T-Mobile Price Guarantee Settlement: New York AG Deal Explained

New York Attorney General Letitia James closed an investigation into T-Mobile's 2024 price increases with a signed Assurance of Discontinuance effective October 20, 2026. New York accounts that bought a 2017 era price guarantee and were still on the plan when prices rose in 2024 can cancel and have their last month's charge paid, or stay and hold their rate into 2029; accounts with a line still below 5G can also take a free or discounted 5G phone.

Information last verified on October 22, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This covers a New York state enforcement settlement, binding on T-Mobile USA, Inc. and reaching wireless accounts billed in New York that enrolled in a T-Mobile ONE plan between January 1, 2017 and April 30, 2019. It does not create benefits for T-Mobile customers billed in any other state, it is not a class action, and it does not resolve any private lawsuit. For how other pricing-disclosure rules are being written and enforced elsewhere, see our coverage of Illinois's move to all-in upfront pricing.

What Happened

The Office of the Attorney General commenced its investigation under New York Executive Law § 63(12) and General Business Law §§ 349 and 350, and resolved it with an Assurance of Discontinuance rather than a lawsuit. The document is numbered 26-042 and names T-Mobile USA, Inc. as respondent, together with its brands, subsidiaries, successors and assigns.

The findings describe a marketing period the OAG calls the Offer Period, running from approximately January 2017 through April 2019. During that window T-Mobile promoted a price guarantee on certain T-Mobile ONE plans running on its 4G network. The promises were made in at least two press releases, in January and August of 2017, and in a January 2017 video interview with the company's then chief executive shown on CNET, as well as on T-Mobile's website during some or all of the period.

According to the findings, those materials told consumers that T-Mobile "will never change the price you pay" for their plans, that only consumers "have the power to change the price [they] pay", that prices "won't go up", and that the offer "abolishes price hikes".

New York consumers enrolled in approximately 252,957 Price Guarantee Plans during the Offer Period, many with more than one line. In May and/or June of 2024, T-Mobile raised prices on certain New York wireless customers by approximately $5 per line and an average of $12 per account, and consumers on Price Guarantee Plans were among those subject to the increases.

The fine-print finding

Paragraph 5 addresses the fine-print defense a carrier would normally raise.

[A]ny purported disclaimers or qualifying language that could be argued to cure the deceptiveness of the Price Guarantee Offer were ineffective, both because they directly contradicted what a reasonable consumer would understand the Price Guarantee Offer to mean and/or because they were not presented clearly and conspicuously in proximity to the Price Guarantee Offer. Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-042, OAG Findings, paragraph 5

The paragraph states two grounds and joins them with and/or, so on its face either one can carry the finding alone: the disclaimer contradicted the headline promise, and the disclaimer was not placed where a consumer would encounter it. Paragraph 7 then states the OAG's conclusion that the conduct violated Executive Law § 63(12) and General Business Law §§ 349 and 350.

Paragraph 8 records that T-Mobile neither admits nor denies Findings 1 through 7, and paragraph 42 states that nothing in the Assurance is to be construed as an admission of liability or of the truth or falsity of any allegation. Paragraph 43 adds that advertising changes made to comply are not evidence of wrongdoing. Those clauses are standard in negotiated state resolutions and they matter when reading the headline: a settled investigation is not an adjudication.

In its own notice templates, attached as Exhibits A1 and A2, T-Mobile describes the 2024 changes as "small adjustments to some of our oldest rate plan prices" made "in response to rising costs and inflation", a characterization materially different from the OAG's.

What the Assurance Actually Requires

The press release describes outcomes. The Assurance supplies the machinery, including a clock the press release never mentions. Anyone trying to understand whether and when something arrives needs the document, not the announcement.

Who is covered

Coverage turns on two defined terms, both limited to accounts billed in New York that signed up for a T-Mobile ONE wireless plan between January 1, 2017 and April 30, 2019 and that remained on the plan at the time of the 2024 increase.

An Upgrade Eligible Account is such an account with at least one wireless line known by T-Mobile to be experiencing less than 5G service as of the effective date. An Upgrade Ineligible Account is such an account whose lines are all on 5G service, or for which T-Mobile's device information is incomplete. Together the two categories are the Covered Accounts. Both definitions turn on what T-Mobile knows. An account whose device records are incomplete is classified Upgrade Ineligible and gets no device offer even if its lines are in fact below 5G, and the Assurance sets out no process for a customer to contest that classification.

That structure explains the device remedy. T-Mobile launched its 5G network in December 2019, after the Offer Period closed, so a subset of guarantee holders stayed on slower 4G service for years. The free or discounted handset is directed at that group.

What each group gets

Upgrade Eligible Accounts have a 45 day window after the Notification Date to cancel. Those that cancel receive payment of their last month's recurring charge plus a $25 cash card. The Assurance is specific about the card in a footnote: it must work at any retail store, alone or combined with cash, must work for online purchases wherever credit cards are accepted, carries no fees, charges or conditions of any kind, and has no expiration date.

Upgrade Eligible Accounts that stay have the same 45 days to select a 5G capable phone for each line running below 5G. Certain devices valued up to $250 are offered free; for other devices the customer receives a $150 credit. No switching, transfer or activation fee may be charged for the upgrade. Those accounts also receive a commitment that the monthly recurring charge on the current plan will not increase before May 30, 2029, with a carve out letting T-Mobile rename or recategorize the plan on the back end so long as the charge does not rise.

Upgrade Ineligible Accounts get the 45 day cancellation window with last month's recurring charge paid, or, if they stay, the same May 30, 2029 price commitment. They do not get a device.

The notice clock

Notice is delivered, not claimed. The Notification Date is defined as a date no later than 150 days after the October 20, 2026 effective date, which places the outer limit on or about March 19, 2027. T-Mobile must email the notice to every address in its records for each Covered Account. Where there is no email address on file, or the email bounces, T-Mobile must send the notice by U.S. mail, and accounts receiving that mailed notice get 5 additional days on top of the 45. A reminder must also appear on the first bill issued to each Covered Account after the Notification Date.

Because the 45 days run from whatever date T-Mobile actually sends notice rather than from a fixed calendar date, there is no single published deadline. The outside edge of the whole process, if T-Mobile uses all 150 days, falls in early May 2027.

The forward-looking obligations run on their own schedule. Paragraph 19, which requires T-Mobile to honor any price guarantee applicable to a consumer unless that consumer agrees in writing to change it on clearly disclosed terms, and which voids any such written agreement obtained by threatening to remove, downgrade or condition the customer's service or to raise the price of some other service or item, applies immediately after the effective date. It does not restrict T-Mobile's ability to change or end benefits supplied by third parties. The advertising and disclosure obligations in paragraphs 17 and 18 take effect within four months, placing them around February 20, 2027.

Enforcement has a reporting hook rather than a monitor. T-Mobile must give the State two reports, at 30 and 90 days after the Notification Date, describing its notice efforts and the numbers and percentages of Covered Accounts that accepted each benefit. Paragraph 28 also builds in a step before any enforcement: the OAG must identify the alleged violation and give T-Mobile thirty days to cure it or explain why it is not a violation, unless the OAG determines in good faith that the alleged violation is a threat to the health, safety or welfare of the public and requires immediate action.

The disclosure rule going forward

Paragraph 18 sets the standard T-Mobile must now meet when it advertises any price guarantee.

Any limitation of a Price Guarantee to a specific period or range of time shall be Clearly and Conspicuously disclosed in the same sentence as the Price Guarantee. Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-042, Injunctive Relief, paragraph 18

"Clearly and Conspicuously" is a defined term in the Assurance, and the definition is doing work. A disclosure must be readily noticeable, readable, understandable and capable of being heard; it "may not contradict or be inconsistent with any other information with which it is presented"; and if it modifies or clarifies something, it must sit in proximity to what it modifies and must not be obscured. The definition then sets separate adequacy requirements for audio, for text message, television and internet disclosures, and for print and point of sale material.

What the Law Actually Says

Three New York provisions carry this action, and only one of them is a consumer fraud statute in the ordinary sense.

Executive Law § 63(12) lets the Attorney General apply to the state supreme court, on five days' notice, where a person has engaged in repeated fraudulent or illegal acts or otherwise demonstrates persistent fraud or illegality in carrying on business, and to seek an injunction plus restitution and damages. The subdivision defines "repeated" to include conduct that affects more than one person, which is why a single marketing campaign can support it.

General Business Law § 349 declares unlawful unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices in the conduct of any business, trade or commerce or in furnishing any service in the state. The unfair and abusive prongs are new. They were added by the FAIR Business Practices Act, chapter 708 of the Laws of 2025, which the Governor signed on December 19, 2025 and which took effect on the sixtieth day after it became law, February 17, 2026, after all of the conduct the OAG found here; section 349(a)(1) defines unfair and section 349(a)(2) defines abusive, while the section defines no term "deceptive". The OAG's findings in this matter rest on deception. Going forward, the abusive definition reaches an act that "materially interferes with the ability of a person to understand a term or condition of a product or service", which gives the Attorney General a second route to a fine-print theory in future New York matters.

General Business Law § 350 is one sentence: false advertising in the conduct of any business, trade or commerce or in furnishing any service in the state is unlawful.

The settlement vehicle itself comes from Executive Law § 63(15), which lets the Attorney General accept an assurance of discontinuance in place of a civil enforcement action, may include a stipulation for voluntary payment of the costs of the investigation, and provides that evidence of a violation of the assurance is prima facie proof of a violation of the underlying law in any civil action or proceeding the Attorney General later brings. That middle clause, authorizing a stipulated payment of the Attorney General's reasonable costs and disbursements rather than per violation penalties, explains why the $98,834.75 is small. It is characterized in the Assurance as a payment to the State "in connection with this matter", not as a consumer fund and not as a civil penalty calculated per violation.

Private claims are handled separately and explicitly. The release in paragraph 27 takes effect on receipt of full payment and releases only claims "asserted or could have been asserted by the State", and only on the activities in Findings 1 through 6.

Nothing contained herein shall be construed as to deprive any person of any private right under the law. Assurance of Discontinuance No. 26-042, General Provisions, paragraph 31

The private right that provision leaves intact is narrower than the statute the AG used. General Business Law § 349(h) gives a person injured "by reason of any deceptive act or deceptive practice" an action in their own name for an injunction, for actual damages or fifty dollars whichever is greater, or both, with discretion in the court to increase the award to an amount not to exceed three times actual damages up to one thousand dollars where it finds a willful or knowing violation and to award reasonable attorney's fees to a prevailing plaintiff. The private hook covers deceptive conduct; the unfair and abusive prongs added to subsection (a) are enforced by the Attorney General under subsection (b), not by private plaintiffs under subsection (h).

Paragraph 45 preserves the other side of that coin, reserving T-Mobile's right to defend itself and to make agreements in any private individual or class action.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The notable thing here is not the money. It is that the OAG refused to let a website disclaimer define what a promise meant, and said so on two grounds rather than one. Paragraph 5 does not merely find the disclaimer badly placed. It finds that the qualifying language contradicted what a reasonable consumer would take the guarantee to mean, and that it was not clearly and conspicuously presented near the claim, joining the two with and/or. Read that way, a carrier that fixed only the placement would still be exposed under the first ground.

That pairs with the compliance standard in paragraph 18, which is unusually concrete for an advertising decree. Most disclosure provisions require prominence and proximity and leave the rest to argument. Requiring a time limitation to appear in the same sentence as the guarantee removes the argument, because a sentence is a thing you can point to. It is the kind of drafting that is easy to audit later, and that is presumably the point given the prima facie proof mechanism in Executive Law § 63(15).

The benefit design is also worth reading on its own terms. There is no fund, no claims administrator and no pro rata distribution. T-Mobile notifies its own customers from its own records and reports its uptake numbers to the State. That removes the usual friction of a claims process, where most eligible people never file. It also means the realized value depends on how many people open an email and act inside 45 days, which is exactly why the reporting obligation at 30 and 90 days exists. The "up to more than $38 million" in the press release is the OAG's own estimate of the value of the benefit package, calculated by that office and absent from the Assurance; the floor is whatever customers actually accept.

The scope deserves a plain reading too. The conduct described, a national marketing campaign followed by a national 2024 rate increase, was not confined to New York, but this remedy is, because the defined Covered Accounts are accounts billed in New York. Consumer protection in the United States is enforced both federally and state by state, and each state's office sets its own priorities and brings its own matters. A New York resolution is evidence of what one office concluded on one record. It is not a determination about anyone else's plan, and it creates no entitlement outside New York.

Finally, the no-admission clauses are not decoration. T-Mobile neither admitted nor denied the findings, the Assurance disclaims any admission of liability, and its own notice templates describe the 2024 changes as inflation driven adjustments. Reporting that treats the findings as proven facts is overstating the record. The OAG concluded; T-Mobile agreed to relief without conceding the conclusion.

How This Affects You

For wireless customers generally, the practical lesson in this record is about where a limitation lives rather than whether one exists. The OAG's position is that a qualifier contradicting a headline promise does not cure it, and that a qualifier buried away from the claim does not cure it either. Courts and regulators applying similar unfair and deceptive practices statutes have generally looked to what a reasonable consumer would take the overall presentation to mean, which is the standard paragraph 5 applies.

For anyone with a New York billed account from the 2017 to 2019 period, the process runs on notice rather than on an application. Nothing here requires filling out a form, and the Assurance establishes no claim portal. Notice is supposed to arrive from T-Mobile by email, with a mailed notice where email fails and a reminder on the next bill, and the selection window is 45 days from that notice, or 50 for those reached by mail. Under the notice templates attached as Exhibits A1 and A2, the selection is made by replying to T-Mobile's own notice or calling T-Mobile's care team at the number in it. Nothing in this agreement routes a customer to any other company or website, so a site asking for account credentials, a payment, or personal data to "claim" a T-Mobile price guarantee benefit is not part of it. Consumer complaints about conduct in New York go to the Attorney General's own complaint intake.

For customers in other states, this agreement provides nothing. There is no New York style benefit to request from T-Mobile elsewhere, and asking for one on the strength of this settlement will not produce it. What the document does provide outside New York is a readable account of how one regulator analyzed the disclaimers, which is also the thread running through pricing enforcement in other sectors, from the Federal Trade Commission's action over undisclosed booking fees to the advertised-price rules written for car dealers and New York City's own rules on pricing and cancellation.

None of the above is a statement about any particular account, and none of it predicts what any regulator or court will do next.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers a New York state enforcement settlement and the New York statutes behind it, and reflects the Assurance of Discontinuance and the Attorney General's press release as verified on October 22, 2026. Laws change, notice dates under this agreement are still in the future, and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• How Illinois wrote all-in pricing into state law
• New York City's rules on advertised prices and cancelling a subscription
• A federal regulator's case over fees buried at checkout
• What price transparency rules look like in the auto sector

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Last updated: 2026-10-22. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-22.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a T-Mobile price guarantee settlement claim form?

No. The Assurance of Discontinuance creates no claim form and no claims administrator. Paragraph 23 requires T-Mobile to send notice directly to each Covered Account by email, with a mailed notice if there is no address on file or the email bounces, plus a reminder on the first bill issued after the Notification Date.

What is the deadline to accept the T-Mobile settlement benefits in New York?

There is no single published date. Paragraphs 21 and 22 give each Covered Account 45 days after the Notification Date, and paragraph 13 requires that Notification Date to fall no later than 150 days after the October 20, 2026 effective date, which is on or about March 19, 2027. Accounts reached by mailed notice get 5 additional days.

Does this T-Mobile settlement apply outside New York?

No. Paragraphs 15 and 16 define both categories of Covered Account as T-Mobile wireless accounts billed in New York that signed up for a T-Mobile ONE plan between January 1, 2017 and April 30, 2019 and stayed on it through the 2024 increase. The agreement was obtained by the New York Attorney General and creates no benefit for accounts billed elsewhere.

How much is T-Mobile paying in the New York price guarantee settlement?

Paragraph 26 requires a single payment of $98,834.75 to the State. The 'up to more than $38 million' figure comes from the Attorney General's October 20, 2026 press release and is that office's valuation of the consumer benefits package; it is not a fund, and it does not appear in the Assurance.

Did T-Mobile admit it misled customers about the price guarantee?

No. Paragraph 8 records that T-Mobile neither admits nor denies the OAG's Findings 1 through 7, and paragraph 42 states that nothing in the document is an admission of liability or of the truth or falsity of any allegation. The OAG reached its own conclusion under Executive Law section 63(12) and General Business Law sections 349 and 350.

Does the settlement stop a customer from suing T-Mobile over the 2024 increase?

The release in paragraph 27 runs only to claims the State asserted or could have asserted, and paragraph 31 states that nothing in the Assurance deprives any person of any private right under the law. General Business Law section 349(h) provides a private action for deceptive acts, with actual damages or fifty dollars whichever is greater. Whether any individual has a viable claim is a separate question for a lawyer licensed in that person's jurisdiction.

When do T-Mobile's new price guarantee disclosure rules take effect?

Paragraph 20 sets two dates. Paragraph 19, which requires T-Mobile to honor a price guarantee unless the consumer agrees in writing to change it on clearly disclosed terms, and which treats any such written agreement as invalid if T-Mobile obtained it by threatening to remove, downgrade or condition the customer's service or to raise the price of something else, applies immediately after the October 20, 2026 effective date. It does not stop T-Mobile from changing or ending benefits supplied by third parties. The advertising and disclosure obligations in paragraphs 17 and 18, including the requirement that any time limitation appear in the same sentence as the guarantee, apply within four months of that date.