Cell Phone Evolution (On the Sprint Merger)
Whew – with that long description out of the way, only two more to go tonight, lol! This photo, as I’m sure you were immediately able to tell, is quite different than what I normally post. I’m sharing this because of the recent news that Sprint and T-Mobile are seeking to merge.
My parents and I are Sprint customers, and have been for longer than I’ve been alive, I believe. I like Sprint partially due to this loyalty, and mainly because they’re not AT&T (lol)… but there’s no denying that they’re not the best by any means either, especially since their coverage in our region is rather poor. (Even worse, go further south down into the Mississippi Delta, and you’ll only get about negative three bars, haha!) To be sure, their coverage elsewhere in the country is much better, and that works well for my dad, as Sprint has a discount deal worked out with his employer. That said, I’m all for this merger in the hopes that it will live up to its promise to increase coverage in more rural and underserved areas.
The sad thing in all this, at least in my opinion, is that the combined company (if, of course, the merger is approved) will be called T-Mobile, meaning that the Sprint name will be put out of commission after such a long run :( Those sorts of things are always upsetting to me, especially when the companies affected have a storied history (the Sprint name has been around since the 70s, and as a matter of fact started out as an acronym for “Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telephony”… #TheMoreYouKnow ).
Which brings me to what is pictured here… as a result of a conversation I was having over winter break, I decided to dig through our closet and photograph every single one of my dad’s past cell phones XD They’re in (what I believe to be) chronological order, from left to right. He just recently ditched his LG G3 – the one on the right in this shot – for a new Samsung Galaxy, but other than that… the gang’s all here! Check out that brick on the left XD And the funny part is – we call that a brick, but look at it; it’s actually smaller than that LG G3!! Crazy how these things got smaller and smaller, only now to be reversing course and becoming practically tablet-sized.
What I especially like about the older phones in this pic is their incorporation of the Sprint logo onto the phones themselves (including the old 1987-2005 logo on that leftmost phone). Nowadays, that’s not done for practicality reasons, given there’s no “front side” to smartphones… but also, I feel like it’s not done simply because there’s no loyalty these days. Providers clamor strictly for new business only, and leave longtime customers in the dust.
As I’ve noted (and this photo proves), we’ve been with Sprint for a very long time, but we don’t get any discounts for our loyalty. In fact, we don’t even get to continue to be users of Sprint’s now-former two-year plan. Used to, we could buy our phones outright, own them ourselves, and then get a new one at any point after two years. Now, that’s been eliminated; Sprint offers only lease plans. My dad actually bought his newest phone through Sam’s Club, which technically also offers only lease plans, but set up in such a way that you can buy out the lease in whole after a couple of weeks pass. Sprint is still our provider, but this marks the first phone he didn’t purchase from them directly… precisely because he wasn’t given the option to do so.
Unfortunately, that’s just the market these days, and there’s nothing I can really do about it… so I apologize for going off on a tangent and ranting, but this trend just does not sit well with me. In addition to the aforementioned coverage issues, I’d really like to see this Sprint/T-Mobile merger make a concerted effort to focus more time on the neglected realm of customer retention.
Sincerely, a loyal Sprint customer.
/soapbox
(c) 2018 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
Cell Phone Evolution (On the Sprint Merger)
Whew – with that long description out of the way, only two more to go tonight, lol! This photo, as I’m sure you were immediately able to tell, is quite different than what I normally post. I’m sharing this because of the recent news that Sprint and T-Mobile are seeking to merge.
My parents and I are Sprint customers, and have been for longer than I’ve been alive, I believe. I like Sprint partially due to this loyalty, and mainly because they’re not AT&T (lol)… but there’s no denying that they’re not the best by any means either, especially since their coverage in our region is rather poor. (Even worse, go further south down into the Mississippi Delta, and you’ll only get about negative three bars, haha!) To be sure, their coverage elsewhere in the country is much better, and that works well for my dad, as Sprint has a discount deal worked out with his employer. That said, I’m all for this merger in the hopes that it will live up to its promise to increase coverage in more rural and underserved areas.
The sad thing in all this, at least in my opinion, is that the combined company (if, of course, the merger is approved) will be called T-Mobile, meaning that the Sprint name will be put out of commission after such a long run :( Those sorts of things are always upsetting to me, especially when the companies affected have a storied history (the Sprint name has been around since the 70s, and as a matter of fact started out as an acronym for “Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telephony”… #TheMoreYouKnow ).
Which brings me to what is pictured here… as a result of a conversation I was having over winter break, I decided to dig through our closet and photograph every single one of my dad’s past cell phones XD They’re in (what I believe to be) chronological order, from left to right. He just recently ditched his LG G3 – the one on the right in this shot – for a new Samsung Galaxy, but other than that… the gang’s all here! Check out that brick on the left XD And the funny part is – we call that a brick, but look at it; it’s actually smaller than that LG G3!! Crazy how these things got smaller and smaller, only now to be reversing course and becoming practically tablet-sized.
What I especially like about the older phones in this pic is their incorporation of the Sprint logo onto the phones themselves (including the old 1987-2005 logo on that leftmost phone). Nowadays, that’s not done for practicality reasons, given there’s no “front side” to smartphones… but also, I feel like it’s not done simply because there’s no loyalty these days. Providers clamor strictly for new business only, and leave longtime customers in the dust.
As I’ve noted (and this photo proves), we’ve been with Sprint for a very long time, but we don’t get any discounts for our loyalty. In fact, we don’t even get to continue to be users of Sprint’s now-former two-year plan. Used to, we could buy our phones outright, own them ourselves, and then get a new one at any point after two years. Now, that’s been eliminated; Sprint offers only lease plans. My dad actually bought his newest phone through Sam’s Club, which technically also offers only lease plans, but set up in such a way that you can buy out the lease in whole after a couple of weeks pass. Sprint is still our provider, but this marks the first phone he didn’t purchase from them directly… precisely because he wasn’t given the option to do so.
Unfortunately, that’s just the market these days, and there’s nothing I can really do about it… so I apologize for going off on a tangent and ranting, but this trend just does not sit well with me. In addition to the aforementioned coverage issues, I’d really like to see this Sprint/T-Mobile merger make a concerted effort to focus more time on the neglected realm of customer retention.
Sincerely, a loyal Sprint customer.
/soapbox
(c) 2018 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)