In the past six months I’ve changed my cell phone plan twice. The end result is a family bill that is about $75 now, coming down from almost $160 before the changes – without any real impact on our service.

It seems like Sprint is really being forced to race to the bottom to add and retain subscribers (are they really being passed by T-Mobile?). And since I’ve been a customer for nearly a decade without a major service issue I plan to ride the bumps out and save some money.

(As an aside, I originally left Verizon over a bill they wouldn’t change when I had repeated misclicks on my feature phone that resulted in $1.50 being charged to me each click. I couldn’t even remove the button from the phone home screen. Good riddance.)

Here’s the process I went through with Sprint:

A few month’s back I decided to ask them about the “Framily” thing. (A name that has thankfully been killed and buried as of this post’s writing.) Switching from our “Unlimited for Life” plans at about $80 a line, we still got unlimited talk and text but I reduced our monthly data allowance to 1 GB each. If you’re not on WiFi as much as my wife and I that might be an issue for you, but it’s not for us.

Anyway, this change got us to about $125 before taxes. I was pretty happy about that. Oh, and no more two-year contracts. A nice bonus (to hell with subsidized phone purchases).

That brings me to today. I went online to pay my bill and noticed an advertisement for what they’re calling “Family Share Pack“. The nuts and bolts are this:

• Pick a shared data package.
• Add $25 for every line you want.

2 GB shared is $25. Our two lines are another $50. So yes, our monthly bill for unlimited talk, text, and 2 GB shared data is $75. It was that simple at the Sprint store (I’m loathe to change plans through the website), even if the clerk seemed a little bewildered and reluctant to help me switch (would love to know more about how this might affect the store/salesperson).

Anyway, if you’re sick of your nasty cell bill you could do a lot worse.