Sprint Nextel Unveils Full-Refund Guarantee

I thought all the US carriers already had some kind of 30-day trial period

 

I think it's great that Sprint is now offering this opportunity to their customers. It will be interesting to see how many of the other carriers will follow their lead now.

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I'm glad to see Sprint doing this. I hope other carriers follow suit. You can't call it a true trial period when people are stuck with activation fees, usage fees, etc. I believe a person should be able to try the service and within x amount of days, return the equipment and say nevermind. Now, I do see one crutch with this. What is to stop a person from using Sprint's service. Canceling within 30 days. Come back within a couple of months and do it again? That could be a real issue if all carriers follow Sprint's lead.

 

First of all number porting would be nearly impossible in such a situation, so you'd be changing numbers every month. Second, I'm sure they'll limit the amount of time before you can do it again. I'd think a year would be likely.

Tmobile might follow suit, but I doubt AT&T or Verizon would. This almost smacks of desperation on Sprint's part. It's an attempt to attract customers who would consider trying them with a trial period. It only works if those people like Sprint's service enough to stay with them. Their plan prices are already pretty low and that's hasn't really helped them grow their market share, so I'm not sure how many people this will attract After all, you can always ask friends and neighbors about Sprint's service in your area without the hassle of signing up and then cancelling.

I'm getting the feeling that Sprint sees the prepaid providers as their true competitors, not Verizon and AT&T.

 

How would number porting be impossible? I've ported out during "trial" periods before You port out, account gets canceled and you then return the equipment to finalize the bill.

 

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I don't doubt it at all, as a matter of fact, Verizon already had a program like this over a year ago, but later took it away for reasons I do not understand. If this program does end up getting more customers for Sprint, I would be willing to bet, that AT&T will start a similar program of their own, and Verizon soon after........... Also, I don't see this as a desperate act on Sprints part, as they have been working pretty hard lately to turn their customer service image around.......

 

They are just asking for some major abuse of this new policy.

 

If abuse becomes a problem they'll simply keep track of people who've already trialed. You try and do the trial more than once a year they give you a "Sorry, you've already taken advantage of this offer. In order to limit abuse we only offer the trial once per customer per year."