T-Mobile is wiping out the remaining debt on phones purchased by some ex-Sprint customers

On Reddit, some T-Mobile subscribers are showing screenshots of a message they recently received from the carrier. The message says, "Sprint is now T-Mobile: Good news! We've forgiven the remaining balance for the installment billing agreement(s) below. You now own your device in full, so you can use its trade-in value when you upgrade to a new device. This change will be reflected on your bill within 1-2 bill cycles."

One person who just received this message said that he still had a full year remaining on his installment plan which T-Mobile wiped out with a swipe of a pen. Some believe that T-Mobile was forced to do this because it had trouble converting some of the Sprint leases/installment contracts to the T-Mobile side of the ledger. So to help the few remaining ex-Sprint subscribers migrate to the Un-carrier, T-Mobile had to make this generous offer.

Or, as one Redditor with the user name "xzxnightshade" explains, "Basically a small portion of Sprint customers never transitioned to T-Mobile for whatever reason, and the phones they got owed money to Sprint. They (T-Mobile) decided to get everyone migrated over. T-Mobile would buy out the money you owed to Sprint, and once it appears on your bill they can migrate you over fully to T-Mobile, it’s like unlocking your phone in a way."

So the good news is that if you did receive this message from T-Mobile, it is legit and you now own your phone free and clear. As T-Mobile notes in the message that it sent to the appropriate parties, the device can now be used as a trade-in toward the purchase of a new handset.

We also were just thinking that perhaps wiping off the remaining payments has forced T-Mobile to limit which relatives a rep can arrange to receive a 75% discount. We're not really serious about that; certainly, there is no connection. Actually, it appears that T-Mobile was forced into wiping out the remaining payments owed to Sprint, possibly for some reason that might have had to do with transitioning the final holdout Sprint customers to T-Mobile.

If you did receive one of the notices, don't waste your time analyzing it. Enjoy T-Mobile's largesse; for whatever reason the carrier paid off your debt. Congrats!