Why can’t they raise the rate directly or shut off these older plans? Am I missing some contractual issue?

FYI, your account appears to be shadowbanned for no reason I can discern. I had to vouch for your comment to get it to show up.

I’ve noticed many new/green accounts that get shadowbanned before (with?) the first post. The accounts will be less than a day old and all comments will be [dead].

I think that how country like Japan do that generally. (They hardly have any services that featuring "grandfathering") and new contract and terms under the new plan would be established in the renewal window.

But in the US, I believe post-paid plans (as opposed to prepaid) there seem to be fairly major red tapes on changing terms while staying compliant with whatever rules set by FTC and also States' equivalent, and that probably makes this very tricky.

the rate change would need to be communicated. harder to slip by. as opposed to just another fee.

it also can wind up causing a legacy plan to cost more than a current one. at times insultingly so. again, if you don’t notice and do (auto)pay, this is just fine by the companies.

and if all that is enough to get you to move to the new plan, good, now it was you that made the choice. you will defend the choice more strongly than if it were made for you. for it was yours, after all.

in time, those with legacy plans will “upgrade,” switch companies (same difference) or die.

the cycle continues.

A few years ago (10?), AT&T got into a lot of trouble - they lost in court - for making unilateral changes to an unlimited plan.

1. The AT&T unlimited plan being talked about here includes the HBO Max streaming for $0.

2. Just a few months ago, Xfinity started breaking out their free streaming service on internet bills, and put in a statement that said that in either late 2024 or early 2025 they were going to start charging a monthly fee unless you cancelled that part. If any of y’all have Xfinity and don’t have a habit of reading your bills, you’d better go take a look!

3. I’d be willing to bet that the “new” AT&T unlimited plan has contract language that will let them also do what Xfinity is doing, and the “old” one doesn’t. Maybe AT&T is considering a sale/spinoff and needs to have that charge broken out for accounting/valuation purposes.

Considering a sale/spinoff of what? HBO? That already happened last year.

Ah, well there you go. I doubt that they can keep including that service for free forever. Do you?

They certainly can but it would impact their profits, which is a no-no.

Will they drop the subscription? Almost certainly. Even if the spinoff included free access to AT&T subscribers, it'd likely only be for a few years.

AT&T is also reducing their autopay discount unless you switch from a credit card to a debit card or EFT.

Fwiw Tmobile is also pullomf this crap. Unless you pay with a bank account you pay more (5$ extra per line) which is ridiculous to me.

You can pay with a debit card, too. Given the number of data breaches T-Mobile has, there's no way I'm giving them my banking information.

How much safer is a debit card? I use mine only at ATMs, after hearing a few horror stories.

Ignoring the "deadline" emails/texts from T-mo myself for now. Maybe reevaluate if no hacks hit the news after a few months.

ATT has been doing shit like this for years. Making old plans that were a good deal obsolete. Their streaming service was a whole bunch of nonsense that just kept going up in price. I’m sure all mobile carriers have shitty practices but I dropped ATT for T-Mobile, time will tell if they turn out the same way. I do appreciate just paying a flat rate every month.