Just one day after T-Mobile unveiled its Smartphone Equality program letting loyal customers avoid credit checks, Sprint has announced a new promotion specifically targeting T-Mobile customers with an offer to make switching carriers easier. Sprint’s latest buyback and trade-in offer joins the carrier’s existing ‘Cut Your Bill in Half’ promo which encourages AT&T and Verizon customers to switch; T-Mobile was notably missing from that offer. Here’s how Sprint details the new promotion for T-Mobile customers:Starting today, Sprint will guarantee any T-Mobile subscriber at least $200 credit for a currently activated and working T-Mobile smartphone when switching between carriers. The offer requires T-Mobile customers to move their phone number over to Sprint and trade-in a T-Mobile smartphone to a Sprint store to qualify.
Sprint also says switchers can combine the trade-in value with a contract buyout offer of up to $350 per line to cover the cost of switching carriers. The contract buyout offer come sin the form of a prepaid or reward card. Finally, Sprint says the current promotion for T-Mobile subscribers will run starting today through April 9th.
While the promotion doesn’t match the Sprint program targeting AT&T and Verizon subscribers, it does make moving from T-Mobile to Sprint easier.
Sprint, you may recall, pursued plans to acquire T-Mobile during 2014 but ultimately dropped its bid over regulatory concerns and replaced its CEO.
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This “We’ll pay your termination fees” has to be one of the biggest marketing scams of all time, kudos to the marketing guru who came up with it. Unless I’m wrong, you have to “trade in” your device to get the credit – which is likely worth more than they’re giving you if you were to sell it out right. You’re basically selling them your phone, at the price THEY determine, they’re not GIVING you anything.
Like I said, I could be wrong but I don’t think I am.
After re-reading the article, there also seems to be a “contract buyout” offer in conjuction with the trade-in offer. So probably not as bad as similar offers I’ve seen in the past.
What they give you upfront as a credit for the phone you trade in PLUS your cancellation fee dollar amount is typically a lot more than you could sell it for
Their comparison to T-Mobile’s unlimited data plan is pretty sad. They show their lease program to T-Mobile’s EIP Program, it’s $27 cheaper but you don’t get to keep the phone after your 24 months is up when you’re done with Sprint so you just hand it in and start paying for another phone that you won’t own. At least with T-Mobile you can either trade in the phone or sell it to get something out of it. Also for 2 people T-Mobile has 2 lines with truly unlimited data, talk and text with 5GB hotspot for $100 before the cost of phones so two iPhone lines would be $154 which is not a bad deal
What’s funny to me is that Sprint, through their compete unwillingness to unlock iPhones, basically “costs” their own customers about $200 in lost value of their Apple devices at the end of their contract…so, this is like a big F-You Part Deux to their current customers.
They signed an agreement along with US Cellular, Tmo, ATT and Verizon that they will be allowing customers and non customers to unlock their devices upon termination of service. They signed up last year and the deadline is March.. That should be changing soon.
Anyhow, you are right I think Sprint does not realize this but they’ve lost to a of customers due to their reluctance on fully unlocking phones.. Verizon phones are pretty popular since they decided to make them all unlock to comply with their purchase of LTE bands.. Verizon did this only to comply but I think it’s made verizon a friendlier carrier.. I personally chose them over att because my phone is unlocked from day one and I get to use it with any carrier should I have the need of traveling. I think this should be a standard.
People hate Sprint phones and they are pretty much worthless because you are forced to use them with their horrible service even if you paid all your termination fees and everything so they have really bad resale value.
Sprint sucks.
Sprint needs to worry about improving their LTE performance and offering services like Voice over LTE