Many readers probably have T-Mobile service due to plans that include data access abroad and/or the popular posts I have written during the pandemic about adding free lines (like this one where I got a $200 Costco gift card for opening a free line, this free line promo, and this one) or the targeted offer to save $100 on service last year. I’m a couple of weeks behind about writing about the current T-Mobile Insider Hookup Deal, but if you’re on the T-Mobile Magenta Max plan or have thought about switching to it, you should definitely get in on this deal. You can save 20% on your T-Mobile bill forever.
Insider Hookup
T-Mobile ran this “Insider Hookup” deal several years ago. It was pretty popular then and I have long seen people at Slickdeals gloating about their Insider Hookup discount for years as they’ve stacked it with this deal and that deal. When I saw the promo come back earlier this month, I was definitely interested.
This time around, you need to get a code from an employee. As I understand it, each T-Mobile employee has received one code to share with an existing customer and one to share with a new customer switching from another carrier. Either way, the code takes 20% off your T-Mobile bill for life (note that I don’t know how long that will mean in reality and won’t be surprised if you’ll eventually want to switch to some other plan and lose the discount, but I imagine you’ll be able to enjoy significant savings for a long time).
The catch of course is that you need to be on the Magenta Max plan. That just won’t make sense for some people given the plethora of cheap MVNO options on the market where you can get cell service for next to nothing.
In my case, I live in a rural area and use my data all the time, both on the phone and tethering from it. Just last week, I drove to Columbus, Ohio and back to buy a new car (and take down half a million Amex points with the purchase) and I worked from the car for the 9hr ride each way (my wife drove — she’s a saint!). Having 40GB of mobile hotspot per line and otherwise unlimited data with no throttle cap is huge for me. I just don’t often use Wi-Fi.
Thanks to those free line promotions during the pandemic, I’m already getting a deal with which I’m pretty happy. I have Home Internet through T-Mobile (grandfathered at $50 per month, though also grandfathered into only 4G LTE speed on that) and I have 7 lines on Magenta Max (completely unlimited unthrottled data on the phone and 40GB of hotspot per line) and I pay a total of just over $235 per month with small charges for a couple of financed phones (note that you can’t get that same deal today as it relied on adding free lines during the promos referenced above).
If this Insider Hookup promotion works as I expect, I believe that I’ll get about $47 off per month, which works out to nearly $600 per year. Note that I’m not positive that the discount will also come off of the Home Internet (which is billed on the same T-Mobile bill). Even if it doesn’t discount that, I stand to save about $37 per month. Either way, that’s going to really add up over the next few years.
Finding a T-Mobile employee
For those who are already on Magenta Max or would be happy switching to it, the second challenge is that you’ll need to get a code from a T-Mobile employee. Unfortunately, it seems that all chat / Twitter team employees have been out of codes since a day or two after the promo launched.
However, my wife recently had to pass by a T-Mobile store, so she stopped in to chat with an employee and ask if they had a code. None of the employees in the store had heard of the promotion, but one of them knew that they sometimes receive emails about promotions. A couple of employees got on their computers searching for the email and one of them quickly found it. I think the email was dated January 1, 2022. If an employee searches “2022 T-Mobile Insider Deal”, I imagine they will likely find the codes — one for a current customer and one for “switchers”.
In my wife’s case, the employee was happy to just hand over the code, though I’ve read stories online of people offering to pay $100 or even more for a code given the substantial long-term savings.
Once we had the code, I just had to go here to enter the code online along with my information. It only took a few minutes to submit.
I immediately received a confirmation page and text message confirming submission that said I would get a status update indicating whether my eligibility was approved within 24 hours. It seems they have hit a big backlog as it took just over a week for that final confirmation to come through and I’ve seen reports of the same from others. The Twitter team reassured me that I had done everything right and it was just a matter of waiting for the promotions team to run through the backlog. I was excited when I got the final text confirming that I would see the discount on my upcoming bill.
Bottom line
This promotion is scheduled to run from 1/6/22 to 4/6/22. The biggest challenge will be finding an employee who still has a code to share, so you’ll want to get on this sooner rather than later since you’re starting a little late (sorry about that!). Still, if you stand to save hundreds of dollars per year, it certainly may be worth stopping in to find someone with a code.
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Just an update on this old post. The insider promo codes kept rolling after the quarter mentioned. This is still a great deal in Feb. 2024 however…T-mobile drastically cut the commission rate for t-mobile employees that sign up new customers using the codes that they still get so it’s harder to obtain them. Costco seems to be the best way to buy t-mobile plans currently and those employees should also have insider codes. In addition the insider codes only apply to new service now and this even bleed over to TMO MVNO’s like Mint, etc.
Any one have the inside discount that i can use ?
Home Internet @$25/mo currently, no MAX required. If you already have home internet the work around is add another home internet line and cancel the old one after 91days if you only want to keep one open. Cancelling old line would probably break a hookup discount though, not sure.
$100gc promo for new home Internet line is alledgedly applicable for the new home internet line. They say there is a $35 upgrade charge, but they didn’t seem to charge it when I ordered by calling in.
Verizon running competing deal with 10yr price lock.
If you have hard line internet, this is good leverage to get them to lower their rate or you can leave and come back as a new customer with new customer promo rate.
If you need truly mobile hotspot check out calyx. If I understand it correctly when sprint applied for the now defunct Wi-Max radio bands they were forced to allow rural internet access for 25yr. T-Mobile inherited that obligation with the merger. In true monopoly form they made it as hard to find and gimped it as much as they could. Think there are at least 10yr remaining on their obligation.
Anyone got an insider code I can have? I’ve got a family of 5 looking to switch from Verizon. Thank you!
Hello. I am on Magenta Amplified plan with my max number of lines – 12. I pay 300 a month after 40$ AutoPay Credit and 30$ Credit for Line on Us 1 and 30$ Credit for Line on US 2. If I upgrade to max – and get the 20% off – how do I calculate the math ? Can you help ?
Will I lose the Line on US promo credits if I change my plan ?
Just got an email with a 20% off for life code for anyone looking to switch to T-Mobile
Does it still work? Still have it?
Expires tomorrow (8/24/22). Please post if you use it so others don’t waste time.
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Using it. Thank you!
I went to 4 stores not one rep had any idea what I was talking about complete waste of my time & gas
Sorry to hear that. If it’s any consolation, the reps at my nearest store didn’t know what I was talking about either, but they did find it in their email when they searched. Doesn’t do you any good I know, but it is definitely a thing. I’ve had a couple of bills generate now and even added a line and a couple of devices and I’m getting the 20% off.
Tried the calling the phone rep route. He said I needed to go to a store. Went to my 4th store. They had no idea about the current promo and told me to call a phone rep. Called yet another rep and she didn’t know what I was talking about until I read to her my DMs from FB messenger. She put me on hold for a long time and came back and said they added it for me. Bill went from $105 (I have an Apple Watch and small iPad plan) to $88!
If at first you don’t succeed. . . .
I’ve been to 3 stores in the Tampa area and none of them have any idea about this promotion
See the data point just before you. Gotta get them to look through their email. If they don’t know what you’re talking about, that means they haven’t given away their code!
They claimed they had no emails. I contacted T-Mobile via DM and they said they would contact the store directly and let them know about the promo. I’ll be in San Diego next week. Maybe I’ll hit up some stores there.
This worked for me! I was already on a magenta plan at $70/month w a 50gb unlimited then slowed down beyond. With the 20% discount, I’ll get Max at $68, plus free Netflix and unlimited data. I tried at one store, but neither of the employees knew what I was talking about, nor showed any interest in figuring it out. But got a customer service rep on the phone who hunted around for the email and gave me his code.
And thanks to the frequent miler team! You guys always come through with great tips.
Awesome! Lucky that you got a phone rep to do it!
I had them search “2022 T-Mobile Insider Deal” in three different stores and no one found the email.
I just tried the phone rep route. No dice. Said I needed to go to a store. I’ve been to 3 stores now. I’ll try a couple more tomorrow.
DP – Just went to 2 different stores and struck out. They said they only got new account codes on 1/1 that expired on 1/4. There are two more stores in my area but the trend seems to be that I’m just wasting gas now.
hard to beat unlimited on Visible for $25/month. : )
No international roaming.
For a single person who doesn’t want any international roaming, I agree that Visible can be a great deal (particularly with some of their solid phone promos).
In my case, as I said below, I’m paying about $26.50 per line on average and some of those include financed phones (most of them are “free” after bill credits, but I am paying 50% of the cost of one financed phone in there and I pick up the benefit of getting newer higher model phones that don’t cost me much more than something like Visible would.
Phone service is definitely one of those things though where there are so many variables that it’s hard to come up with a universal solution. I used MVNOs for years (Virgin Mobile, Straight Talk, Cricket, H2O, etc), so I definitely see the use case.
We’re Paying $190 for seven (7) TMO ‘ONE Military’ plan lines that also includes 4G/5G TMO Home Internet (Used 1.5TB last month) .
We don’t have the 40GB 4G Hotspot but tbh I rarely need the Hotspot for my laptop – even moreso with WFH and lack of travel.
We have fired up the GoogleFi data only Sim on longer Int’l trips and I’ve used it for laptop business on occasion rather than hotel WiFi for security reasons.
FWIW I have churned the BYOP at Costco for the Costco GC 2X a year it’s up to $300 now.
The line I cancel is an old BOGO free line and so many of the BOGO phones are EIP credits but you have to be on Magenta.
I pay for the line cause it is grandfathered (so price doesn’t change if it’s 6/7 lines).
The ‘Military ONE’ is NLA but I am limited to what I can do promo wise.
I did get a free Samsung A52 (MIR) as a temp phone to replace DW Samsung S9+.
You had to purchase at Costco then they sent MCGC that I cashed out at US Bank branch (just go to counter – it used be WF but they switched vendors). It was organic spend for a SUB.
TMO has a Magenta Military plan but its more expensive with no real added features.
We if this was on Slickdeals good luck finding an employee, but YMMV.
That said got a ton of killer deals from 2017-2020 when they rolled out the Magenta program.
It seems like either the deals dried up because if supply line issues or phone demand has been strong enough to limit the deals.
Any idea if this works with Magenta® MAX First Responder?
I’m not sure. I would check with the Twitter team or the chat function in the T-Mobile app. Either should be able to answer that.
No. It needs to be just a non discounted MAX plan.
Nick is right about MVNOs and their significantly cheaper prices. A few of them (Ting, Mint, Ultramobile, maybe others) even provide international roaming on a paygo basis, although data can get expensive in certain parts of the world. If you typically don’t use much data, you would probably come out ahead just paying for the roaming minutes, text, and data on an ad hoc basis when you do travel overseas, as compared to paying the higher T-mobile Magenta price month after month.
MVNOs that provide international roaming by eSIM (which is data only, and only possible on a few different phone models) get you even cheaper roaming. Examples are U.S. Mobile and Red Pocket.
Other options (obviously) are to pick up a local SIM in the region you travel to (often easy, but requires a little effort and time out of your trip), or look for one of the SIMs from UK/EU providers on Amazon or eBay. You sometimes find a cheap deal (for Europe travel, anyway).
I used MVNOs for years and bought local SIMs. That worked especially well when it was just my wife and I. Now though, with 7 lines (several of which have financed phones that are “free” or mostly free after total bill credits), I’m paying $185 for 7 lines (Home Internet is the other $50 per month that I pay). That works out to less than $26.50 per line per month, which is less than I paid when on an MVNO and with no data cap, prioritized traffic, and 40GB of hotspot on each line. I think there are some lower-tier MVNO plans that cost less, especially if you really need very little phone service, but thanks to adding those free lines (which obviously can’t be done now for a new customer) I feel like I’m coming pretty close to MVNO cheapness.
But if we had one or two people signing up new today and didn’t need the hotspot and unlimited phone data, Magenta Max clearly wouldn’t be worth it even with 20% off.
Yeah; I see the regular price for a single line is $85, although it does come with some “freebies.” One would have to do the math, for sure.