Back in September, the T-Mobile-owned MetroPCS was rebranded to 'Metro by T-Mobile.' Along with the name change, the carrier refreshed its available plans, which looked great on paper; $60/month gets you unlimited LTE data, 100GB of Google Drive storage, Amazon Prime, and other goodies. However, there's a new catch if you plan on switching — you'll have to pay $15 any time you put your SIM card in a new device.

While it's not uncommon for U.S. carriers to have plenty of hidden fees, it's definitely unprecedented to charge customers to swap between phones they already own. I'm not aware of any other carriers doing the same — even other budget MVNOs like Cricket, Google Fi, and Boost Mobile.

This isn't a completely new policy, but before now, it was possible to reverse the charge by calling customer support, or avoid it altogether by entering your new phone's ESN on the carrier's site. A customer service representative confirmed to us that the charge can no longer be avoided, as of last week.

T-Mobile definitely isn't the "un-carrier" it was a few years ago, and it seems Metro by T-Mobile is now following suit.