Verizon Ups Fee by 3 Cents – Might Get You Out of Your Contract Without an ETF

I always love when carriers do things like this. Verizon Wireless put a “Notice of Change to Regulatory Charge” in this months bill saying they plan on upping the charge to $0.16 from $0.13 per line each month. The Consumerist is always first to jump on these “Material Changes” to your contract as an opportunity to get out of your cellphone contract without paying an Early Termination Fee. When I first heard about this with text messaging charge increases I didn’t believe it but since then I have seen quite a few people get away with it.

In short you need to stick to your guns when calling Verizon and stating that this extra 3 cents is a “Materially Adverse” change to your contract. If you want to give it a shot you can read up more about the method and details on the Consumerist. A few of the people I know who did this managed to also keep their number by going through this process and not actually cancelling the line but rather having the retention department note their account that the ETF was waived. Then then ported their number off. No promises but you can try to pull that off and port your number to Google Voice…

PS: The thing that really pisses me off about all these fees from wireless carriers is they try to make it sound like it is some sort of government imposed fee or tax when it really is just the carrier trying to squeeze everybody for more money. Tack that on top of Verizon’s horrible new data plan tiers and the world starts looking a bit scary with an AT&T/T-Mobile merger allowing AT&T and Verizon to screw customers left and right.

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Telus Adopting More Sensible Early Cancelation Fees – Others to Follow?

One of the things that always bothered me about early cancellation fees is that carriers use them as punitive fines though they claim they are to “subsidize phones.” Carriers in the US have gotten a bit better at lowering the ETF every month after they got slammed by class action lawsuits. Carriers still claim they need these ETFs to recover the subsidies for devices but they refuse to base the ETF on those devices.

Electronista noticed that Telus up in Canada has changed their ETF policy to follow their sub brand Koodo. From now on you don’t pay the flat rate ETF but instead pay off the “device balance.” In other words if you bought a $500 device the contract ETF should go down in fractions based on the contract length. While I think carriers will still game the system by claiming the device cost is based on MSRP even if it launched 12 months ago but its still a start.

In my dream world you would have the option of a cheaper monthly plan that does not subsidize devices or a more expensive monthly plan where a portion of it every month would go to paying for the device cost unless you wanted to pay for it fully up front. Something makes me think that dream is a long way off though it might be coming faster with Tablets and LTE/WiMax connected devices. What do you think?

Img Credit: TecheBlog

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