To my British eyes, it’s sometimes difficult to understand the American Thanksgiving season other than seeing the eyewatering discounts applied on Black Friday through and beyond Cyber Monday. Some of the deals I’ve seen are outrageous: Cricket Wireless offering half price Samsung Galaxy flagship devices for their pre-pay service and for customers on a post pay contract, getting more or less seems to be on the cards. It would make me hold out changing my device until the end of November every year and I can’t alone in this respect given how popular the sales are!
Justin reported a couple of weeks ago that AT&T were offering customers a $100, 15 GB shared data plan that included unlimited minutes and text messages, a saving from the $130 price before the promotion. At the time we didn’t know how long the promotional price would last; it turns out that it was inside two weeks, so if you grabbed it between the 18 November to the 30 November, well done! You can keep the shared data plan at the $100 a month but customers resigning will be paying the higher, $130 a month plan. AT&T are not alone in starting and stopping promotional deals with very little notice. It means that if you are shopping around, it’s important to one, check prices carefully before you sign up and two, try not to pay any attention to price reductions afterwards (although it’s probably sensible to see if you can still take advantage of them!). We don’t know if AT&T discontinued the promotion because of lack of customer interest or instead because of plenty of interest; an AT&T spokesperson only said that the carrier constantly runs limited time promotions.
All of the major US carriers have offered deals at the back end of November. Sprint’s “cut your bill in half” event offered customers unlimited minutes, texts and matched their existing data allowance, even if the discount applied for customers was not always quite what Sprint explained. T-Mobile USA offered reductions and gave away tablets, with Verizon also offering discounts too. How many of our American readers hold out until November before replacing or buying a new device? Let us know in the comments below.