Kris Carlon / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Starting today, all T-Mobile subscribers using the Netflix On Us promo will be down- or side-graded to the Standard with Ads plan.
- That means ads will start appearing in your Netflix streams, and some content will become wholly unavailable.
- You can get back to the Standard or Premium plan if you want, but you’ll need to pay T-Mobile the difference.
Earlier this month, we told you about T-Mobile’s plan to downgrade or sidegrade all of its subscribers’ Netflix plans. If you’re not a T-Mobile subscriber, the company’s Netflix On Us promotion — running since 2017 — gives you a free Netflix subscription. Previously, this included the Basic Netflix plan, which offered the full ad-free Netflix experience at 720p.
However, Netflix retired the Basic plan and introduced the Standard with Ads plan, which upgrades you to 1080p but includes ads and restricts streaming of some content. Following suit, T-Mobile is changing the perk to be for this newer plan, and the change starts today. In other words, if you have free Netflix through T-Mobile, you will start seeing ads in your streams today.
If you can’t stand the ads, you do have options, although none of them are free. The easiest option would be to pay T-Mobile to upgrade you to the Standard or Premium plans Netflix offers. This would cost you $8.50 each month for Standard or $16 for Premium (a savings of $6.99 monthly in either instance). The other option would be to cancel Netflix On Us and pay a friend to add you to their ad-free Netflix account. You could also forego T-Mobile altogether and cancel the Netflix On Us promo and sign up directly through Netflix, although this would be silly because then you’d be paying full price for Standard or Premium ($15.49 and $22.99 monthly, respectively).
There is, of course, another option, which would be to cancel Netflix entirely.
In similar news, T-Mobile is also rolling out the new Hulu On Us promo today. This comes with ads, too, and also a slew of caveats. Check out our roundup on T-Mobile’s free Hulu offer for more.
