Did you forget the part where people on Everything Data 450 automatically have unlimited minutes?

Nevermind.

This apparently didn't apply to the Everything Data Share plan (my brother and I are on the same plan). I'm going to stop by the Sprint store today and inquire.

@darkforcesjedi: It's supposed to apply to Everything Data Family plans as well. It doesn't take effect until the start of your next billing cycle, though.

@ben: Yup I just called and that's what they told me! I'm happy about it. >50% of my calls are within the Sprint network. Of the remaining calls, almost all of them are to mobile phones. This effectively turns my plan into unlimited calling.

See, this is the step in the right direction.

Of course, this comes after I was searching for an upgrade phone this morning and found the Nokia 5730 (only available in Europe).

Qwerty slide out keyboard, WiFi, standard earphone jack, takes up to a 16gb microSD card and has midlevel smartphone capabilities. Too bad AT&T won't bring it here, so I'll have to buy an unlocked one.

Problem with deals like this, people are still required to pay for X amount of minutes and suddenly they aren't using them.

Take AT&T for example. I only have the ability to call AT&T subscribers for free, but I'm on the LOWEST PLAN (450 for $40) and I use about 80 minutes a month.
However, because of the few people I do call who aren't on AT&T, a prepaid is not economical :(

It maybe too late for them. Their stock is poisonous, almost to the point where bad loans look good, they keep dropping customers to the Other Two, not to mention local carriers like Boost and Pocket Wireless.
The irony of this is the aforementioned cell companies are leasing services and carrier bandwidth from Sprint.

I'm about to tell them they are fired anyway, no signal where I live and too expensive to maintain crappy coverage.

A shame, really.

@Nighthawke:

Boost $$$ is Sprint's $$$. Granted, they aren't as healthy as the other two. But they are making a play to remain competitive. Gotta hand it to them for the gusto.

@Nighthawke: Boost is owned by Sprint and isn't "local", it is everywhere Nextel has/had service towers.
*loves my $30 SERO Plan*

@Oranges w/ Cheese in rainy Central FL: The prepaid wouldn't be that economical anyway, if you make a call most every day. Their prepaid plan that includes free calls to other AT&T subscribers charges you $1 for every day you use the phone at all, so if 100% of your calls were to other AT&T subscribers and you made a call every day, you'd go from your $40 plan down to $30. 100 minutes of calls off AT&T's network would render that a wash.

It's definitely a step in the right direction to make all networks seamless, pretty much the same as landline phones. It doesn't cost me more to call a Qwest subscriber than another Verizon subscriber using my landline. Cell phones should really work the same.

@mbz32190: Sprint plans are cheaper than the other carriers and include roaming for no extra charge. I live in an area with spotty Sprint coverage, but I've always got signal from some carrier. Probably a third of the calls I make are roaming.

They have decent data speeds and with the free roaming and free calls to other carriers, I don't understand why people keep leaving.

Sprint is my carrier, but I've been out of contract with them for quite some time now. My problem is that my phone + data plan is old and dirt cheap; I can't find anyone anywhere (including Sprint) that can match the price. I'd love to upgrade my Treo 650 someday, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that without signing a contract for double what I pay now.

@darkforcesjedi: I couldn't agree more. I have the Everything Data Family Plan, and five of us share 1500 minutes a month, have never used even half this amount. Data, Picture Mail, Text Messaging are all unlimited. The cost is about $185 --- less a 25% discount due to my employer.

No one (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, etc.) can touch that plan with a 10-foot pole. Add in that I don't ever think I've had a dropped call, built in GPS navigation on my Instinct, and customer service that has always been helpful... and I can't think of any reason why people wouldn't want Sprint.

I can't complain about their Simply Everything plan. I use a ton of minutes (last month was low at 1,300, previous months were 5,000+) and never have to worry about anything. Pricey, but the alternative is to pay several multiples of that in overages.

I can't think of any reason why people wouldn't want Sprint.

Their customer service is garbage, and they can't manage their phone applications properly, maybe?

@Oranges w/ Cheese in rainy Central FL:

"Problem with deals like this, people are still required to pay for X amount of minutes and suddenly they aren't using them."

Yep. Guess why you have access to this "free" feature?

@destruktolux: Rats. replied in the wrong thread. Sorry.

@Oranges w/ Cheese in rainy Central FL: T-mobile prepaid. Buy a phone, buy a $100 card, and do the per-minute rate. 10 cents per minute, expires after 1 year. NO USAGE CHARGES. All top ups expire after 1 year.

I use maybe 40-120 minutes a month and it is by far the most economical plan for me.

@Nighthawke: We've actually been with Sprint for just about ten years now, and have a three line family plan with everything data on it. We don't use all of our minutes, either. I was actually toying with the idea of leaving Sprint when our contracts came due this past December, and I made an excel chart (nerd alert) to compare everything I was getting from Sprint. In order to have plans that matched (including night time minutes starting at 7 and mobile to mobile, both of which are included), I had to pay way more with any other company.

These facts, coupled with the simple reason that each of the few times we have had a problem, it has been dealt with by super polite, very helpful people, means we just love Sprint and have no reason to change.

@Ratty: I bought a t-mo prepaid for my sister. Just to nitpick what you said, once you've bought $100 of minutes, your minutes all last until 1 year after the last time you added minutes.

The difference is important... let's say that you have 100 minutes left 11 months after you bought that $100 worth of airtime. If you buy $25 of minutes and load them to your account, your 100 leftover minutes are extended to the same 12-months-from-now date on which the new $25 chunk of minutes expire.

@339point4: You could buy a perfectly functional phone that someone else is selling because they couldn't wait to upgrade. A friend of mine is selling a pristine year-old Palm 755P because he HAD to have a Palm Pre.

Wait - didn't Sprint do away with off-network roaming years ago?

I take my Sprint phone to the middle of nowhere several times a year, roam on some random tower, and don't get charged a thing.

@GearheadGeek: Isn't that what I said? All top ups expire after a year. maybe I should have added "from date they're added to account." But once you've done the $100 any new minutes bumps yours to lost a full year after the date.

And worth noting buying smaller incriments isn't going to get the same rate per minute... $100 gets you 1000 minutes, $50 gets you 400, down to $10 getting you 30 minutes or something.

[www.t-mobile.com]

but if you really only use 80 minutes a month, you can have a year of coverage for $100. Heck, and even with AT&T if your phone is unlocked you can just add a new T-Mobile SIM card to it since they're all GSM. or buy a prepaid phone kit. The one I bought wasn't bad at all.

I'm a diehard sprinter.... But I have one of the SERO plans. Can't beat $35 a month including taxes for 450 mintues and unlimited everything else.

am i the only one that thinks $50 a month for a cell phone plan is still too expensive?

@msbask: I second your opinion. We have the same plan (but I only get a 15% employer discount, how did you get 25%?) but with 2 phones on the account. I've been a Sprint customer for at least 10 years and have always been happy with them. Whenever I've called customer service with a problem they fixed it, no questions asked, even if it was my mistake to begin with. Of course, that might just be for the silly reason that I'm a loyal customer who always pays their bill on time.

The only time I've ever had dropped calls was when the person I was talking to had a crappy phone or crappy service.

Before signing a new contract a few months ago I shopped around with other carriers. NO ONE had a plan that even came close to Sprint's everything data plan. We don't use minutes as much as we use texting, so that being unlimited was important. We were also buying new phones with lots of features that needed the data plan, so to have everything included (like picture/video mail, streaming tv, web browsing, and gps) at that price was awesome, even without my discount.

So not only do I not understand why people keep leaving Sprint, I don't understand why this blog is constantly tearing into them. This new feature is something no other carrier is offering, we don't have to pay extra for it, and any Sprint customers who aren't already on the everything data plan don't have to extend their contracts in order to upgrade to it. Why put a negative spin on that? How many other companies have a dedicated customer service line for readers of this blog? Cut them some slack - they seem to be trying a lot harder than other companies are right now.

Count me in as one of the people who is really happy with my sprint plan. I've never had bad customer service, and whenever an error came up on the bill (which it has, as with other companies) they fixed it fast, and had great customer service.

I have heard other people's horror stories w/ sprint, however not as many as i have heard of the other companies. I dont currently have data on my phone, but have been thinking of upgrading. Last time i renewed i looked at all the other carriers, and sprint had the best deals hands-down. I've had data plans in the past with them also, and it was waaaaaay cheaper than any of the data plans with other companies.

I think its a good change, and I'm not quite sure why its being reported as "it could work out in your favor" when there isn't a way it wouldn't, unless you dont use your minutes anyway.

@cromartie: Yeah, I recently had an issue with their customer service that was bed/good story. I have the Family Share plan with my mom and my sister on my account. Last month, my mom lost her Instinct. She barely uses her cell. She has it for when she isn't home and to talk to me using the PCS to PCS feature. So when she lost it, it wasn't a big deal to her. She just figured she lost it somewhere in her place. After a couple of days of searching, she decided to call Sprint to report it lost so she could get a new Instinct shipped to her. She got the phone a couple days later, no worries.

This past Monday when I checked the new bill, I noticed that the bill was 575 bucks higher than it usually was. Turns out her phone was stolen and the person that took it downloaded a mulittude of ringers, songs, games and other misc stuff. In the end, it was more than the Instinct could store. It was just being malicious. I called Sprint and after talking to 2 ccps and a supervisor, I was told that all they would help with was 50% of the charges since everything was downloaded before my mom reported the phone missing.

I wasn't pleased with that. I didn't feel we should have to pay of any of it since it wasn't her that downloaded the junk. I called the Sprint Consumerist line and spoke with a very helpful rep. She told me that the issue would have to be reviewed and she would call me back the next day. When I woke the next day, I had an email waiting for me letting me know the entire amount was removed.

It sucks that the normal channels come off as barely helpful and stuck in "policy only" mode. They won't go too far out of their way to help. It's nice though that there is another option by being able to call the Sprint Consumerist Line to get help by someone that can actually do something. It's just a shame you can't get that level of help by calling the normal customer service line.