[Samsung Epic 4G Touch] abhaxus:
First, my actual quote before you took it out of context was

So what you are saying is exactly what I said. It's going to differ market by market, I'm not arguing anyone there. Where I happen to live and work, Sprint is very near to verizon in coverage and speed, at a significantly lower price. Given that I work for sprint, I'd rather not say where, so I don't get fired. K?

As to your points, some of which I won't argue because you are quite correct:

5) I'm not sure what happened to you here, but if you purchased a 3g smartphone prior to I believe 1/16/2011 (might be Feb 2), and haven't taken it off your line, you aren't being charged the $10. That charge only takes effect if you activate the phone on a line after that date. Sprint did not go back and start charging people that fee. That said, I didn't work for sprint when I purchased my OG Epic, and I did not have a problem paying the fee, because obviously I was going to use more data on a more advanced phone. And Sprint was a significantly better price in my area (as I discussed above).

6) I don't know how far back you are going but as a customer for almost 10 years prior to taking a job with the company, I don't remember a time when I didn't have to pay for the convenience fee if you declined ERP/TEP. This is a standard practice that makes sense for every phone except for the iPhone, because in reality, there is no Samsung store or HTC store for you to take your phone to for easy same day service. Otherwise you have to ship it back, so that fee makes sense. Again, only a problem if you decline repair coverage from sprint (which is priced in line with other carriers).

7) As a rep, I can only think of one or two times in my time with the company that I have had a customer that was actually getting a better deal with their outdated plan vs a new one. Many people perceive that a 1000 minute plan from 2001 is a good deal with a $30 data package and $15 for unlimited messaging, but in reality, I have seen most customers fighting to keep those plans are getting charged for roaming minutes, or overages, or many of the things that are not covered. I happen to think Sprint's plan offerings simplify choice for consumers and alleviate future billing headaches vs the other carriers where you can potentially sign up for too little coverage for what you need (looking at you, AT&T 250mb data plan)

8) When Sprint (or any carrier) gives you 300-550 off of a modern smartphone, they should reasonably be expected to want that money back if you cancel your contract. As it stands, I have personally witnessed a customer come in, add a line to buy an iphone 4 for 100 bucks, turn around and sell it for 500 bucks to a guy standing next to him, then call and cancel the line and pay the 350 etf. Not to mention that most company discounts are negotiated to have lower ETFs for customers on that hierarchy. The potential for fraud with lower ETFs is astounding. Before the 350 went in place, we would regularly have customers come in and try to cancel service on a line after getting a new phone activated because paying the ETF plus promo price was cheaper than paying for the device outright.

10) I'm not really going to argue with you here, other than my previous point that in some areas, Sprint has excellent coverage and has improved in the last quarter of this year as well. Hopefully, in 2 years we will all be giggling about this like school girls rocking our quad core 1080p amoled phones sporting 100mbit LTE advanced connections, and pointing and laughing at the iphone kiddies.

Finally, as to the corporate discount, it was brought up today that we are the only company that give you a discount on the data and messaging portions of the plan (in addition to the voice package). Since I've not been with other carriers as a customer, I don't know how true this is. In addition to that, I am 100% confident that Sprint offers more discounts to more companies than any carrier. In fact, when I went through corporate training, we were ENCOURAGED to ask the customer questions to find out what discounts they may be eligble for. Compared to companies I have worked for before, that is a huge culture change.

I'm not disagreeing that this is nickel-and-diming, and as I've said before, I don't think most people will have a problem getting a credit for this cost going up. But before you let your anger boil over, just think rationally and have some perspective. It really is not that bad, and if it is, why are you still here?

---------- Post added at 07:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 PM ----------

A) the 6 bucks I was quoting was assuming a 27% discount, and included the taxes. 27% is only available to a few customers for a few select companies. Most are 23% or less. But I don't disagree with most of your points.

B) fun fact - return rates went up during a test market of instant discounts only earlier this year. General theory on that is that when a customer is faced with getting a phone for free (instant) vs $20 (instant), they will take the free phone no matter how much less it meets their needs, because it's free. But when it's $0 (after mail in) vs $20 (after mail in) (so really $50 vs $70) in store, they actually buy the phone that meets their needs. That said, Sprint did go to instant discount on high end devices, because customer satisfaction is already high with those phones. I thought that was interesting, at least.

---------- Post added at 07:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------

I shopped a 4 line plan of Sprint vs verizon for a customer about a month ago, and price before taxes for sprint was 232 for what you are asking, vs 298 with verizon (before taxes, no discounts). That was with 2gb of data per line on VZW. ATT is a little better on family plans if I recall, but I dont have the actual numbers in front of me.