AT&T is trying to drive you to a new plan by making its old ones worse

Last week, AT&T announced new core plans that are largely a sidegrade at best and arguably are more of a downgrade in many ways. At the time, we ran a poll, and most agreed that AT&T customers were better off sticking to a legacy plan.

It seems AT&T predicted that many customers would feel this way, as the company has announced it will raise prices on legacy plans starting in April. It’s almost like they are trying to make their existing plans worse, so customers switch without giving it much thought.

Single-line users will see an increase of $10 a month, while multi-line users will see a $20 increase in total, regardless of the exact number of lines.

In an attempt to make this sound like it’s not just a complete shakedown of its customers, AT&T is throwing in an extra 20GB of hotspot data per month. Of course, that’s one of the most underused perks, and an easy addition for AT&T that really brings very little to the table for most users.

The one small silver lining here is that if you’ve switched accounts in the last nine months or sooner? You won’t see an increase even if the plan you switched to is a legacy offering. This is basically to ensure that newer customers don’t feel like they were given the old bait-and-switch.

Previously, these eligible fields would get a 25 percent discount, but that’s since been lowered to “up to 20 percent” with some fields seeing even lower discounts than this. These new special discount rates apply to both older and newer plans.

I can’t say I’m too surprised by these changes. The mobile landscape is more competitive than ever, and all three carriers have made a lot of cuts like this over the last year or so. AT&T is in some ways just catching up here, but considering the carrier already was seen as the “sleeper option” that most overlook? I can’t help but feel like this is a risky move.