Seasonal Standby Plan Expands to 6 Months

This went into effect last month, but it slipped my mind until today. The Seasonal Standby plan was originally available for up to 6 months, then it was reduced to 3 months, and after much debate, it is once again (and for good) set back to being available for up to 6 months at a time.

• Consumer and IL customers can now remain on the SSBY for a total of 6 instead of 3 months.


• All other requirements remain the same:
  
  
  
  • Customers must be on a regular plan for at least 3 months before qualifying for SSBY.
  
  
  • Services are disabled on SSBY
  
  
  • Service Agreements are frozen while on SSBY
  
  
  • SSBY should be provisioned using next day or another future date as the effective date.
  
  
  • Customers should not be promised a return to their old plan when the phone is reactivated
  
  
  
  

Palm Pre Goodness

Whoops - I was off by one on the launch date, sorry folks - sometimes even I get the slip, ya know :) It was never my intention for my blog to be all about the Palm Pre, just my sometimes mundane life at sprint. But, hey - what can I do lol. We've been working in our own departments and in others the past few weeks, gearing up on all fronts - hence my lack of posts. Like I said though - ISN isn't about the Pre, it's about Sprint - and though I have blogged mostly about the Pre lately, well... quite frankly that's been the biggest thing going on, so it's only appropriate, right?

Ok.. ok... so I did mention goodness, right? If the blog stats are any indication then you've ALL been craving some new info... yea, i see ya hitting refresh every hour or two to see if I've posted. Get a feed reader, already - lol :) So who am I to disappoint.. here's some goodness I doubt you've been exposed to. Enjoy.

Oh.. and while you're here, in case you're new, check out some of my non-pre posts too, like: Overage Relief Minutes, where you can get 100 minutes for $5 (sure beats .40 cents a minute for overage, right?) oh yea..back to the palm pre, boys.... and you may already know this - quite frankly I've been so caught up in it all at work, I forget what's been figured out, and what hasn't.

How about some official accessories, price plans, and device info (including battery life)? Full size images after the jump!


After the jump: Palm Pre Service Plans, Featured Accessories, & More...

 

Palm Pre Plan Choices

Due to all the fuss about having to swap to a new plan (for some) in order to activate a Pre, here's a breakdown of the plans it can be activated on - both with the standard price AND the price with a NVP/Employer discount. As posted before, anyone can qualify for the credit union member NVP discount automatically, which is a 10% discount no questions asked - but you can of course qualify for much more, by having a different employer's discount - Not that I advocate being dishonest about your employer for discount purposes, but a LOT of companies do business with Sprint/Nextel, so many people are very surprised to know they already qualify for 15%, 20%, 25%, or 27% already.

Here's how the plan pricing looks, standard and with discounts. Yellow is the standard MRC (Monthly Recurring Charge) and then the NVP Discounts to the right, with 27% first, all the way to the 10% in the final column.

[caption id="attachment_174" align="aligncenter" width="505" caption="Palm Pre Data Plans"][/caption]

If i left anything out I'm sure someone will let me know, but this gives you a general quick-reference when looking at your options. enjoy!

Ask I.S.N: How Do AT&T Plans Compare to Sprint Palm Pre Plans?

Ask Inside.Sprint.Now!

First, let me say that over the past couple of months I've had around 30 visitors a day to my blog - So you'll have to bear with me while I try to process this crazy influx of madness over what I thought was going to be some general FAQ about the Pre. Turns out over 8,600 of you visited here yesterday (!really? it was just some general info.. nothing earth shattering!) so I hope you'll understand when it takes me just a bit to respond to comments and the like. There was one comment that I started replying to, but the answer got to be too long to be an effective comment, and I was afraid it'd be overlooked, so I created a post just for it. I've called it 'Ask I.S.N(Inside.Sprint.Now) and if anyone wants to email me a question or two that might be something that's beneficial to a lot of folks, I might do one every day or two, that all depends on how much time I have. Here's the one comment I picked that I felt could use some clarification.. and I have not told the poster I was making it into a full post, so hopefully he won't mind!

Mike asks: (link to his comment)

What about a family plan where one spouse (me) wants a Palm Pre and a data plan and the other spouse (my wife) does not want to pay extra for a data plan? AT&T offers the ability to pay a flat $30/mth on our existing shared (non-data) plan for a data plan for one spouse which results in a combined monthly cost of $99 ($69 for shared plan + $30 for single line’s data plan). I don’t see anything like this in your post. Will Sprint have something like this for those of us wanting just one Palm Pre on a shared plan?

Mike, I'm glad you asked!

Based on your pricing, I'll assume you have the 700 Minute Shared Plan for $69.99/mo with AT&T which includes:

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  700 Anytime Minutes


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  Nights & Weekends 9PM-6AM

You stated you could add a data package to one line for $30, leaving the other as is, with only voice usage. That gives you minutes and data for $99.99 – Let’s compare apples to apples though – the AT&T plan is very barebones, and requires buy-ups in order to even compare to a Sprint plan for the Pre, here’s what you’ve have to add:

$16.99 for N/W at 7PM(REALLY?), $9.99/mo for Navigation(per/ln), $1.99/mo for standard voicemail features(per/ln), $30/mo for unlimited messaging(per/acct), $15/mo for Mobile TV Basic(per/ln) – and after all that you still only have data on 1 line! It’d be yet another $30 to add on to the second(assuming PDA too), right?

That’s $230.94/month for 700 minutes, N&W 7PM, Navigation, Enhanced Voicemail, Unlimited Text & Data, and Mobile TV Basic. Even if you left some of these features off (that are included with Sprint) you’d still not come close to the same value, in my opinion (albeit a bit skewed).

How’s that compare to Sprint? As you know we make it easy. It’s SO easy, in fact – Everything’s included! It’s just there! It just works! No worries about using some cool feature of your new phone b/c you might get a $62,000 bill next month cause you were watching more than your allotted 42 seconds of bloopersTV for the month(or whatever your vice may be) Here’s a few options:

(#1) – Everything Data Share 1500

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  1500 Min/Shared, Unlimited Data & Messaging (Text, Picture, & Video)


• 
  
  N&W 7P-7A, Complete Voicemail, GPS/Navigation, TV Premier, Mobile Email


• 
  
  $129.99 (includes both lines)(or less with employer/credit union discount)

For (#1) above, you’ve more than doubled your minutes, gave both phones access to everything they were built to do, and tons more features than with AT&T.

So, maybe you say the wife just does NOT use the internet, and has no need for it? Absolutely no messages either?  We could even do something like this:

(#2) – Everything Data 450(you) / Talk 450(her)

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  You on a Everything Data 450 Plan, including all the same features of the data plan above, only change is 450 minutes. $69.99


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  Her on a Talk 450 Plan, includes unlimited mobile to mobile, N&W 7P-7A, LD/No Roaming. $39.99

This (#2) would give you each a plan totaling 200 more minutes than you had before, gives your nights and weekends at 7PM, AND you get messaging with your data, and the total is still only $109.98 (before any discounts, which you can get 10% just for telling us you bank at a credit union).

So I guess my question to you, is how can you afford to stay with AT&T  knowing how much more you’d get here, for so much less? Even if you just did the 69.99/plan +$30 Data(1 line)+$30 Messaging(shared) - you're still paying more and getting less, and your night&weekend minutes would not start until 9PM(-6AM) !

In all seriousness, if I’m missing something in the math here, or there are just features that you absolutely don’t use (like TV) then let me know and we can take a look, but when you compare apples to apples, we beat AT&T in every way that I’ve worked it.