Sprint and eBay Join Forces to Offer Prepaid Products
on Internet's Hottest E-Commerce Site
Million minutes donated to charity for launch of new Sprint store
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - August 5, 2002 - Sprint (NYSE:FON, PCS), the first major carrier to market the concept of prepaid long-distance minutes and eBay, the world's online marketplace, have combined efforts to sell Sprint Prepaid PhoneCardsSM. Consumers can shop for long-distance prepaid cards in the new Sprint Prepaid PhoneCard Store located online at ebay.com. To kick-off the launch of the new store, Sprint has placed one million minutes of prepaid domestic long distance up for bid on eBay with proceeds to benefit a camp for seriously-ill children.
"eBay presents a great opportunity for us to offer an extremely competitive product to millions of Internet shoppers," said Harry S. Campbell, president, Sprint Mass Markets Organization. "As more consumers become comfortable shopping online, we are able to reduce sales costs and pass those savings on to our customers."
eBay shoppers will be able to choose from two different denominations, with rates as low as 4.2 cents per domestic minute, when purchasing Sprint Prepaid PhoneCards.
· 25 pack of 480 minute cards - 4.2 cents per domestic minute
· single 120 minute cards - 4.5 cents per domestic minute
· single 480 minute cards - 4.5 cents per domestic minute
"We are pleased to welcome Sprint to the eBay marketplace. Sprint's highly recognizable brand will be a great asset to eBay, and their new store will be an ideal venue to find widely sold consumer and retail-oriented products," said John Herr, vice president and general manager for eBay's electronics category. "Having access to a reliable and proven product along with the familiarity of the Sprint brand name attached to it is a first-class benefit that all of eBay will be able to appreciate."
Prepaid cards are an increasingly popular way for consumers to make long-distance calls. Consumers can use the cards from any home phone, around town or while traveling. Prepaid cards are also popular birthday, holiday and back to school gifts that are easy to mail and appreciated by everyone from babysitters to teachers to college students. The Yankee Group's Technologically Advanced Family Study® (TAFS®) shows that nearly 45% of all U.S. households used prepaid calling cards to make long-distance calls in the past year, up from 41% in 2000.
The proceeds from the million prepaid domestic minutes Sprint donated will benefit Victory Junction Gang Camp. The camp has been founded for children with chronic or life-threatening illnesses by NASCAR driver Kyle Petty and his wife Pattie, in honor of their late son Adam. The camp is scheduled to open in the summer of 2004. The minutes will be up for bid until 7 p.m. on Sunday, August 11, 2002. Bidders can locate the no-reserve auction site at:
http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/sprintprepaidphonecardstore/
"The Petty Family has always been admired for their help in supporting organizations that strive to better the lives of children," said Campbell. "We are thrilled to offer a million minutes of prepaid long-distance service to help raise dollars for such a worthwhile cause."
Sprint has chosen marketplace management provider ChannelAdvisor Corporation to develop and manage the Sprint Prepaid PhoneCard Store on eBay.
This is not the first time Sprint and eBay have worked together. Late last year, the two companies announced that eBay would begin using Sprint E|Solutions Centers to expand eBay's Web hosting facilities.
About eBay
eBay is The World's Online MarketplaceTM. Founded in 1995, eBay created a powerful platform for the sale of goods and services by a passionate community of individuals and businesses. On any given day, there are millions of items across thousands of categories for sale on eBay, as well as on Half.com, eBay's site dedicated to fixed price trading. eBay enables trade on a local, national and international basis with customized sites in markets around the world.
About Sprint
Sprint is a global communications company serving more than 26 million business and residential customers in over 70 countries. With approximately 80,000 employees worldwide and more than $26 billion in annual revenues, Sprint is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying state of the art network technologies, including the United States' first nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network. The Sprint award-winning Tier 1 Internet backbone is being extended to key global markets to provide customers with a broad portfolio of scalable IP products. Sprint's high-capacity, high-speed network gives customers fast, dependable, nonstop access to the vast majority of the world's Internet content. Sprint also operates the largest 100-percent digital, nationwide PCS wireless network in the United States, already serving the majority of the nation's metropolitan areas, including more than 4,000 cities and communities.
About ChannelAdvisor Corporation
ChannelAdvisor Corporation provides technology and services that enable leading online retailers to maximize their products across multiple e-commerce marketplaces such as eBay, Amazon.com and Overstock.com, comparison shopping engines such as Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Nextag and Google Product Search and search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. In 2006, ChannelAdvisor managed over $1.6 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) on behalf of its customers. ChannelAdvisor solutions combine best practices, on-demand software and integration technology to help retailers sell more products, faster, by automating labor-intensive, manual functions so they spend less time optimizing campaigns and more time solving marketing and business issues. ChannelAdvisor's customers include, GSI Commerce, Sears, Brookstone, Abebooks and Motorola. ChannelAdvisor Corporation is headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC with offices in Seattle, the United Kingdom and Germany. For more information, visit http://www.channeladvisor.com/.
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