Sprint and T-Mobile are the tiny under dogs compared to the two giants Verizon and AT&T. But the cool thing about both is they often had perks and other things that made them attractive alternatives.

T-Mobile killed it's "unlimited" (was never really unlimited anyway) plan, no contract plan (prepaid still available), and began charging overage fees for the 200MB plan.

Sprint is killing it's Premier Program, cutting it's return policy from 30 days to 14 days, and removes accessory discounts.


Neither is doing anything Verizon and AT&T don't already do. Sprint actually says they are doing this to be more inline with their competitors. But if you are in last place, shouldn't the goal to be better than your competitors?

Don't know why Sprint and T-Mobile are removing the perks that made them better to me than Verizon and AT&T. I've been with T-Mobile for 10 years. I was thinking about switching to Sprint this fall. But now Sprint really doesn't look any better than Verizon or AT&T and at least with those two I get a much better phone selection.

AT&T hasn't even bought T-Mobile yet and things are already getting worse.

http://www.androidcentral.com/leaked-sprint-playbook-shows-big-changes-coming-premier-program-return-policy-and-more-and-you-wont

Oh, just learned that besides the 30 return policy being reduced to 14 days, they are also now charging a restocking fee.

Also, Sprint's Early Termination Fee going from $200 to $350.
$1.50 administration fees charged for each phone line.
And upgrade fees double to $36.

If you ask me, what T-Mo and Sprint need to stand out and get ahead of the game is merge their text messaging into the data stream - allowing for basically unlimited messaging for everyone who has data. For ALL phones/plans: add 20 MB data free of charge - for the text messages and the occasional email check.

Then bump the data plan limits to 2GB for the lowest tier, 20 GB for the middle and unlimited for the top.

Allow for a real pro-rating of cancellation fees. What I mean is - of they sponsored you with $240 on the phone price when you signed a contract, the termination fee should be $240 on day 1, and go down by $20 every month.

Of course that would mean real innovation though, but unless they make real changes they will forever be simply puttering in the shadow of ATT and Verizon, probably fade away / be bought out some day.

 

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They are probably killing off these perks so that when they get bought out by the big boys, they dont have to grandfather the perks in to the bought out customers which would royally piss off the already exisiting customers.

 

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