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FCC Wants Answers to Why Cell Phone Termination Fees Are So High

Posted Wednesday, January 27, 2010 in Consumer/Business Services
by Elaine Roxane Winter

The FCC sent letters to all major U.S. cell phone carriers concerning early termination fees, according to Tech Crunch. 

The FCC's main concern is why cell phone carriers AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all have expensive termination fees which consumers are required to pay after terminating their contract before switching to another carrier.  

Some of the samples questions included in a letter to the four carriers are:

Do your ETF (Early Termination Fees) apply to all service plans or only some? If so, which ones? What is the amount of the ETF for each service plan where ETFs apply? If there are different ETFs for different plans, what is the rationale for those differences?

The FCC also sent a letter to Google, for charging an additional fee on top of the ETF imposed by T-Mobile.

Read the full article at Tech Crunch by clicking here.

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Comments

I have been with T-Mobile for 5 years and have 3 phone lines. According to the contract I signed for me to end my service with them early I would have had to pay $200 per line for early termination fee. I went into a T-Mobile store on January 20, 2010 and was able to get out of all 3 contracts for only $70. They have new plans and for you to switch to these new plans they charge $35 per line for the first 2 numbers on your account and anymore after that is free. I've always been happy with their customer service and now I know I picked the right mobile provider. Paying $70 instead of $600 tells me they care more about keeping their customers more than they care about screwing you over like other companies seem to do.
Comment By Angela At 2/4/2010 3:06 AM
It's obvious why termination fee's are so high...alot of these companies have such terrible service that they know that the customer will probally leave soon and not come back so they try to gouge them one more round before they leave...lol.
Comment By theQ At 1/31/2010 1:37 PM
I wish the FCC would put a stop to ETF's, the cell phone companies get enough out of their customers already. I for one will never have a contract again because these companies cant be trusted to look out for the best interests of the clients, they are all for what they can get. Now I have a Straight Talk phone from Walmart with unlimited everything for $45 per month and I am much happier. Verizon network runs Straight Talk nationwide so the signal quality is the best.
Comment By Terry At 1/29/2010 4:56 AM

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