Sling TV has ended one of the best benefits of being a subscriber – the ability to instantly switch between its base Sling Blue and Sling Orange plans. To be clear, Sling has not removed the general ability to switch between plans. Instead, it has removed the immediate benefit of switching from one live TV package to another.
Those familiar with Sling’s base plans will know that Blue and Orange are very similar overall. Where they do differ, however, can be quite important and especially for sports fans. While ESPN is only available with Sling Orange, Fox Sports and NBC are both only available with a Sling Blue subscription.
This is exactly where the ability to instantly switch between plans came in so handy. If, for example, you were subscribed to Sling Blue for the live sports shown on NBC but there’s suddenly a game you watch to catch on ESPN, you could just change from Blue to Orange and instantly start watching ESPN. Considering you could switch back and forth as often as you wanted within the same billing cycle, it really was a highly useful benefit of being a subscriber.
It remains unclear when exactly the change was made, but Sling TV no longer offers the option to instantly switch between plans. Subscribers can still log in to the Sling TV website or (use the app) to change from one plan to another. However, the change now won’t take effect until the start of the next billing cycle. This not only means that subscribers can no longer switch plans and instantly benefit from a different channel lineup, but they also now cannot change their plan more than once per billing cycle.
It is possible that some of the service’s other recent changes have led to this change. Specifically, the addition of ABC.
At the start of March, Sling TV added ABC to its Blue package in select areas. This also resulted in a $5 price increase to the cost of Blue in those same locations. With the two base plans now priced differently, switching between them could result in an additional charge or refund that would need to be processed.
As that charge/refund would also need to be prorated to account for how long of the billing cycle is left, switching between plans would now be more complicated (in some areas) than it was before. It is possible that Sling made the change to ensure all subscribers can still switch between plans, albeit not instantaneously, without the need for any additional payments or refunds being processed.
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