SPRINTing Toward Bankruptcy

Sprint announced late last week that it is offering voluntary buyout packages to a number of its employees in an attempt to cut costs due to falling subscribership. The company lost over a million subscribers in the 3rd quarter alone. Interestingly enough, they're the only wireless company to have such crazy declines in subscribers.

Why?

Well, as of tomorrow Julie and I will be moving from Sprint to AT&T. So maybe I can provide some insight from a subscriber's point of view.

Julie and I have both been with Sprint for years. Both of us have been with Sprint for something along the lines of 10 years. That's close to 20 years of service between the two of us. At an average cost of $60 / month, that's about $14,000.

With that kind of customer loyalty, you'd think we'd get a little something in return. What do we get in return? Let's take a look.

Once our contract expires, we get notices. Sign up now and get $150 toward a new phone. So we go to shop for a new phone. There's one for $150! That means free, right? Nope. You either get $150 off the $300 phone for signing up as a new customer or you can get $150 off the $300 phone for being an existing customer. In other words, the cost of the phone, no matter what, is $150. You don't save any money for being an existing customer.

Long story short, they do absolutely nothing for you.

So let's take this one step further. I contacted Sprint and told them I'll sign a new 2-year contract if they can do something above and beyond for us.

Never so much as received a confirmation that my e-mail was received.

We even tried going into the Sprint store. They were unwilling to budge. I told them they would lose a long-time customer. They walked away and moved onto the next customer.

If you're going to overcharge for a service, you'd better take care of your customers. If you don't, you'll lose them.

Bye Sprint! Thanks for nothing!