T-Mobile and Best Buy go way back — and by way back, we mean just about two years as of now. Users could look through and shop T-Mobile’s plans and devices from Best Buy stores without needing to go to a T-Mobile location. That way, T-Mobile became more easily reachable by users.
The partnership was sort of an extension and expansion of the agreement between Sprint and Best Buy prior to the acquisition of Sprint by T-Mobile. Unfortunately, not everything lasts forever.
The carrier is apparently ending their partnership with Best Buy, and the retailer will not offer the carrier’s services through its stores anymore.
As per a Reddit post and independently confirmed by us here at The Mobile Report, T-Mobile will not renew its contract with Best Buy, which first entered into effect in 2021. As a result of this change, T-Mobile’s plans and services will be slowly phased out over the course of the next few weeks.
Best Buy will remove T-Mobile’s landing page from its website on August 31st, and two weeks later, on September 14th, the retailer will end all exchanges and activations in stores.
From the period encompassing September 15th to October 1st, only returns will be allowed. These will shut down as well on October 1st, ceasing all links between T-Mobile and Best Buy completely.
We’re not exactly sure of the reason behind this fallout, as neither T-Mobile nor Best Buy have commented publicly on the matter. It’s likely that as we near August 31st, some sort of public announcement will be published by one or both companies, given that the timeline we detailed above will probably need to be announced so users are aware of what will happen.
For now, though, we can only speculate on what’s happening here. It’s definitely an important loss, however, given users were able to snag really good deals on phones sold through Best Buy during shopping seasons such as Black Friday.
Man, that's unfortunate. I was thrilled when they finally partnered with Best Buy like the other major carriers.