T-Mobile Support Now Required To Refer Warranty Claims To Nearby Stores

Recent changes to T-Mobile’s Protection <360> services, their in-house warranty program, have been mostly positive, featuring changes like an increased number of claims per year and bringing former Sprint Complete customers into the fold. One big change is the establishment of specialized repair centers integrated into some T-Mobile store locations. Now it seems there’s a slight change being made to warranty claims as a result of the new repair locations.

As of November 15th, customer support representatives will be required to refer customers looking for a warranty replacement to a nearby repair store.

The news comes via an internal document shared with The T-Mo Report, embedded below. It means that customers that live within about 30 minutes of a repair store location will now be referred to that location before a warranty exchange can be done.

This change is simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing for customers. On one hand, for most issues, customers can be in and out in “less than 2 hours” with their device repaired. This saves time for the customer compared to shipping the device in. On the other hand, this may be an inconvenience for some customers who would rather not travel to a store.

Our source says that support representatives now have a new tool to enter the customers address and determine if they are within driving distance of a repair location. If a customer is too far away from a T-Mobile repair store, standard mail-in processes will be used.

Exceptions will still likely be made in some cases for some customers, however the previous mail-in process is now considered a “last resort”. Representatives are required to attempt a local repair first.