition.

Second, the carrier would take another step that would make its services a much more unpleasant experience for its customers.

The first is already happening, so what comes next for T-Mobile’s customer base?

T-Mobile is axing jobs left, right, and center

Unfortunately, the un-carrier has been cutting jobs almost every month it seems. Employees are being let go, staff is being fired, and there are fewer T-Mobile representatives now than there have been in quite some time.

The whistleblowers who had reached out to us had claimed that the company wanted to drastically reduce its costs. One very easy way of doing this is to conduct mass layoffs, which is why Verizon did the same thing when CEO Dan Schulman took over.

But there are more ways to save on costs, and T-Mobile has already begun enacting step two of its master plan.

Stores are being shut down everywhere

T-Mobile is shutting stores at almost the same pace that it is letting go of employees. The idea is simple: the carrier gets to save on leasing and operational costs and customers are forced to use the T-Life app for everything instead.

Pretty soon, a physical T-Mobile store might become a very rare sight indeed. This might just be the one thing that Verizon and AT&T beat T-Mobile at, if the two don’t start following in the footsteps of the un-carrier, of course. After all, the two other carriers have also conducted their fair share of layoffs in recent memory.

So, what comes next for T-Mobile’s customer base?

Unfortunately, T-Mobile is determined to shift the majority of its operations to the T-Life app. Less tech-savvy customers will be forced to learn how to use T-Life while others, even if they don’t like it, will have to rely on the app as well.

The problem with this approach is that the T-Life app is, as is very often angrily pointed out by customers, a pretty unreliable piece of software. In addition, there are times when using the app is a huge inconvenience and an exercise in patience.

When T-Mobile first started requiring the mandatory use of the app in its stores, customers walked out in protest. To this day, the app is a point of contention between users and the company’s workforce that runs its stores.

Many customers don’t understand why they need to use the app to do something that would take an employee a couple of minutes to get done. Oftentimes, customers just hand over their phone to a T-Mobile representative at a store to do their job for them. Understandably, the un-carrier’s customer base doesn’t like being asked to carry out tasks that were once what employees were paid for.



Here’s what comes next, in my opinion. Stores will continue to disappear and more and more employees will find themselves out of a job. Some customers, I think, will absolutely switch networks just so they don’t have to deal with T-Life.

The majority of you, however, will likely stick around. T-Mobile is betting on the hassle of switching, as well as some of its excellent perks, deterring most users from switching.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the company’s users forming a united front to take a stand against its practices. So, as bitter as it may be to witness, T-Mobile will likely enjoy a successful forced transition to everything T-Life, and you’ll be forced to handle everything on your own from an app.

I hope you’re prepared.

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