Sued for Early Termination Fees

why would providers not offer discounted phones to customers after they have gotten one phone if they DIDN't cost hundreds of dollars (the phones) why would it be in the companies intrest to have customer paying for service and NOT use a phone they don't have a chance to make the company money but running over minutes and using network services doesn't make sense. someone is charging all that money to buy the phones it's not necessarily the cellular provider. also yeah a cell phone doesn't cost that much to make but my dad used to work in industry they have to pay royalties PER phone for the technology used in the phone(the manufacterer if they arn't the one who holds the patents on the circuits) . but where are the companies going to get their money to DESIGN the newest hottest phones? build the chips/design/ invent/ kinda like drug companies the drugs don't cost that much money to make its just inventing new ones that costs a lot of money. (but that's not exactly the same but an ok example)

and thank you for someone mentioning i don't call ma bell because my phone doesn't work (the actual phone) I just go to store and buy a new phone. just a housephone costs $5 and a cellular phone does not. and people do think they can do anything to their cellphone not pay the $5 or whatever insurance a month and still get a phone replaced for free. I even had a call once where a woman had the phone stolen in her car that was stolen. HELLO your auto insurance company get you the $200 for the retail price of the "free" contract phone.

Nope.doesn't work that way. Car insurance is for the price of the car and anything attached to it. Cell phone coverage is through the homeowners.

Yep. Unless it's a pocket PC or something of that ilk

ya. so that court case will probably be thrown out due to mandatory arbitration. the contract states that t-mobile gets to choose the judge, and that the dispute will be settled on t-mobile's terms. no way they'll lose. if they did, then there is something wrong with all of the contracts and theyll fix it so that it doesnt happen again.

Frist of all you sound like a dumbass for sticking up for multi-billion dollar corps. freaking retarted. Early termination fees are B!S! The phone componys want to charge you more money because thay cant hold up there part of the deal witch is providing good qualty services. The last i checked most people want good customer service (English speaking understand the words that are coming out of my mouth non A-holes). The correct amount on your bill (not having to call every month asking them once agine why you are being billed twice for the same calls at least $100 dollars extera) able to use your phone "nation wide" or at your house thats in the middle of there strongest signal area with you brand new upstage phone (that sucks!) Or even someone a there stores that is willing to help you (Besides selling you a new phone) Comishion ain't that a bitch! pluse im syure theres alot more i havent had to deal with one things for sure F**K SPRINT im done home phone time. But hey you order a pizza and get it cold, old and wrong and have no problems paying $200 for not being happy

Its july of 2007 now , was there a winner?
Tmobile? or the people against EFT?

Wow, I'm actually kind of amazed by the general feeling towards anyone who wants out of a contract and feels as though the ETF is a bit much in the way of penalty for poor or even non-existant service.

I can remember a time, before the the AT&T and Ma Bell to 'baby' Bells split, when you couldn't just go down to Radio Shack and buy a landline phone for your house. You had to get an authorized Bell phone, usually only available from the Bell store. And yes, they were expensive, and because of that people didn't tend to have phones in every room like they do now. We had one phone, in a large two-story house.

Long-distance charges back then were unbelievable as well - at a time when minimum wage was around $2-$3/hr, a call one city or area code away (basically across town, if you lived in a large metropolitan area) could cost as much as $1.50/min. Now you can call almost anywhere in the world for that.

The same arguments about funding the cost of infrastructure and technology advances were as applicable back then to landline service as now to cell service (I can remember when touch-tone phones first came out, which required not only different phones but also a different infrastructure over time. No way to take advantage of the digital switching and services they made possible while still using the old analog click-and-bang switches). It seems to me that we advanced just fine without having to pay through the nose for telephones (they got cheaper rather than more expensive, once they were no longer tied to a specific company as they had been), and without having to sign contracts in order to have both reasonably-priced phones and service.

In the time since, the advances to both technology and infrastructure (such as telecommunications satellites, DSL, and fiber optics) of landline services have been every bit as great as the advances to cell phone service have been. Cell service isn't quite as recent technology-wise as it might seem anyway, my dad had a company radiotelephone in his car back in the early 70's. And the amateur (ham) radio community pioneered the idea of digital repeater technology (via packet radio and interlinked repeater networks that had phone-patch technology to tie the linked tower radio signals to telephone landlines) years before it was ever adapted for use commercially. My guess is that the holdup wasn't so much the technology, as the idea that anyone using it should have to have an FCC license to do so (either individually, or via a business where you were one of its employees).

I can't think of any technology that hasn't gotten cheaper even as it made incredible advances in features, size, and functionality - and without the support of contract fees as well. Computers certainly went that way (an IBM PC AT/XT cost more new in the early 80's than a typical computer does now, even without adjusting for inflation). Even things as mundane as calculators - I can remember when an LED-display calculator, that did *nothing* but simple math (square root was the most advanced feature), cost over $100. For that price now, you can get an LCD graphing calculator that will do complex algebra, calculus and trigonometry. And we got there without having to put up with paying any sort of subsidy or subscriber fees to make those advances possible. Nor did we have to pay through the nose in order to buy a competitor's product (or service either, especially not once the phone monopoly was broken) if for any reason we became dissatisfied with what we had.

I cant believe you PPL. I've been with Tmobile for 3 months sence may 07 and ive gone threw 5 phones all were lemons so i tried to cancel my service due to faultyness on T mobiles manufacturing department they want to charge me $200.00 to do so they wouldnt eve refund my money that paid for my phone which is $159.00 . I paid for my phone out of my CHECKING ACCOUNT and so do thousands of other ppl in this country you can not say they have a right to to this . They never gave me a phone. I pay for my services each month out of my OWN POCKET and all the other stuff they gave me so when im going to be charged for just not wanting to be with them really pisses me off how can you defend them they are "PUNISHING ME" for not wanting to be with thier company.
I understand ppl are given a phone part of thier Phone plan but with all the money they make on Phone purchases my consumers and monthly charges for rate plans they cover thier losses completely and make profit to bat. So i think alll state should ban cancellation fees it riping PPL off and its a MONOPLY thats hurting american consumers with gas prices so damn high and ppl stuggling to find work it is discusting to me that they do this to ppl. So i back the lawyers and thier brave atk and will back them all the way.

Sued for Early Termination Fees

Similar Topics

New T-Mobile Cell Phones

Carriers Talk

Manufacturers Talk

Mobiledia Community