By golly, people expect more from prepaid

provider reviews, the level of customer service for prepaid is generally terrible. Not that postpaid CS is a gem or anything. Those times may be a changin’, though.

Analyst Fedor Smith of Atlantic-ACM said that as wireless has become more ubiquitous, the expectations of some prepaid customers have risen. They now expect to be able to access the same services that postpaid customers can use, including various messaging services and data services.

Imagine that. Paying for a service and expecting a level of service. We do understand that prepaid customers aren’t as profitable to the wireless carriers as their postpaid counterparts. However, that doesn’t mean that prepaid should be neglected.

“They are upwardly mobile in terms of demand and expectations,” Smith said. He added that while the low-cost, basic voice prepaid customer still dominates the market, a more sophisticated prepaid customer also exists — often falling into the urban youth category between the ages of 18 to 26 years old. “A lot of them want a basic phone with five-cent per-minute calling… That’s a market that’s always going to be there. But there are consumers who want more… They might not have a lot of credit or cash in the bank, but they can still afford to buy high-end sneakers. It’s not that they don’t have any money — they don’t have any credit or reliable cash flow per se.”

We couldn’t agree more. Prepaid isn’t just about the credit deficient, though that type of person is still the typical prepaid user. People without credit have needs, too, and we shouldn’t be so discriminatory. Who knows how their credit got that way? And who knows if soon they can become a “viable” postpaid customer. The average prepaid customer spends $38 per month in additional airtime. That’s about $11 below the average postpaid user. [RCR Wireless News]]]>