In response to T-Mobile Uncarrier 4.0 strategy, Sprint had to come up with something. Considering the statistics that an astounding 31% of the Sprint Customers want to leave Sprint, it was Hail Mary time for the soon to be #4 Carrier in America. Enter the Framily plan which like T-Mobile’s Simple plan will do away with Contracts and Phone subsidies, but this is really where the similarities end. Framily went step further and came up with their own version of Multilevel Marketing (Amway anyone), but more on that later. Lets take a closer look at the pricing of the plan and the perceived savings. I will explain later on how this plan is destined to ruin your Thanksgiving dinner.
Pros and Comparing Prices with T-Mobile
The Pros are pretty obvious. You can now reduce your bill. By coming up with the Framily plan even Sprint is admitting (what we have known all along) that they have been overcharging their customers for years. Sprint was not #1 or #2 in the Market, so for years they had to compete strictly on better price and value. They were doing a great job till about August of 2011- after which their prices went up. What really happened here is that Sprint was getting the iphone in October 2011, so they decided that they did not need to be customer friendly anymore. They killed a bunch of their customer friendly initiatives like the the Premier service for long term customers. Their moves only alienated their loyal customer base. Now with the ETFs being paid by T-Mobile, Sprint finds itself in a tough position, they lost the last possible shackle they had on their customer base. The chart compares Sprint Framily vs. TMobile Simple Plan
| Sprint cost /line 1 GB of data 1.5c/MB overage | Sprint Cost with Hotspot per Line,1 GB of Data 1.5c/MB overage | T-Mobile Cost/ Line, Unlimited Data, Throttled after 0.5 GB, Free Hotspot, Free International Data | |
| 1 Line | $55 | $65 | $50 |
| 2 Lines | $50 | $60 | $40 |
| 3 | $45 | $55 | $30 |
| 4 | $40 | $50 | $25 |
| 5 | $35 | $45 | $22 |
| 6 | $30 | $40 | N/A |
| 7- 10 | $25 | $35 | N/A |
A very small percentage may see a value in Sprint. A family of 4 or 5 is better off on the T-Mobile plan A hotspot allows you to kill the data plan on your tablet and use the data off your phone instead, Sprint decided that they want to charge you for the hotspot/ You will have to pay 1.5c/MB if you go over the 1GB of data. In my opinion, if you compare the value of the plans T-Mobile does comes way ahead.
However if we want compare in T-Mobile’s 2.5 Gig LTE data plan. The results start looking even better
| Sprint cost /Line 1 GB of data 1.5c/MB overage | Sprint Cost with Hotspot /Line 1 GB of Data 1.5c/MB overage | T-Mobile Cost/ Line, Unlimited Data, Throttled after 0.5 GB Free Hotspot | T-Mobile Cost/Line,Unlimited Data, Throttled after 2.5GB, Free Hotspot, Free International Data | |
| 1 Line | $55 | $65 | $50 | $60 |
| 2 Lines | $50 | $60 | $40 | $50 |
| 3 | $45 | $55 | $30 | $40 |
| 4 | $40 | $50 | $25 | $35 |
| 5 | $35 | $45 | $22 | $32 |
| 6 | $30 | $40 | N/A | N/A |
| 7- 10 | $25 | $35 | N/A | N/A |
Right now on the Price war and value T-mobile is still way ahead. I could add the Sprints 3 Gb and Unlimited plans to this chart but their prices will only go up from here. Also keep in mind that T-Mobile gives free International Roaming. You may not think that is relevant or important to you but I was in Jamaica a few years ago, my phone was on roaming for about 20 minutes and it pulled in
“3819 KB Wireless Data Roaming – Haiti @ $.019/KB………………………………$72.56”. (This is straight from my old Sprint Bill).
I don’t know why it says Haiti. I know I was in Jamaica. However, I have a feeling the most of that 3.7Mb of data was Siri trying to communicate with the mother ship. This was really my fault, the Sprint employees warned me about International Data roaming telling me stories about how people came back and had a $10,000 roaming data bill and the reps could not do anything about it.
From my recent experience, I was out of the country on a Caribbean cruise and on the 4 port days, my 3 lines managed to pull in 95.8457 MB of data. I paid Nada, Zilch to T-Mobile for that 95 odd MB of roaming data.. My sprint bill just on the data alone would have been a whooping $1864.77 (using their calculation of $.019/KB). The biggest offender on the roaming data was my teenage son, of Course!
With international data you can tweet, post facebook pictures while abroad and not pay T-Mobile anything extra. But hey – the choice is still yours.
Cons of the Framily Plan and the effect on your Thanksgiving Dinner
Disclaimer: I had to go through the FAQs and the very fine print to come up with my analysis.
To get the best prices on the Framily plan you will need help from your friends and relatives. You will need to recruit your friends and family into signing up for Sprint, that may not be how they are advertising it but that is definitely the intent. The Sprint rep on the phone told me to stop by the Sprint store and pick up brochures for my friends and family. I had called Sprint for clarification, telling them I wanted to come back :). Everything is setup so that the current customers recruit for sprint
From the FAQ
- There is no way to leave one framily to join another framily. I could not find anything in the faq that said you could do that. Once you leave a framily, I am guessing you get your own Framily ID. (Recruit for savings)
- There is no way to merge 2 separate framilies. (Recruit for savings)
- “New customers on a new account have up to 14 days from account activation to join your Framily ID”. After 14 days they cannot join your framily. They get their own framily id. They now have to recruit and build their own Framily and you just lost your recruit
Unless you have a family of 7 or more you really need to analyze this plan. You can play the scenarios on how your families/friends will be guilted into staying with the Framily plan and by extension with Sprint so that everyone can “Enjoy” the savings. It does not matter if a family of 4 wants to move to Verizon because they just cannot get any service from Sprint. Slow data, dropped calls, texts not going through (there are plenty of complaints/examples on their facebook page). Hell, If Aunt Becky moves all her 4 lines, it screws all of us because our Sprint bill will be higher. Tell her she needs to Stay with Sprint for the good of the framily. Shoot she moved her 4 lines, don’t invite her and her idiot husband for thanksgiving. Let’s call cousin Matt and tell him to move from AT&T so that we can all save. I never liked his wife and kids but I am willing to look the other way. Also he is lazy so make sure, he signs up with our Framily id within 14 days or all those calls and being sweet to his wife, will be for nothing.
Sprint we have enough drama in our lives. We really don’t need to add any more Framas from Framily 🙂 . You are sinking ship and your brilliant new plan requires me to recruit subscribers for Sprint and then hope and pray that they stay with Sprint – Not Happening.
All I can say is the people who are going into the framily plan – be aware of the potential potholes, read the fine print and gotchas. Every company has the fine print that ends up blowing in your face. Telecom companies are some of the worst offenders of Advertising vs the fine print. These are some of the ones I could catch. Otherwise, it would make for very interesting misgivings, oops I meant Thanksgivings.
jackmehra 