In its race to stay ahead of T-Mobile, Sprint has decided to offer people switching to its network up to $350 to cover any outstanding installment payments they owe to T-Mobile, along with a minimum of $200 for trading in their T-Mobile smartphone.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because T-Mobile began offering the same deal to people who want to switch to its network last year as a part of its “Un-carrier” moves. It’s an attempt by Sprint to keep up with T-Mobile, which has been seeing massive subscriber growth.
There’s a catch, of course: Sprint is only running the promotion until April 9. All of this comes just a day after T-Mobile announced a new “Smartphone Equality” initiative that offers good financing deals to people who have paid their T-Mobile bill on time for 12 months, even if they don’t have the best credit.
It’s not clear how well the initiative will work. T-Mobile just topped a Computerworld survey about data plan quality. Only 21 percent of T-Mobile subscribers who took the survey said they were considering a switch to another carrier, while 51 percent of Sprint customers said that they are thinking about leaving.
As expected, T-Mobile CEO John Legere had some thoughts about the promotion on Twitter, saying that “no one wants to go from America’s Fastest to America’s Crappiest,” comparing data performance on T-Mobile’s network to that of Sprint.
It makes sense, @Sprint has to target @TMobile when we’re winning with 1.3M postpaid ads and they only had 30k in Q4. #sadface
— John Legere (@JohnLegere) January 23, 2015
Sprint’s effort isn’t the only time one of the Bellevue-based company’s competitors has tried to pick up new subscribers with a limited-time promotion. Last year, AT&T offered a $450 credit to T-Mobile customers who wanted to switch, but that effort only lasted a month.