I will first start with
an introduction, hello I'm Djurre. I'm an international student from the Netherlands and
study for a semester at Montana State
University. I'm a business major and a senior in college, when I go back
to the Netherlands I will hopefully graduate in June. But enough about me,
let's start with the blog.
When you clicked on this
blog you would have proably thought "Americans are not stupid?" why
would he ever come up with this idea? We were the first people to reach the
moon, almost all of the big tech companies are founded by an American and we
are the greatest nation in the world! No it is not me who thinks Americans are
stupid, but I do think most of the teams who make the commericals you see on TV
or on Youtube, as this is the only place I can't block them.
Although
there are a lot of commercials which assuming the American citizen is stupid I
want to take one specific example, Sprint's commercial about their comparison
with Verizon.
In this commercial they
stress the fact that Sprint's reliability is within one percent of
Verizons, so still worse but close. To make things easy, I take reliability
as the coverage. So the coverage of Sprint is within 1% of Verizons and the
reliability of the network is also within one percent. This is probably not the
case, but to keep things simple we assume it. The reason why you should choose
Sprint over Verizon comes later in the clip, the fact that Sprint is 50% cheaper
on most rates. This would be a logical value offering; Almost the same reliability but half of the price,
who wouldn’t switch? With this thought somewhere
deep in my mind I was working on my understanding of the American culture, watching
American football. After a couple of minutes there was a commercial break and Sprint
was the first one; 10GB of data, unlimited
texting and calling, and four phones for 160 dollars a month. First thing that
came to my mind, so Verizon will be 320 a month?!
Wow, they really swindle you! Three commercials later it was Verizon’s turn,
who also had a horrible commercial by the way, and to my surprise they had
exactly the same deal for exactly the same price.
So Sprint, where did your advantage in price went? Did you watch the prices of your competitors or did you just think 50% seems nice and we’ll go with it. Do you really think that the American citizen is so stupid that he can’t remember that your reliability is close but worse and that the prices of both plans are exactly the same? I was literally baffled by the fact that they advertise with being almost, yes read closely; almost, as good but still asking the same price. Maybe Sprint has some plans which are 50% cheaper than the same plan at Verizon but nobody knows that now, at least advertise those plans! And not the plans which are exactly the same price and offer a worse version of the product.
Personally I wouldn’t even buy those plans, just because Sprint treats me like a stupid individual. Furthermore, as mentioned above I assumed that Sprints coverage is within one percent of Verizon’s but in real life this is probably not the case, with reliability they most likely mean failures of the network. Which makes Sprint even worse. Finally, I would like to stress the fact that both companise are absolutely ripping you of when comparing it to Dutch rates and in this sense I really feel sorry for you.
So Sprint, where did your advantage in price went? Did you watch the prices of your competitors or did you just think 50% seems nice and we’ll go with it. Do you really think that the American citizen is so stupid that he can’t remember that your reliability is close but worse and that the prices of both plans are exactly the same? I was literally baffled by the fact that they advertise with being almost, yes read closely; almost, as good but still asking the same price. Maybe Sprint has some plans which are 50% cheaper than the same plan at Verizon but nobody knows that now, at least advertise those plans! And not the plans which are exactly the same price and offer a worse version of the product.
Personally I wouldn’t even buy those plans, just because Sprint treats me like a stupid individual. Furthermore, as mentioned above I assumed that Sprints coverage is within one percent of Verizon’s but in real life this is probably not the case, with reliability they most likely mean failures of the network. Which makes Sprint even worse. Finally, I would like to stress the fact that both companise are absolutely ripping you of when comparing it to Dutch rates and in this sense I really feel sorry for you.
