AT&T Improves Early Termination Fee Policy
AT&T has just announced amendments to its early termination fee policies that make it far less painful if and when customers decide to part ways with America’s largest cellular carrier while still under contract. Early termination fees are never a good thing as far as the customer is concerned. 999 times out of 1000, when people decide to break free of a mobile carrier contract ahead of schedule it’s because of a stark hatred for their carrier. Maybe the hatred is a result of poor customer service, a series of billing errors or maybe the customer is just tired of the limited handset selection that CDMA certain carriers might offer. Whatever the case may be, a contract break means that the customer is beyond the boiling point. To make matters worse, the issue is then compounded when the disgruntled customer is reminded of the early termination he/she will have to pay before all ties are severed. AT&T has decided to kindly ease the pain a bit for all customer contracts signed on May 25, 2008 or later. Contracts opened prior to that date are still subject to the wrath of the full $175 termination fee, but new customers will enjoy a $5 drop with each passing month with the carrier. In other words, if you have ants in your pants and decide to switch to a new provider in the final month of your two-year contract, $55 will get you out the door. AT&T isn’t the first carrier to utilize a depleting early termination fee schedule, but we appreciate it all the same.
All carriers should adopt this early termination system. Early termination fees are just ridiculous.
this is unfair to current customers what kinda fuckery is this!!
AT&T is constantly trying to catch up to verizon, verizon has had this policy since last year.
well att and t-mobile offer month to month plan offerings. you don’t wanna pay an early termination fee? don’t sign a contract!! I agree in lowering them over time, makes a lot of sense, but I think etf’s still have a place whether people like it or not
Its why you get such a discount on your first phone. Its a good start on the month to month fee lowering. Now if they can make it easy to cancel without calling that would be awesome.
I don’t understand why people keep going to AT&T. T-mobile has it beat in every category except 3g. Customer service at AT&T is horrible, and they charge 30 dollars more a month for the same plans. T-mobile is the champion of GSM.
T-Mobile service is horrible in my area.
T-Mo is the best carrier hands down! Even I will admit their coverage isn’t the best, but what also matters is when you call and need help, they will work with you, and not d_ck you around. Sprint screwed me over bad twice, and I hear nothing good about AT&T. I had finished my two-year contract with Sprint, and then switched to T-Mo, and Sprint sent me a $400 bill saying my two phones had been on a contract, when I know for a fact it was over two years. Yes I know there are tricks they pull to get your contact renewed without you having to sign something, so maybe that is what happened. I think you shouldn’t be under a contract, new or renewed period, unless you sign something. F-you Sprint!!
i left cingular paying to get out cuz their customer service is so bad, loeved nextel well i was there (prior to sprint merge), had sprint was very glad to leave after experiencing their awful customer service. currently with t-mo I’ve seen reps go to bat for customers making sure they were satisfied. those JD Powers awards mean something, they have earned my 7 phone lines.
(Sorry Verizon and Alltell, never had any experience with your customer service).
I would do TMob but the coverage & 3G are an issue. As good as everything else is you have to be able to make a call and for some the high speed data is an issue. If coverage is not that mission critical and 3G dosent float your boat then TMob is the way I agree.
well in Canada its 400 for early cancellation fee!
i would have no problem with current US fees
well i believe that if you have a problem with a carrier 100% of the time its user error my wife is a customer service manager at a cal center and she had a customer talk to her for an hour because the customer swore up and down she was getting overage charges on the unlimited plan so that goes to show how smart people are
Regarding T-MO’s coverage: I ended up getting a BlackBerry through ATT. I couldn’t get one through T-MO because in N.E. Iowa they roll their service to an affiliate, iWireless, who doesn’t have BlackBerry plans.
As far as VZW goes just make sure you goto one of the kiosks in a mall or bestbuy and you will be OK, if you goto a corporate store they will rape you blind
Altel sucks down here we call it alhell.
The comany I was working for had datacards and eveything trough them an when they laost divers for data cards or if you called customer service you got the following repsonse: “thank you for calling altel our offices are curenlty closed we are open form 10 am to 4pm est thank you for choosing altel -click-”
Ge woat about the midwest an west coast an south west that like 2-3 different timezones right there so the office hours for customer service woudln’t do you any good altels CS if you can call it that is as almost as bad as sprints it’s almost non-existant.
that just goes too show how even managers rip you off,yes the lady has unlimited means no charges,AT ALL dumb ass
What’s the fee for terminating AT&T overall? That may be worth it. Just kidding…
Not sure why they are coming up with this now. Interesting.
Almost 100 percent of the time its user error. They never read the fine print so when they see there outrageous bill because they chose to download something that starts a monthly subscription, they look for anything to vent there anger towards because they can’t see that it was there dumbass in the first place that did it.
Seriously I don’t understand why the Canadian gov’t doesn’t at least pretend to care about people getting f’ed in the ass. 3 year contracts $400 cancellation fees. AMAZING! Some how the idea of capitalism got completly raped here. If your bored head over to roger.com bell.ca or telusmobility.com and check out our sweet rates. It will make you all feel a little better.
except 3G, Rollover, more towers, and features/devices. Also the reason their customer service is great is they give away everything due to mad customers wanting to leave them.