By Francis Moran
I wrote earlier this week about Sprint’s new all-you-can-eat rate plan, and the excellent black-and-white television commercial I saw announcing it. I wrote that I was particularly impressed that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse’s personal email address flashed on screen at the end of the commercial, a clear invitation, it would seem, to engage with Hesse.
Alas, it was not to be.
I took Hesse up on his implied invitation and dropped him a line. My colleague Danny Sullivan was closer to the truth when he said the email address might as well have been info@sprint.com, not dan@sprint.com, because sure enough, I did get a reply but it was bland pablum from some peon named Cindy.
An all-you-can-eat rate plan from a North American wireless carrier might indeed qualify as a “revolution,” as Hesse claims in his ad. But while I applaud Sprint’s move, it’s a sad commentary that what has been standard fare in most of the rest of the world when it comes to mobile phone rates passes as revolutionary here.
As a signal that Sprint was going to engage with its customers in a new, revolutionary way, though, it was strictly business as usual. Not revolutionary. Not awesome. Not even close.
