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Early termination fees. No one likes them but they can sometimes be a necessary evil. If you become unhappy with your service provider or you are overwhelmed with lust for a new gadget on a different carrier, you pay the price. Carriers say that these termination fees, or ETFs, allow them to subsidize handsets and recover those costs over the course of a contract. Should a contract be broken, a carrier recovers those subsidies with an ETF.<\/p>\n
The FCC recently decided something was amiss with ETFs and probed carriers into explaining the rhyme and reason behind the fees<\/a>. The carriers have finally spoken, albeit a little unconvincingly. Most of you are already familiar with why ETFs exist, but it is interesting to see the canned and obvious responses from the carriers.<\/p>\n AT&T boils it down to choice and it really couldn’t have done a better job of playing Captain Obvious. Customers can either choose a subsidized handset with penalties if a contract is broken, or go pre-paid and pay for a device outright. Of course, the latter option can either limit handset selection or make a huge dent in one’s wallet. Again, it’s a choice consumers have to make.<\/p>\n Sprint says that its customers are thoroughly informed about contract terms and conditions, and that ETFs are a part of the game. The carrier does everything it possibly can to make sure a customer knows what he or she is getting into before, during and after a handset is sold and a contract is signed to make sure the customer is satisfied and happy. Fair enough, and I agree having been a Sprint customer lately. Vonya McCann, senior vice president of government affairs for Sprint, says, “An unsatisfied customer is much more likely to leave Sprint for another carrier.”<\/p>\n After recently doubling its ETF for premier or high-end handsets, Verizon actually had the gall to say that it was doing a favor for its customers. Verizon’s excuse is the same as everyone else’s: subsidies allow customers to purchase otherwise pricey handsets for more manageable costs, and ETFs are put in place in case a deal is broken. But still, does $350 seem fair on top of what a top-tier device usually costs?<\/p>\n Lastly, there is Google, who recently got into the handset sales game with the Nexus One. Google either sells the Nexus One directly to customers, or sells it subsidized through T-Mobile, earning a commission in the process. If the customer bails, Google passes the cost of that lost commission down to the customer.<\/p>\n What this all boils down to is handset subsidies, which are usually recovered via the pricey monthly plans we pay for. If a carrier fronts $300 on a device so we only have to pay $100, and we cancel a contract three months into the deal, the carrier does have a right to recover those costs because it just waved bye-bye to a shiny new handset.<\/p>\n [via Associated Press<\/a>]<\/p>\n Early termination fees. No one likes them but they can sometimes be a necessary evil. If you become unhappy with your service provider or you are overwhelmed with lust for a new gadget on a different carrier, you pay the price. Carriers say that these termination fees, or ETFs, allow them to subsidize handsets and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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