Random Ramblings

Sprint Pays the Price

Back in June, when Verizon announced the end of their unlimited data, I posted an article comparing Sprint to Verizon based on MY usage.  One of Sprint’s strong points was “no limits”.

One of the devices I wrote about was my Dell 11Z notebook from Sprint which was a month old at the time of the post.  It came with a 2 year contract for unlimited 4G and 5GB of 3G.

A lot has happened in six months.  Actually it only took a few months after I raved about Sprint’s unlimited 4G for them to take it away.

That’s right, just a few months into my contract, Sprint rewrote the contract and decided that my unlimited 4G for my notebook was now 5GB of combined 3G/4G use.  They claim that the contract allows this and since raising my monthly bill doesn’t cause “an adverse material effect”, I’m stuck paying the higher data rate for two years and am not entitled to a no-penalty early contract termination.

Ok, so they didn’t raise the price of the plan.  But in the last month that I had the plan before finding out about the “new” contract, the data I used over their new cap would have cost me $500 for the month!  Yes, they charge $50 per GB for everything over 5GB of data.

Now, they can and did say, “We didn’t force you to use that much data.”  And they’re right.  However, if I’d known that I’d have limited data on my new work notebook, I wouldn’t have bought that one and certainly not from Sprint.  Since most places I use it has WiFi available, I’d have used it instead.  Well, IF it wasn’t such a P-I-A to get the notebook to actually USE WiFi vs Sprint’s 4G.  To switch involved running several different programs and changing settings.  All of which reverted after a reboot or suspend.

Bottom line, I posted about this everywhere (but strangely enough, not my blog), wrote letters to the FCC and FTC (Even after they changed the plans, Sprint was still promoting unlimited 4G for that notebook on their website, many forums and made sure that everyone I knew thinking about going to Sprint knew what happened and that they can’t be trusted.

Sprint’s contracts seem to be only binding for us, the customer, not binding on them.

What did I do?  When I could get no help at Sprint (at least a few others managed to cancel their contract without an early termination penalty) and being politely told by one Sprint Customer Service Rep to go have carnal knowledge with myself, I cancelled the contract on the notebook and paid the $180 early termination fee.

I still have two lines with Sprint:  My wife’s plain flip phone on their minimum plan, and my HTC EVO 4G on the 450 minute, ‘Unlimited Data” plan.

Now, as smart phone plans go, I guess my Sprint plan is pretty good:

450 “any time” minutes a month

300 bonus “any time” minutes

Unlimited any mobile to any mobile minutes

Unlimited Texting

Unlimited 4G data

Not too bad for $69 + $10 for having a smart phone + $8.48 for various Sprint “surcharges”

OTOH, That’s a lot of money for an average monthly data use of 220MB and 364 minutes (only 67 of which are “anytime” minutes.)  It works out to about $1.30 per minute based on “anytime” minutes or about 24 cents per minute total.

Now one interesting thing… since last August, I’ve used ZERO “anytime” minutes.  This makes no sense as I know that I talk to my mother at least three times a week and usually several times a day and she’s on a landline.

By comparison, since my last post in June, I picked up an iPhone 4 from Verizon which got me grandfathered into the unlimited data plan.  The same plan from Verizon: 450 minutes anytime, unlimited mobile to mobile, unlimited texting and unlimited data, costs $93.60 including surcharges or roughly $6 a month more than Sprint.

Granted, a new customer today wouldn’t get the unlimited data from Verizon, but I think that most folks would use less than the capped amount anyway.  Plus the CEO of Sprint has said several times that their unlimited data is not etched in stone, that it isn’t IF it goes away, it is WHEN.

So, why did I title this: “Sprint Pays the Price”?  Because they’ve lost my business.  They’ve already lost 20 months of my data contract for the notebook and when my EVO 4G contract is up in June I most likely won’t renew it.  They don’t have any new Android phone to compete with the Google Nexus or Droid Razr and I just don’t trust them to honor their contracts.  My wife’s plan doesn’t expire until May of next year.  At that point I’ll switch her to Verizon for either the Senior Citizen plan or an iPhone plan.

Either way, Sprint has lost me and many of those I know as a customer.