Pick 3 and Pick 5 Numbers on Any Network: Offers Expired!

Not that it should be any surprise, but with the launch of the new 'Any Mobile, Anytime', Account Services no longer offers the Pick 3 or Pick 5 Numbers on Any Network plans for customers that are requesting to leave Sprint®.

• With the Any Mobile, Anytime^SM offer, the Pick 3 or Pick 5 Numbers on Any Network retention offers are no longer needed.

• Customers should not be transferred to Account Services with the intention of getting the Pick 3 or Pick 5 Numbers on Any Network offers.

If for some reason you still have a Pick 3 or Pick 5 and decide to not go to a new plan that includes Any Mobile, Anytime, then Customer Care can still modify your selected numbers, business as usual.

Google Voice & Sprint... 11/08/09

 

At yesterday’s keynote address at the 2009 Open Developer Conference, Steve Elfman gave us some great news and details about how we will allow Sprint users to integrate Google Voice into their Sprint service…. actually the more official wording went more like:

“Sprint is proud to promote access to the new voicemail feature in Google Voice™ to deliver an even richer experience to customers.”

 

Here’s the goodies…

• Google Voice™ - starting 11/8/09, all Sprint price plans will include free conditional (no answer/busy) call forwarding (*73,*74,*28).
  • No action is required on your part, it’s all automatic. Unconditional (immediate) call forwarding (*72) will remain $0.20/minute.
• Simply Everything customers will also begin receiving unconditional call forwarding (immediate) included in their plan beginning late November. More info on this closer to time!

PRL Updates in select LA markets

Starting this morning, we have released new Preferred Roaming List (PRL) updates that allow customers in select areas to keep their roaming ability. This will mean nothing to 99.99% of you that read the blog, but for those few that do, I know you’ve been waiting on this for a little while now, so here you are.

The new PRLs (standard 10055/50555, EVDO 20255/60655 and data card 60755) resolve the loss of mobile broadband roaming as home service in Houma, LA and surrounding markets.

These same PRLs will also resolve the following roaming outages expected to take place on the targeted dates indicated.

• 10/28/09 - loss of roaming voice and 1XRTT - Mohave County (This PRL update does not resolve mobile broadband roaming coverage loss for customers in this area.)


• 11/13/09 - loss of roaming voice and 1XRTT - Yuma County and La Paz County, AZ


• 11/18/09 - loss of roaming voice and 1xRTT - Santa Cruz County, AZ(This PRL update does not resolve mobile broadband roaming coverage loss for customers in this area.)

Customers living in or traveling in these counties should update their PRL prior to the roaming network date, or they will lose the listed services.

Note: Dates listed are planned; however, actual actual dates may vary by about 1 - 3 days before or after.

Sprint.com Self Service Maintenance Window

Some updates on the backend are being completed over the next few hours... from now until 6AM (Monday) actually. Affected areas are:

• You won't be unable to purchase or manage their content.


• Ability to login to Sprint.com/Manage account will be down.


• Customer will be unable to check MOU in Sprint.com - they can still get MOU from the IVR (*4/*5)


• Customers will be unable to purchase content from their computer or from their handset

Fully expect all to be up before the sun rises :).. so you probably never missed a thing!

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:

• 
  
  700 Anytime Minutes


• 
  
  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

• 
  
  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)

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


• 
  
  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.

Sprint Overage Relief Minutes

Tired of paying $.40/per minute or more for using more minutes that your plan allows per month? There’s a little known tip to help avoid paying the ridiculous price for overages. You have to be alert and plan ahead to get the savings, but it’s well worth it. For instance if you used 200 minutes over your plan in any given month, you would have to pay $80 in overage – with the tip below, those same 200 minutes only cost you $10 ! It does pay to plan ahead, or at least to know what day your bill cycle ends and how to check your MOU (minutes of use).

Here’s how it works! Sprint offers ‘Overage Relief Minutes’ to customers who have used more minutes than allotted in their plan. The purpose was originally intended to help customers in ‘one-time’ situations or to use as part of an offer to entice you to upgrade your plan starting with your next bill cycle while providing the overage for the current month at a discounted amount.

• You MUST call in before your bill cycle ends. Overage Relief Minutes can only be added before your bill generates. Nor care or account services or anyone can change this. If you waited too late, you’ll just have to pay for your usage and mark your calendar next month for your cycle end date.


• Overage Relief Minutes come in ‘buckets’. There are several available for consumer accounts, with one restriction: You may only ever purchase a 500 minute bucket 1 time during the entire life of your account. This is enforced by the system and cannot be overridden (though there is a trick, read on!).

Buckets of Minutes	Cost
100 Overage Minutes	$5
200 Overage Minutes	$10
300 Overage Minutes	$15
400 Overage Minutes	$20
500 Overage Minutes	$25

So, how do you get them? It’s simple. Just dial *2 and ask! Tell the agent that you’d like to purchase “Overage Relief Minutes” and if you can feel the blank stare on their face (hopefully most of those have been weeded out by now) insist they look in their knowledgebase for the information, or in a super nice way suggest to them that they ask their team lead or supervisor about it. While every agent is trained on these, most have forgotten the 5 minutes they spent on it during six weeks of training, and it’s not a common call driver, so some may not be familiar.

• Overage Relief Minutes don’t roll over, no matter what expiration date is put on them, again this is systematically enforced. If you want them next month, you’ll have to call in again. They aren’t intended to be an easy way to get extra minutes, but rather for help for occasional overage.


• The agent MUST backdate the SOC to the start of your current billing cycle, or you will only get a prorated portion of the minutes. If this happens, call in after your bill posts to get it corrected, and be clear about what happened and insist on proper credit to your account.


• You can change your mind and purchase more minutes! If you call in on the 20th day of your bill cycle to add a bucket of 100 minutes, and realize on the 30th day that you really needed 400, you can always add more.


• You can only purchase the bucket of 500 minutes one time, however you can ‘stack’ the other buckets all you want. Need 500 again? purchase a 300 and a 200. Need 600? stack a 400 and a 200.Officially there is no limit on the upper amount, however you’d be able to get 1,500 once and 1,000 any month thereafter, as the same code cannot be ‘stacked’ twice during the same month (assuming you get a rep willing to add that many – as most would probably have the good sense to require a plan change, and I can’t say I’d blame them on this, though there’s no official policy).


• Lastly – in case you have a plan that doesn’t include it – Overage Relief Minutes DO NOT apply to roaming minute charges. These would be billed as normal.

If you find yourself using Overage Relief Minutes more than once or twice, then you probably should listen when the agent offers to tell you about a different plan that would save you money – because most likely they’re right, and you’re hanging on to that ancient plan for sentimental reasons – and if that’s the case, then you may actually want to consider our newer offerings that really do include everything. While there’s no formal policy on requiring a plan change commitment when using these minutes, do the math yourself and see what’s right for you, because in almost every case you will save money if you find yourself using these more than a couple of months in a row.

It’s really that simple – so know what day your billing cycle ends, and check your minutes of use each month (that’s 12 times a year – surely you can find the time!). You can find your MOU on sprint.com, by dialing *4 from your handset, and by speaking with someone at Care (*2).

Have you used Overage Relief Minutes before? Did you know they existed? Comment Away!