Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Now we are getting somewhere. After years of having wireless carriers “buying” customers with device subsidies, they have finally decided that the best way to lure new users is to just put cash in their hands. Cold, hard cash.
This move was kicked off earlier this month when AT&T surprised many by announcing it would give (give!) T-Mobile US customers up to $450 if they switched allegiances. This bribe included up to $250 in credit on trading in their old T-Mobile US device and a $200 credit per line when they switched over their number. Pretty sweet, and even more sweet because it targeted just T-Mobile US, which had used pretty much all of 2013 taking digs at AT&T. Good to see AT&T finally take a swing back.
Making the AT&T news even sweeter was that it was announced just days before the interwebs were abuzz about T-Mobile US announcing a similar deal. For a carrier like AT&T that has always had an “above all of that” image, the move was downright saucy.
Of course, T-Mobile US did indeed to what the buzz said it would do in that it announced plans to offer up to $650 to any customer of its three larger rivals switching family plan lines to T-Mobile US, including up to $300 in device trade-in credit and up to $350 in paying off any early-termination fee. Sure, this deal was open to anyone coming from Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility or Sprint, but most of all it was targeted at AT&T Mobility because that is how T-Mobile US does things.
Again, this is literally the best thing to ever happen in the wireless space. No more beating around the bush with deals that require a two-year commitment in exchange for providing a customer with a lower-priced device. It’s now just money on the table.
“Come to us from them and we will give you a stack of bills!”
This type of customer acquisition has been around for some time, with the occasional story at the bar of someone managing to talk a carrier into paying that customers early termination fee if they were to move service. But, this was never “official” carrier policy.
Now, I know that behind the scenes where the bean-counters work, these moves are really just re-juggling of past customer acquisition costs and that once all the factors are taken into account the true cost of these moves will likely be a wash compared with past practices. But, from a consumer perspective, this lays it all out in the open – for the most part – and does away with at least some of the confusion inherent in the wireless space.
Outside of the two main pugilists, lay Verizon Wireless and Sprint. Sure, the T-Mobile US offer is designed to impact these two operators as much as it is to impact AT&T, but that does seem to be much of a concern.
Verizon Wireless remains itself (so far) in barely acknowledging no-contract customers – at least directly – and has only thrown out token gestures that it wants to play in all of this device financing nonsense. Heck, with customers still willing to fork over top dollar for a perceived top-notch network, why should Verizon Wireless stoop to getting its hands – and profit margins – dirty.
As for Sprint … well, what can you say. They seem to be doing all they can over there in Overland Park. But, with their hands still a bit tied due to some recent financial transactions and change in ownership, anything they can do, even if that includes creating a new word for “family,” at this point should be seen as a win.
Now, we can only hope consumers take this new found marketing strategy to the next level and begin demanding to be shown the money.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–I will save you the arduous and repetitive task of reading my rants about having to attend the recent CES event in Las Vegas. As with past visits, attending this year made me question my very existence.
Instead, I will rant about some of the stupid things I saw at this year’s show. Or at least I would like to if I had even a second to actually see anything on the show floor that encompassed all of Las Vegas’ enormous convention center, parking lots outside the convention center and the nearby Sands Convention Center.
However, I did manage to speak with a few people, and it seems that the stupid item(s) of the year were anything related to the “wearables” category. This seems to be the “next-big” thing that seems like a great idea on a spreadsheet, but falls flat in reality.
Sure, the thought of wearing multiple devices that could wirelessly transmit my every thought, feeling and pain to some other wireless device seems like a no-brainer, but how on earth are we supposed to now keep track of multiple wireless devices when for the life of me I seem to lose my cellphone at least 84 times per day?
I won’t even attempt to ask about how we are supposed to keep all of these new “wearables” charged. Any venue where humans gather has already become a battle ground over electrical outlets, and adding more charging needs to the equation seems set to take that war to the Thunder Dome.
So, thanks wearables market for moving humanity just one step closer to the brink.
–Finally, I try to not be too harsh when it comes to critiquing television commercials, but this ad from Verizon Wireless has for some reason crawled under my skin.
I don’t want to say it’s the worst commercial of all time, but it’s at least a solid No. 2.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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