T-Mobile is reportedly mounting pressure on its employees at a time when it is losing loyal customers. 

During the third quarter of 2025, the phone carrier saw its postpaid phone churn, which represents the amount of customers who canceled their phone service, reach 0.89%, according to its latest earnings report. This is 3 basis points higher than the churn T-Mobile reported for the same quarter in 2024.

The increased customer losses follow the company’s decision to raise monthly bills in late 2024 and early 2025, affecting customers on legacy phone plans. It also made drastic phone plan changes, such as removing taxes and fees from pricing and automatically moving customers to newer plans.

To win customers back, T-Mobile has launched several offers, including free phone line promotions, competitive trade-in deals for iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices, and generous perks through its T-Life app in recent months. 

T-Mobile is raising eyebrows with its strategy to boost signups for a new offer.

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T-Mobile pressures employees to push new offer to customers

Now, T-Mobile has a new offer for customers; however, this time, the company is reportedly using it as a performance metric for its sales representatives.

In November, T-Mobile launched its first credit card in partnership with Capital One, which features no annual fees, 5% rewards on T-Mobile purchases, and 2% rewards on all other purchases. The new card runs on Visa’s network, and T-Mobile customers can get $5 off their monthly bills when they use the card with autopay activated.

T-Mobile is reportedly telling employees to get as many customers to sign up for the card as possible and has added this goal to its “Un-Carrier Leaderboard Ranker,” a ranking system that measures employee performance, according to The Mobile Report.  

In addition, T-Mobile has reportedly assigned customer accounts to one of three status categories. The first one is “priority,” where customers are “pre-approved” for the card, and employees are instructed to send them an application link to sign up for it, even when the customer didn’t ask for one.

The second status involves a button labeled “Present T-Mobile Visa via SMS link only if requested.” This one prompts employees to click this button to send an application link, but only if a customer requests one. However, employees are reportedly sending these customers applications anyway to meet sales goals. 

Related: T-Mobile quietly makes cold move as loyal customers leave

The third status is when customers don’t have this button attached to their account. In these cases, employees are told to point those customers to a QR code they can scan to sign up for the card if they show interest in applying. 

Because of this new initiative, customers should expect sales representatives to be more aggressive about pushing them to sign up for the new T-Mobile card, especially since their job security allegedly depends on it. 

A recent post on social media platform Reddit from a user who claims to be a T-Mobile employee even revealed that sales representatives risk getting laid off if they fall below the bottom 25% in terms of customer signups. 

“Basically if you bottom 25% from here on out, See ya later,” wrote the employee in the post. 

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In the post, the employee said they had never seen their district manager “so spooked” after an internal meeting on Sunday unveiled this information to their team.

This is not the first time T-Mobile has pressured employees to push a new offer to customers. Last February, T-Mobile launched a new in-store system called Magenta Welcome, which requires store employees to encourage customers to download the T-Life app. 

Employees are reportedly even tracked and rewarded for getting customers to use T-Life. For each account, they earn a maximum bonus of $10, and if they fail to encourage a certain number of customers to sign up for the app, they allegedly face repercussions. 

T-Mobile is shrinking its workforce

T-Mobile’s move to tie sign-ups for its new credit card to employees’ performance metrics comes as it quietly conducts layoffs. 

The phone carrier reportedly laid off an unknown number of account executives and sales managers in December. This month, it also laid off workers across several other departments, including end-user support, resource planning, consumer and retail, product, and sales and business.

In a statement to TheStreet on Jan. 20, T-Mobile said there have been “some changes” at the company this month, but didn’t share how many employees were let go.  

“Being the Un-carrier has always meant growing in ways that fuel broader products and services, deepen connections with our customers and enable us to respond even faster to a dynamic market,” said T-Mobile in the statement.

“As the next step in our evolution, we’re making some changes while continuing to hire to ensure we have the right focus, structure and momentum to keep changing the industry through innovation and our long-standing focus on customers,” the company added.

T-Mobile’s recent job cuts follow a concerning trend where more companies nationwide are shrinking their workforces amid economic challenges and the rise of artificial intelligence, according to a recent survey from Resume.org.  

How many U.S. companies are planning layoffs in 2026:

  • Approximately 55% of companies expect to conduct layoffs in 2026. 
  • Specifically, 48% said layoffs will definitely or probably occur during the first quarter of the year.
  • Also, 44% of companies said artificial intelligence was the top reason for layoffs, while 42% said reorganization/restructuring and 39% said budget constraints.
    Source: Resume.org

“What we are seeing is workforce rebalancing,” said Kara Dennison, head of career advising at Resume.org, in a statement. “Companies are laying off in areas that no longer align with near-term priorities while hiring aggressively in functions tied to revenue, transformation, and efficiency.”

T-Mobile is heading in a new direction

It is no surprise that T-Mobile is conducting layoffs, especially since it replaced its CEO, Mike Sievert, with Srini Gopalan in November. 

A month before becoming CEO, Gopalan said he plans to roll out a “digital transformation” at T-Mobile to address customer frustrations. 

This reportedly involves making customers solely dependent on its T-Life app to handle upgrades, new lines, and account activations. This announcement raised concerns among some employees, who feared they would lose their jobs as a result of the new initiative. 

“The amount of friction and frustration we cause customers today because of our processes and the state of evolution in this industry is phenomenal,” said Gopalan during an earnings call in October. “We have a huge opportunity to change that with our digital transformation.”

T-Mobile is doubling down on consumer satisfaction amid heightened competition from Verizon and AT&T, which have been rolling out more free perks and phone deals to attract new customers.

​​Cable giants, such as Xfinity and Spectrum, have also lured new phone customers by offering discounted phone plans when bundled with TV and internet services.

As the wireless market becomes increasingly competitive, T-Mobile faces the threat of losing more customers. Many consumers across the country are considering switching to more affordable phone plans outside their current provider, especially as they battle rising monthly bills, according to a recent survey from Oxio. 

Why U.S. consumers are considering switching phone providers: 

  • Approximately 90% of consumers would consider alternatives to traditional phone carriers.
  • Also, 85% consider cost to be a main factor in mobile provider selection.
  • Additionally, 46% of consumers rank a lower-priced plan as their main reason for switching providers, while 33% prioritize better network coverage.
    Source: Oxio

“The research shows that many consumers are looking for greater plan clarity and value — they want services that match what they actually use,” said Oxio CcxEO Nicolas Girard in a statement. “We’re seeing a strong interest in personalization, transparency and more control over mobile services.”

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