New Legislation to Lower/Eliminate Charges for Breaking Wireless Contract
September 18, 2007 by Vincent
You may or may not have had to deal with this issue personally but when it comes to Early Termination Fees from cell phone providers I would like to think of myself as a seasoned warrior. Many cellular carriers allow you a certain time frame to "trial" their service, this period oddly usually only cinsists of about two weeks. During which you are supposed to decide if you want to stick with that carrier for 2 years. In 2 weeks you are forced to try and determine if their price is worth the service you're getting in the places you need to be. If you haven't caught on yet, this obviously is not ample time to fully test a network's capabilities. Also what if you find yourself in the a situation where you simple are no longer satisfied with your phone carrier, because as most do forget you are the customer, and you are supposed to be having your needs met by the wireless carier, not the other way around.
Well in light of this issue brought more to the mainstage by the realease of the iPhone which had everyone trying to drop their wireless providers like a bad date, many found that they were goign to be getting hit in the pocketbook for their early termination.... and hard. Usually early termination fees are somewhere between $100(although I've never seena ny this low) and $250. Also you have to then pay for your new phone, in the case of the iPhone there goes roughly another $400, oh and don't forget your activation fee, usually around $35, and there is the first month's bill with your new carrier that they like you to pay upfront generally, oh and let's hope that youremembered to also pay that last month's bill for your old carrier too....
As you can see the cost easily begins to get very high very quickly. Consumer advocate groups here in the US agree that this is not right, and legislation has been put into motion in the senate that may limit or even get rid of early terminaion fees once and for all. This move would allow customers 30 days to try the carrier's service and cancel without any fee, after which they could cancel with a predetermined and set termination fee which would be drastically lower than any charges now. Currently Verizon is the only US carrier which has this type of system.
[Source: MacNN]
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