Glad it's not just me.. many people seem to be excited about this Framily plan though.. It's an even worse deal now that I found out the 23% employee discount I get through my employer is only applied to the data buy up on the Framily plan, so my current $240 plan really only costs me about $215 after my employee discount... a far cry from the $275 + monthly phone financing charges with Framily. The employee discount would be reduced from about $25 to about $10... even less if I don't buy the $20 unlimited data buy up.
I wonder if this isn't also a tactic to try and reduce the lost revenue in employee discounts as well. Seems the discount has applied to less and less over the years. When I started with my company the discounts applied to my entire plan costs, now reduced to just the initial line/plan costs, and with Framily reduced down to applying to only the data buy up.
Just feels like Sprint is using this as a way to offer less phone discounts through eliminating phone subsidizing, and less application of employee discounts to their plans as well structuring the data separate from the unlimited plans as well. They haven't reduced their per line costs enough yet to make me consider going to purchasing phones outright or financing them. Subsidies for me are still a better deal since I use them as soon as they are availble to me when my 2yr contract is up.
T-Mobile however has it about right in their pricing after removing their subsidy charges in the plan pricing. Their plan rates are great. For 5 lines w/unlimited data, the cost would only be $210, and I bet I could knock $20-30 off that going with the 2.5Gb data plans on a few lines. Plus T-Mobile will apply my work discount to the entire bill, not just the data buy ups either... Sprint maybe knocked off $5 per line from their plan pricing, but pushed a $15-20 per month charge on to their customers instead by removing the subsidies, and trying to market it as a great "no contract" deal with a funny name..
If I didn't have to travel so often into many areas across rural MN and WI where there is zero T-mobile service or only 2g data coverage, i'd swap to T-Mobile based on their no-nonsense approach to plans, pricing, and website ease of use. I think Voice coverage on every carrier will be pretty much the same, but the data coverage for T-Mobile just ins't there yet. It may be faster than sprint when you can get thier 4G, but at least for now with Sprint I get 3g or 4g data just about everywhere I need it, alhtough sometimes very slow. But at least I have the data and it's useable, unlike some of the zero coverage or unuseably slow 2g or worse data on T-Mobile outside of the larger city areas.
I've been with Sprint about 14 years now, and they have just always been the carrier I love to hate.... I'm never 100% happy with Sprint but they do just enough to string me along. Just when you think the new plan options are going to be great, I run the numbers and they fall short of the value being marketed. Most of the time because I hang onto these older legacy plans for a while rather than just jumping to the next exciting plan option.. most new plan options end up costing more to existing customers. Framily is a good example... It would cost me more to get the same thing I have now, although I would LOVE to add 1 more line to my account to cover my dad. Sprint tops out at 5 lines on their shared plans. Framily sounds like a great option and only $30 a line for 6 members! Until you do the math, add in the data add ups, and the monthly device financing charges, it's cheaper to keep what I have, and get pops a trackphone... grrrr....
T-Mobile however has got my attention, and if they can get some better coverage, they will be worth a look.
Just my rant for today..
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