T-Mobile CEO John Legere takes a final swing at BlackBerry with a brutal comparison to MySpace before his peace offering to BlackBerry fans through a promotional offer.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen took to his company's blog to blast T-Mobile for sending out emails to all Blackberry users in its network urging them to switch to iPhone 5S. T-Mo's CEO John Legere does not take any criticism lightly. So, in a not-so-subtle way, Legere posted a tweet Wednesday, saying, " Was going to engage John Chen on Twitter, but turns out he's not here." He further added that he would "check MySpace" to see if Chen has an account there.
Was going to engage John Chen on Twitter, but turns out he's not here. I'll check MySpace. Don't worry @BlackBerry Something in the works!
- John Legere (@JohnLegere) February 19, 2014
MySpace reference in the tweet by Legere was to remind Chen of the lost dominance his current company once had in the industry. MySpace and BlackBerry were once the most popular services in their respective industries but with time, these big companies lost their power to other competing products.
T-Mobile's Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Sievert, announced a peace-making deal in a blog post, Wednesday, a day before T-Mobile CEO mocked Chen for not being on Twitter. Sievert detailed the offer that can fetch an old BlackBerry handset $200 trade-in value. This can be either applied toward a new BlackBerry phone or another brand smartphone. For existing T-Mobile BlackBerry customers, the deal gets even better with an additional $50 discount on trading in and choosing a new BlackBerry Q10 or Z10 device. The carrier did not reveal the end-date for the offer but it is valid for limited time.
Under the new offer, customers with BlackBerry phones can switch to T-Mobile and take advantage of the Contract Freedom program, which pays the early termination charges for switching carriers, as well as get the trade-in value for an old Blackberry handset. The $200 offer is quite a deal as old BlackBerry phones do not have a high demand in the second sales market. As T-Mobile points out, it ranges from $5 to a little over $100.
"We simply have a different point of view on the matter of choice than the one expressed yesterday by Mr. Chen," Sievert wrote in the company's blog. "The Un-carrier is fundamentally about delivering real flexibility and freedom to wireless customers. It's just not in us to lock customers in to annual service contracts, make them wait for upgrades ... or limit them to one or the other type of device or OS. That's not what we're about."
