Sprint Offers “Satisfaction Guaranteed or Money-Back”
Posted by Kevin McGuire on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 · 
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Sprint announced today that that it will offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for new customers starting tomorrow. Given that tomorrow is April 1, I had assumed it was a joke, but it is confirmed in a press release on their website:
Beginning tomorrow, the Sprint Free Guarantee gives any customer opening a new line of service the chance to try Sprint for 30 days. If a customer isn’t completely satisfied, they can get reimbursed for the device purchase and activation fee, get the early termination fee waived, get a full refund for service plan monthly recurring charges incurred and get all associated taxes and Sprint surcharges associated with these charges waived. In addition, Sprint will waive the restocking fee for new customer exchanges as part of this policy.
Other carriers offer a money back guarantee, but in most cases the customer is still responsible for the month of service, taxes and activation fees (after three days) among others. Sprint is trying to change that paradigm, thus making the risk of trying Sprint much less.
I’m reminded of a line from the movie “Tommy Boy” every time I hear the word “guarantee,” but let’s be honest — Sprint needs to do something. Their shares have lost about 86% since the merger back in August of 2005 and, according to their 10-K, they have lost a net of 7.5M post-paid subscriber since the end of 2007. This will either be seen as a brilliant move to bring customers back into the store and prove what a great network they have, or maybe the beginning of the end. Perhaps we’ll even see another merger/takeover in the future. If Comcast pulls off the NBCU deal, might they want to expand their Clearwire investment? Will be interesting to see how things progress.
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