Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure teasing the new promotion
Update: Sprint’s CFO says what you probably already know: saving you 50% if probably really more like saving you 20%, and current Sprint plans might already be cheaper. Amusing to see the CFO acknowledge it.
Sprint today announced a new campaign to attract wireless customers from competitors AT&T and Verizon with seemingly aggressively priced plans and an offer to help pay switching fees. Under the new promotion, which Sprint’s recently appointed CEO Marcelo Claure previously teased, the wireless carrier will offer to match Verizon and AT&T plans at half the cost for customers switching to Sprint.
Sprint says the ‘Cut Your Bill in Half Event’ will kick off this Friday, December 5th, both in its retail stores and online through sprint.com/halfprice where AT&T and Verizon customers can bring or upload their bill for quoting a cheaper plan on Sprint with unlimited talk and text and the same data at half the cost.
“For example, a Verizon customer paying $140 per month for 4 lines + 10GB of data can get 4 lines + 10GB of data on Sprint for $70 per month.”
Taking advantage of the promotion requires financing a Sprint smartphone either through its Sprint Lease or Sprint Easy Pay program and turning in your existing AT&T or Verizon phone, but the deal does include Sprint reimbursing switchers up to $350 per line to pay for early termination fees or existing installment plan balances from the competing carriers.
Sprint will also waive the typical $36 per line activation fee for switchers taking advantage of the promotion. Current Sprint customers and T-Mobile customers are notably not eligible to take advantage of the aggressive pricing promotion.
For its part, AT&T ran a rather attractive campaign for its own customers during October with an offer to double data plans at the same cost for some plans followed by a similar plan last month. Verizon followed AT&T with its own data increases for certain plans last month as well.
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Just a word of warning for anyone thinking about doing this, don’t.
I was mad at AT&T for them changing my family plan without warning on a phone bought in May. When AT&T was rude to me, I checked with Sprint and the girl was wonderful, giving me what I thought was a great deal.
But unless you get it on a contract, don’t do it. I got by first bill from Sprint and instead of the plan being between $250 to $270, by first bill was $650. After they made adjustments, the bill is $320 a month, a bit more than AT&T. Also be careful and insist that you don’t need the $11 a month per phone insurance. Really runs up the bill and they force you to take it.
Of course I have no recourse since I am past the 13 days and stuck with Sprint for what could be a terrible two years.
But here is the topper and one that you should consider. I live in Northern Virginia and let me tell you Sprint is about 70% of what AT&T was. I can’t get LTE at my home and most of the places I go to. I also have traveled to Illinois and had problems with LTE coverage. So be fairly warned, that Sprint does not have the same coverage area for data as AT&T has. The phone works well in calls, I get them everywhere. But the LTE coverage is very, very spotty, so again be careful and ask others how Sprint is in your area before you get suckered in. There is a reason that Sprint is offering cheap prices and that’s because they don’t have the same coverage that AT&T has.
If Sprint is 70% of what AT&T is, the Verizon is 80%. I had Verizon for one 2 years in Dallas and rarely saw my phone switch to LTE. I also had no signal in my office building so I would miss calls. I switched back to AT&T and now I get LTE all the time.
Sprint isn’t even an option for me. They are the equivalent of the postal service, IRS or drivers license office slow. My grandmother’s olive green stove comes to mind.
Had Sprint for 1 year and it was awful. Went to Verizon and never looked back. You may pay more at AT&T and Verizon, but you get what you pay for.
i would have to disagree with you, i have been with AT&T for a number of years but all this year they shut down a tower and our service is horrible, phones show 4 bars but you cant even send a text or make a call, it is frustrating. I upgraded to the new iphone 6 and they raised my bill i went from paying $200 a month to now over $300!!! when i don’t even get data coverage!!! AT&T is just ridiculous now they don’t give you what you pay for.
Fredy, I would say that your one of those loopholes that AT&T should go out of their way to help. Yes stuff like this happens but the business side of AT&T just care about their profits instead of making arraignments to help folks like you. But I can say this, on the whole both AT&T and Verizon, who yes have blackholes in some areas are the best in the business.
You just got screwed by AT&T and I would be frustrated also.
The company that i work for recently put up a tower in order to get faster internet for our company and they asked AT&T if they would be willing to put up they cell service on it but they weren’t even interested (the company i work for has thousands of employees and the company uses AT&T for their business) so they talked to Verizon and they are considering the offer so if it goes through AT&T is going to loose the company i work for as a customer because we will be switching over to Verizon.
I don’t care how much money I would save by switching to Sprint! they couldn’t PAY me enough money to switch to their crappy coverage, super slow data!
I can say this and it probably won’t happen. We have five phones on Sprint since October 13th. We are paying off $3,700 for the cost of those phones over the next two years.
If AT&T had a similar offer I would be the first one in line to dump Sprint for AT&T.
Because AT&T and Verizon are far better than Sprint, you will never see them make a similar offer.
So for folks that are thinking about doing this and saving some money just we aware that you are going to make sacrifices in poor quality of service, specially on the data side of things.
It’s your problem to recognize the service to begin with. It’s not about the damn plan they offer, but the real usability of the plan. What the point of paying unlimited LTE data plan with Sprint while you get 3G speed most of the time?
I paid ATT the same price as Sprint and got 1/2 of data plan, but I could use it at LTE speed which is 30 to 50Mbps in my area most of the time.
Right now, AT&T is offering $150 per line to port your phone number in if you finance the phone on AT&T Next, which is exactly like Sprint EasyPay or Sprint Lease. Although AT&T does not offer the prices this low, $160 for four lines and 10GB of shared data, or $190 for 30GB of shared data is a fantastic price for the actual service portion of it (phone payments are extra). You can choose to finance the phone for 20, 24, or 30 payments, all with 0% APR and $0 finance charge, plus you can pay off the phone early if you want to and lower your payments and not have a contract anymore.
It’s a great time to switch to AT&T and actually be on the best network in the country.
I agree that you get what you pay for.
When I got my first tablet, a Samsung Tab, it was through a great promo from Sprint.
The coverage was awful. The coverage map was pure fiction.
When I went back to the store they said the coverage would improve (essentially to wait). I got all of my mine back.
Yes, att is more but the coverage is reliable.
If you want to save money, call your carrier when you have a couple of months left on your contract.
Tell their retention department that you can get a better deal even if you have to pay the ETF, and see what kind of deal you can get.
Sprint have the worst coverage and speed. LTE speeds is around ATT 3G speed. Your Sprint bills have been overbilled since their speed and coverage have been less than 1/2 of ATT and Verizon.
You are speaking the truth on this.
Each person has to pick a carrier that fits something.
In some cases like if you live in Los Angeles, Sprint is really good and I would recommend Sprint as a way to save some money for fairly good service (speeds are low)
But if you travel or your area like Northern Virginia has spotty coverage, I would stay away from Sprint, no matter how much money you are saving.
The bottom line is this, is good service and coverage worth the extra cost??? Really tough question for many of us trying to save a buck but in my case I am going crazy with the poor data service of Sprint.
Big problem, once you make the mistake in most cases you are stuck with the cost of the phone which is $600 to $800 and two years. So make the right choice for you, I didn’t and I hate it.
Quote from Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure in August 2014 “When you have a great network, you don’t have to compete on price,” the Brightstar Corp. founder added. “When your network is behind, unfortunately you have to compete on value and price.”
My Note 4 phone is worth over $700. I am not going to just turn in my phone to them. LOL!
I switched to Sprint the end of September for my family plan because of their double the data they gave me at a huge discount. What a mistake. I won’t go into all the detail of what happened, but I essentially spent hours on the phone about the over charges on my first 3 months of billing to have them correct the bills pursuant to the contract that we signed. And even though I was able to get my bills corrected, the service is just horrible. I was with AT&T before, and even while speaking on my cell, and not connected to wifi, I could do everything on my iphone while on a phone call, i.e. connecting to the internet, using email, etc. With Sprint, you can’t connect to anything while on a phone call unless you are connected to wifi at the same time. It’s absurd. And even when not on a call, connecting to the internet, email, etc. is abysmal. I just went to NYC for Thanksgiving and it was just horrible sitting in stores while my daughter shopped and not being able to connect to the spring network to allow me to surf the net, email, etc. Final words, you get what you pay for. DO NOT CHANGE TO SPRINT, PERIOD!!!!! I wouldn’t stay with Sprint even if it were free. AT&T, even with the headaches, stands head and shoulders above SPRINT. Now I have to wait 2 years to leave sprint if i don’t want to pay the early termination fee. I can only hope that AT&T will offer to pay an early termination fee to get their customers to return. That’s my only hope at this point.
Tom, sounds like the same experience I have chronicled.
You probably feel just like me, the boner mistake of the year and we will be paying for this horrible mistake for the next two years.
Sprint told me that they would unlock my 3 iPhones after 3 months of service. So I plan to advertise the 3 iPhones for sale on ebay or craigslist to see if I can sell them for what I would have to pay Sprint for the remaining monthly payments. If I can sell them to a potential Sprint customer or existing Sprint Customer, I’ll take the money and pay Sprint with those funds to early terminate my account. (Yes, I’m aware that the sprint iPhones only work with the Sprint network.) Then I’ll go back to AT&T. That’s the only way I know how to get out of my sprint contract without losing any money. Thoughts? Am I missing anything with my plan?
Another big warning if you switch to Sprint and choose to either finance, purchase a phone outright, or wait and have the phone unlocked:
Even a phone UNLOCKED from Sprint, whether it’s an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, LG, anything… they will NOT work on other carriers once the phone has been “unlocked.” A Sprint iPhone 6 will not work on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, so even if you go with Sprint with no contract and buy your iPhone 6 outright, find out the service is garbage, you won’t be able to turn around and use that iPhone on AT&T. You’ll have to buy it again.
Sprint told me that they would unlock my 3 iPhones after 3 months of service. So I plan to advertise the 3 iPhones for sale on ebay or craigslist to see if I can sell them for what I would have to pay Sprint for the remaining monthly payments. If I can sell, them, I’ll take the money and pay Sprint with those funds to early terminate my account. Then I’ll go back to AT&T. That’s the only way I know how to get out of my sprint contract without losing any money. Thoughts? Am I missing anything with my plan?
Can Sprint give me unlimited data for 1/2 the price? I’m grandfathered in at the unlimited data plan. I’m reading about the others that say the service isn’t worth it. It may be if unlimited data is involved
In a word, yes. I have a Verizon grandfathered unlimited data plan. Total voice, text & data cost is $70 excluding tax & fees, but I have a 22% discount as an employee benefit from my employer (not a phone company) so my bill is $54.58 before tax & fees. Sprint offered me unlimited talk, text & 4G LTE data for $27. Add $30 for a Samsung Note 4 and the $57 total is only $2.50 more than my Verizon bill. Since I have a 3-1/2 year old HTC Thunderbolt which I bought up front for $100, this is a very tempting offer. I haven’t accepted yet, because of all the bad press Sprint gets for its network coverage, data speed, and customer service. On the other hand, Sprint reps tell me that in my area, Knoxville, TN, Sprint has better 4G LTE coverage than Verizon. I can confirm that in numerous instances around town I only get 3 bars with Verizon and Internet sites seem to load very slowly, my Gmail accounts included. So how much worse off could I be with Sprint? That is the big question.
Well that’s pretty rotten. I wasn’t informed of an increase, or offer, or anything else.
worst service ever!!! do NOT subscribe with sprint, they may advertise many type of deals to save you money but their service sucks so bad…there are many signal issues with sprint, the towers keep going down and they will take their own sweet time to resolve the problem, I do not know if any other telecom company who works like this, i’m in Ellenville,NY and I have no signals for the past week, this is ridiculous. FYI this is the 4th time i’m experiencing the same problem for the past 2 years….. pathetic service…. shame on you!!!!
My AT&T bill is $57.00, cut that in half for me!