Over a year ago, Sprint released the new set of “Everything” service plans to go along with the release of the Samsung Instinct. The new plans allowed users to play with every feature their phone was capable of without incurring any additional fees (Sprint TV, GPS, picture messaging, sms, data, Blackberry service, the works). Charging only $99 for the Simply Everything all-included plan (which includes even unlimited minutes), this is much less than it would cost for the same features elsewhere.
The problem is, they didn’t give Instinct buyers any choice. If you want an Instinct, you MUST get an Everything plan. They won’t even allow the device to be activate on any other plan.
There hasn’t been any official explanation for the policy, but in some strange sort of way, this made some sense… The original Instinct was supposed to directly combat the original iPhone on AT&T, and the big selling point for Sprint was that it could do things the iPhone could not at the time (3G, Voice Control, turn-by-turn GPS, etc). Without paying for those features, however, the Instinct was just a touch screen phone that lost in style and UI to the iPhone. In order to get noticed, its possible Sprint wanted every Instinct user to be able to show off how much “better” their device and service was.
Fast forward to today- Palm’s new Pre, and another Instinct (S30) is now running on Sprint’s network, and all of them require the Everything Plan.
That’s right, unless you want to pay for all the trimmings on your new Palm Pre, you can’t have one. Even if you’ve been using a Treo as a PDA for the last decade or so on a regular basic 200 minute plan, you aren’t eligible to even pay full price for the new Palm phone!
Now, that doesn’t seem fair… Ok, so the Instinct was supposed to target possible iPhone buyers, but Palm already has a large loyal user base, many of whom have been on the same old plan for years. Maybe they don’t want GPS, unlimited text or even Data… they never had them before, why would you force them to pay for it? For their own good?
Since when is it a requirement that every feature should be enabled on a phone? Imagine if they required every RAZR to pay for GPS Telenav service, even if the user already owns an in-dash GPS for their car! This hardly seems logical.
I personally have seen many people who had Sprint for a long time, and after years of adding features to their grandfathered plans, finally have a plan that they are happy with and want to stick with. Some of these folks were very excited about the Palm Pre until it was announced they would have to give up their old plan that fit like a glove, and take on a new one that required features they don’t want or need. These people were turned away, and Sprint missed a potential boatload of renewed contracts.
The effect? Sprint reported a rather disturbing financial loss this quarter, citing that they lost many customers. I very strongly believe that Sprint could have kept a significant amount of subscribers if they had the option to resigned their current contract for a hot phone instead of leaving them out to wander elsewhere.
Even stranger still is that Sprint is not consistent with the policy… Currently, only the Instinct and Pre require Everything plans, while other smartphones such as the Diamond and Touch Pro running Windows Mobile (which came out after the Instinct) do not. Strange, since Windows Mobile rivals the other two platforms in features, and adds some more on top of it.
Meanwhile, current subscribers are wondering how Sprint will view the new Android handsets promised this quarter. Will they enforce the everything plan like the Instinct and Pre? Or will they leave it open like Windows Mobile, since Android is not exclusive to Sprint? Remember, users can buy a G1 or MyTouch on T-Mobile without having to add a special expensive plan, so if someone doesn’t want to pay for the services on Sprint but wants the phone, what would they do?
For their sake, I hope they don’t enforce the new plans.
