With 'Framily' plan in place, Sprint eases upgrade terms

Introducing Framily plan in January, Sprint also let customers upgrade phones more quickly, although terms aren't as generous as other carriers' are. Framily plan lets relatives and friends pool accounts for savings.

|
Brendan McDermid/Reuters/File
A woman talks on her phone as she walks past T-mobile and Sprint wireless stores in New York in 2009.

Sprint is restoring the ability for customers to upgrade phones more quickly.

Sprint Corp.'s "Easy Pay" requires customers to pay the full price of the old phone before getting a new one with installment payments. The customer could then sell the old phone for cash. Programs offered by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile take back the phone and waive remaining payments.

Easy Pay replaces Sprint's "One Up," which was more like rival upgrade programs. That was discontinued last week when Sprint introduced a "Framily" plan, which lets friends and relatives pool accounts for savings, while keeping individual billing and data allotments.

One Up required 12 monthly payments for the phone before an upgrade. Easy Pay requires full payment for the phone, but that can be done right away.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to With 'Framily' plan in place, Sprint eases upgrade terms
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0119/With-Framily-plan-in-place-Sprint-eases-upgrade-terms
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe