Cell Phone Contracts

June 17, 2004 7:46 AM

Getting out of a cell phone contract (US) - is there any hope? In this case, the usual story: Verizon, crappy service (roaming in the center of town), atrocious customer service (phone dies after three months, it's discontinued, they'll only replace it with used ones that also crap out). Do you know anyone who has tried to quit a cell phone contract? What did they/you do (file complaints, document, etc)? What were the consequences (credit, etc.)?

Help me fight the power! The customer service runaround is un-fuck-ing-be-liev-a-ble. This investment of time already has been astronomical. By now it's as much principle as anything, but this is a legitimate problem - they are not upholding their end of the contract. Their service does not work, and they will not correct it, because they know they have you by the short hairs. Is there any way to handle this without involving lawyers?

posted by gottabefunky to Technology (9 answers total)

Each state has Public Utility Commision that can and does levy significant 6 and 7 figure fines to land line telcos that aren't doing right by the public franchise conferred to them.

Alas, Cell phone companies fall outside of the oversight of the PUCs though and the FCC is careful not to get involved. This leaves only noisy campaigns that counteract their expensive ad campaigns to convince the consumer that they don't suck.

So... I'd sent a letter to the president with 2 links. One to this post, and a second showing the monthly traffic stats for AskMeFi.

You might also want to do this on ther high traffic sites. Its really your only hope other than paying the buyout clause to be released from your contract. For ATT Clueless, this was $170, last I checked.

explain that they have delivered a thouroughly miserable consumer experience in exchange for your monthly fee, and that you will work hard to get the message out if they refuse to make good on the deficiencies.
posted by BentPenguin at 8:46 AM on June 17, 2004

Read your contract closely. When dealing with this in the past, I found that my provider (SunCom) had violated the terms of our contract. I said that I would overlook that violation if they would overlook mine, and that was that.

I was, incidentally, really nice about it. I wouldn't have gotten far if I'd been a dick.
posted by waldo at 9:08 AM on June 17, 2004

I browse the alt.cellular.attws usenet group where people compalin about this stuff--maybe there's a verizon group?
posted by gramcracker at 9:37 AM on June 17, 2004

I work for a cell company (((chirp)). The contracts/service agreements are pretty flimsy. If the customer service/account services folks won't work with you over the phone and you have escalated the issue to higher ups in the company to no avail and documented the process thoroughly, I would suggest just cancelling anyway if you want to switch carriers. When, if, the bill comes take it to small claims court and sue for breach of contract. Some states, not all, will not honor a contract where one side (the cell company) is allowed to change the terms of the contract at will (as is often the case with rate plans and services offered) but won't allow the other side (the customer) to alter the terms of a contract (leaving early, making complaints about prices, service, service footprints) I would inquire with your local courts as well to see if you can sue for breach and also court costs. Most times, the cell provider won't show up and you will win by default.
I have seen this work in the past, although talking about it makes me persona non grata in my little corporate village.
posted by majikwah at 10:16 AM on June 17, 2004

As a side note - is there anyone in the US that has had a good, or at least neutral experience with a cell phone company? I've been through three and have been fucked over one way or another each time, with no recourse.
posted by badstone at 10:34 AM on June 17, 2004

I used to work for AT&T Wireless. I don't know how much policies differ between carriers, but we would terminate contracts without penalty when the account holder died, or was called to active duty military and deployed to a location outside of our coverage area. We never requested documentation of any kind. Verizon, on the other hand, was recently in the news for telling a little old lady that she was still liable for the contract after her husband died, so who knows what to expect? Not that I'm suggesting such a course of action, mind you, but I do understand the feeling of helplessness. The company's position is that they don't guarantee coverage anywhere under any circumstances, and that you acknowledged this somewhere in the fine print. I delivered this verdict to entirely too many customers during my career. When a customer was fed up enough to want to cancel, and didn't want to hear any save offers, the only resort is to gouge them with the ETF on their way out. Those that threatened legal action were dismissed with the knowledge that $175 is less expensive than an hour of a good lawyer's time. I never saw anybody that went to small claims court.
posted by cdavis at 10:36 AM on June 17, 2004

badstone: I've had Cingular for about three years and have never had an substantial problems with them. I pay my bill online and once I entered an incorrect account number by accident and they shut my phone off. When I called to find out why my phone was shut off, they said I had entered an account number incorrectly and this was their way of insuring I called to rectify the problem. I wrote a very angry letter suggesting that a call or email would be a better notification and they gave me a month's free service and like a billion free off peak minutes.

That was years ago, and now when I don't pay my bill, they email me.

So I wouldn't knock myself out extolling their virtues but my personal experience has been neutral to good.
posted by jennyb at 11:45 AM on June 17, 2004

As a side note - is there anyone in the US that has had a good, or at least neutral experience with a cell phone company?

Absolutely. I work with a tiny regional wireless company called Ntelos (nee Intelos [Intel nixed that...IntelOS, anyone?], nee CFW, nee Clifton Forge-Waynesboro Telephone Company) that offers service in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. I was their first-ever PCS customer, in the late 90s, and played the role of guinea pig. They're big enough now that the corporate memory has forgotten that I played that role, but small enough that when I called up customer service with a hacking cough recently, the lady that I talked to gave me a recipe for a hot toddy and gave me her phone number to call her back if it didn't work.

Incidentally, I had service from T-Mobile for two weeks in March and found them surprisingly pleasant to deal with. Due to the lousy service on my block, they gave me all of my money back and didn't even bill me for the few hundred minutes during which I used my sexy, sexy Sony Ericsson T610 which I had to give up not that I'm bitter.
posted by waldo at 5:05 PM on June 17, 2004

It took me over 6 months to get out of my SprintPCS contract, once I moved to Japan. This includes a trip back to the US where I stopped in at 2 different SprintPCS stores, to be told that I could not cancel accounts in the store.

I swear to g0d it was one of the worse customer service experiences EVER.

I will never, ever be a SprintPCS customer again.
posted by gen at 7:01 PM on June 17, 2004