Hey, what do you know! A mere month before it is expected that Sprint will finally get an iPhone for its network to call its own, the nation’s fourth largest carrier is beefing up their early termination fees, thus guaranteeing that they will be able to milk the maximum amount of money possible from impatient switchers!
According to the leaked internal document, Spring will raise their early termination fee, or ETF, to $350 on September 9th.
While that’s the same as AT&T and Verizon charge, it does represent a $150 jump from their previous ETF fee of $200.
Cynically, it looks to us like Sprint expects a lot of customers to suddenly want to upgrade their phones, don’t you think?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
12 responses to “Sprint Prepares For iPhone 5 By Almost Doubling Early Termination Fees [Rumor]”
Sprint not Spring. Â If a Sprint customer is going to upgrade their phone that ETF doesn’t really matter. Â That would make sense if people were hopping from Sprint to another carrier to prevent or discourage people from canceling. Â I am sure this only affects new contracts as well. Â
Correct new customers and those upgrading after the 9th. This is no longer a rumor either. Sprint confirmed in a statement today.
No, They are beefing ETF’s to recoup the price of iPhone they are about to get. AT&T and Verizon only have $350.00 ETFs on their more expensive devices like the iPhone.
The article tells us two things:
1) more proof that Sprint is getting the iPhone, and 2) this will be the first phone Sprint will carry that isn’t complete garbage.. :-)
I wonder what this will do to their “Sprint Premiere” program that allows you to upgrade every year…
bit of a leap to say this is proof they are getting the iPhone. Perhaps they are just following the other boys because Sprint has seen that said boys got away with it.Â
Also, what is the subside they are currently paying for such items. If it is $350 or higher then this move makes sense because all companies want their ETF to recover what they paid out. This could be nothing more than that
The best phone (monetary value, or most expensive) that Sprint has is the Evo 3D with a contract free price of $499.99. If you do the math, a $350 ETF and $199.99 contract price equals a buyout of $549.99 for a phone that only costs $499.99..
Couple that with all of the other buzz around the internet about Sprint getting the iPhone; is it still THAT big of leap to conclude what I did in the original statement?
The contract free price of an iPhone is $599.99 to start and it goes up for more memory which is exactly why AT&T and Verizon (even though, ironically enough, Verizon upped their ETF after the iPhone debut) have $350 ETFs. Again, educating my prediction of a Sprint iPhone even more….
I’m sorry. I should have made my post more clear as I didn’t think I needed to..
P.s. You get what you pay for; iPhone will be the most expensive phone that Sprint has ever carried. Factually speaking, if you look at it on a level of value, “this will be the first phone Sprint will carry that isn’t complete garbage..” is mostly a factually true statement. Complete garbage may be too harsh, but I’m sure plenty would agree.