After ending a troubled relationship with Radio Shack, T-Mobile has found a new sales outlet: Family Dollar discount stores.
"T-Mobile is excited to work with Family Dollar to offer an affordable prepaid device to its customers who seek value and convenience when shopping," said Amy McCune, vice president of national retail at T-Mobile USA. "T-Mobile is delivering great prices, simplicity and a nationwide 4G network with our prepaid products, which we know Family Dollar customers will find appealing."
T-Mobile prepaid cards, starting at $15, have been available at Family Dollar since 2003. The first T-Mobile phone to go on sale at Family Dollar will be the LG GS170 feature phone, which will sell for $30 without contract. The LG GS170 is a pretty basic flip phone with 64MB of RAM, a 0.3-megapixel VGA camera, and 2G support. In PCMag's review of the LG GS170, mobile analyst Alex Colon gave it three out of five stars and said it "is a nearly perfect simple voice phone, but its features are all pretty much from 2004."
With more than 6,000 locations around the country, Family Dollar sells a range of prepaid phones and phone cards, including those from Tracfone, Net10, Sprint's Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Cricket Wireless, Verizon Wireless, and Go Mobile.
Prepaid sales were one of the few positive figures in T-Mobile's second quarter earnings report. It added 231,000 prepaid subscribers between April and June 2011, but shed 281,000 lucrative postpaid subscribers for a net loss of 50,000 customers.
In April, T-Mobile forged a partnership with 7,000 7-11 convenience stores around the country by offering the LG GS170 device for $30 as well.
Last month, however, Radio Shack officially dropped T-Mobile products from its lineup in favor of a deal with Verizon Wireless. The reason is uncertain, but back in February, Radio Shack announced in an earnings statement that T-Mobile had "materially breached its contract" with RadioShack. In the second quarter, Radio Shack reported a one-time fee of $23 million to T-Mobile.
Last week, T-Mobile confirmed that customers on its low-tier 200MB monthly data plan will be charged overage fees if they go over their allotted data.
Source:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391182,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05039TX1K0000762
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