This is great news for Sprint customers! Verizon Wireless recently started doing this on most of their smartphones and looks like Sprint caught wind and decided to do it also.
I myself do everything to avoid paying the extra $100 everytime I need to upgrade to another smartphone. It seems Sprint is starting to realize they’re are losing some money on hardware sales by pushing their customers towards other vendors such as Best Buy, Radio Shack, Amazon and a few other to avoid those Rebates.
Is their next step to be more competitive in their hardware pricing?
Geeks, what do you think? Let us know by responding in that cool white box below.
Source: Phonescoop
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As of right now, its a trial. Its not indefinately. If all goes well they will keep it going. But its just a 3 week trial right now. Hopefully people will use their upgrades at sprint and avoid third party places for the next 3 weeks so they keep it going.
(Proud Sprint Employee
)
Even though it may be a trial for now it will be something they will have to do eventually. Right now sprint needs to start making all the right decisions and be as competitive as they can be since they will now be further in third place once this att/tmobile merger finalizes.
there is NO att/tmo merger it looks like… preliminary responses by DOJ representative says, NO… att will have to have a hearing even it looks like just to get approval on the DOJ/FCC level… then would still have to jump hoops to make it happen…. i wouldnt worry about the merger for quite sometime
@boredandtattooed, Wow, ok thanks for the info. I am really interested in knowing what will actually happen.
sadly they should have done this earlier and it would have been a success. now that people are losing their upgrades not as many people will be upgrading as could have
@ajac, I agree!
me like
I went to radio shack to get my Evo to skip that dumb mail-in rebate. Having been one of those Cx’s I would’ve definitely preferred to get it straight from sprint. Hope they keep this in place indefinitely so i can get the Evo 3D
I like this move on Sprint’s part, I went through Radio Shack to get my Epic 4G and planned on doing the same for my wife’s upgrade. To me it didnt make much sense to force you to wait 8 weeks to get your $100 dollars back. Why not do what others are doing and just send in the rebate yourself as appose to causing the user to do it?
I know they have lost a ton of money by doing this. So much so that some Sprint stores, I wont say where, offered to give you the $100 back and take care of the rebate for you.
yeah this would be a great idea if sprint were to just make this their SOP. me personally, i hated having to deal with mail-in rebates…that’s why i don’t upgrade my phone as much as i would like to. yeah yeah…call me cheap…but if i was paying a few hundred dollars for a phone upgrade already, at least make it easier for me by cutting the cost already at the store. no need for sprint to keep my $100 rebate for a few weeks so it can earn interest in their bank account.
Companies sometimes do that, expecting some people would not mail in for the rebate.
@teddyman,
Exactly. Most people do not take the time to mail in rebates and the average company exec knows it. That is why they make you do it. I have lost out on many a rebate because I procrastinated and by the time I remembered to do it it was too late to receive it. I am not referring to Sprint’s I am talking in general.
Well for me its true I pre ordered my EVO 4G from best buy last year because of this reason and I also per ordered my EVO 3D this year from best buy because i was sure they were going to stick the mail in rebate tag on it…I also advise anyone who ask me to do the same…