Last month, T-Mobile debuted a new perk for its customers: a free standard Netflix subscription. It’s not the best offer in the world, since it requires multiple lines on the account to work, but for anyone who qualifies it’s difficult to turn down free stuff.
Less than a month after T-Mobile announced Netflix On Us, the streaming company turned around and hiked prices on its cheapest plans. Luckily for T-Mobile subscribers, your cell carrier is picking up the tab.
T-Mobile support confirmed that the price hike is being fully covered by T-Mobile’s offer. It will continue to pay for one standard subscription, which now costs $10.99 rather than $9.99. If you want the premium Netflix plan, which offers support for 4K content and 4 concurrent streams, you have to pay T-Mobile the $3 difference between the regular plan and the $13.99 premium plan.
There’s a good chance that T-Mobile isn’t actually paying Netflix any more money on your behalf. The Netflix On Us offer works by T-Mobile paying Netflix directly on your behalf, so there’s likely an existing agreement between T-Mobile and Netflix at a set price, and it’s unaffected by Netflix’s recent price hike.
Still, the end result is the same for you: no price increase for Netflix, since you’re not paying for it in the first place. Hard to argue with that.
