How can I put this.....NO

[TWOLF]

I had a woman call in who was moving to OR and wanted to know if we would be willing to waive the early term fee on her lines. I advised her that we would not be able to and of course everone together on this one"She asks for a sup". My happy self tells her that a sup will tell her the same thing as I am. She states that a sup will understand and be more then happy to work out a deal. uh uh.
So sup takes over the call and she starts going on and on about how we aren't being fair and she's moving because of her work and she just can't afford this. Funny thing is she just renewed last month and is stuck under 24 months and edp is per line. She gets the sup and states that she will just have to call back. Some people

[Sliceanddice]

Wait, why can't she take the network with her??? thats just weird....

Oh and *whakes the woman with a rolled up notebook a few times* bad customer bad, no pie for you.

[angelicafire]

Actually, I work for a regional cell phone company, and I was in the cancellation department until January. If you moved out of the coverage area, you would be billed the termination fee if you wished to cancel. The reasoning is that we agreed to provide service in a certain area, and if you want to cancel because we don't provide (or most likely haven't ever provided) service in the area you're moving to, it's considered a voluntary cancellation. So I understand the O/P and those calls get old after a while.

[Boozy]

Is Oregon out of your coverage area? Because if it is, I don't think that's such a ridiculous request....

Maybe not...but how would they know she was actually moving to Oregon, and not just saying that to get out of her contract?

[angelicafire]

I mean, what if someone had a 2 year contract for $100/month service and only had 6 months to go? I don't think having the cancellation fee lowered somewhat based on a cross-country move would be too much to ask...

Right, but if you pay $100/month with 6 months left, the company is losing $600 worth of revenue for the remaining of your contract. A $175 or $200 cancellation fee is a deal in comparison.

[Myra]

A lot of cellular companies used to let you out of your contract if you moved out of the coverage area. Now, I don't think many do, with the exception of little regional guys. Basically, their reasoning is it's not THEIR fault you decided to move to East Nowhere, so therefore, you must honor your end of the contract. The company I sell for, it has this in the terms and conditions (fine print) of the contract you sign. Yeah, it's a stinky rule, but a lot of people were probably getting out of contracts by lying and giving fake addresses.

As far as losing a potential customer, I highly doubt the Bug Guys (Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, Cingular/ATT, T-Mobile...) really care about losing one customer when they have millions of others paying their bills every month. It's a sad state of affairs, but I see how these companies treat their Normal John Doe customer every day and it's not pretty. Hell, they don't treat their Big Business customers that well most of the time.

It's sad and frusterating to deal with every day, but that's how it is until enough customers show their disapproval with their wallets and change things.

[BlaqueKatt]

we're allowed at my company to waive an ETF if the customer moves(and we are one of the ones listed in above post), provided they can get us proof of address outside the service "footprint"-and our ETF is manily to cover the cost of the "free" phone you get when signing a 2 year contract(most of them are $200-$300-you have service for two months and cancel without an ETF you just got a $300 phone for around $60(and our ETF goes down every month you complete of your contract)

[Ljt09863]

No, they're not "losing" anything, because they're no longer PROVIDING anything. They have no more costs, because you're no longer using the service. They're losing POTENTIAL revenue, yes, but they also do that every time they lose a potential customer due to poor customer service strategies like that.

lets put it this way. when a customer signs up for a cellular plan, than enter a legal, binding contract. , in that contract, it says they are supposed to pay so much for so long. it also says, ifyou cancel before that time period is up, you will be charged.

a customer knows this when agreeing. therefore, why should they be let out of a contract THEY agreed to?

when the company gets a customer who signs the contract, they expect they are going to be getting so much money from them for so long. when a customer breaks a contract early, they are out of the money they would be getting if the customer did not break it.

heres an example. lets say you are renting your house. you charge them $800 a month and they agree to a year contract. 6 months in, they decided to move. but they don't want to pay the rest. you aren't going to be getting that $800 for the next 6 months, are you? so you are out of the money.


but in the end, the customer agreed to a contract,and in the contract, the early termination fee was in there, and they agreed. since they agreed, they have to pay. if they didn't want an early termination fee, they shouldn't have agreed.

[Ljt09863]

[QUOTE=bannedanna;126293]No, you aren't. Because you will find a new tenant and THAT person will pay you the money.


if you find a tenant. no guarentee there. but i do agree with the overdraft.

[CrazedClerk]

A big part of the problem is that very few customers actually read those contracts before they sign them (they just want that free phone in their hands as fast as they can get it), then call up to me and tear me a new one for the "unfair " conditions they now have to live with, and beyond that, they have the gall to say "Well they didn't tell me that when I signed up!".

And they always say it as if they hope pleading ingnorance will make me bend the rules for them.

Get it straight people. We don't have to tell you, we give you the contract and you sign it. If you SIGNED the contract, then legally we DID TELL YOU all of that stuff that's in the fine print.

[Boozy]

I'll be completely honest. I don't read contracts. Not from well-known, reputable companies. Not for things like cellphones and utilities - things I know I pay on time and will be responsible with. (I did read our entire lease for our apartment, though.)

Once in a while, I get bitten in the ass by my own laziness. I'll have to pay some sort of fee that I didn't know about. Do I call and yell at some CSR? Of course not. Its in the contract I signed.

I'd say, overall, not reading contracts has probably cost me about $100. I have been lucky. Its been a good thing thus far, because if I had sat down and read the small print of every single contract I've signed, I'd have wasted say, 25 hours of my life. Conservatively. $100 divided by 25 hours = $4/hour. Even my high school McJob valued my time at a better rate than that.

My point is, I could see myself calling one of my service providers and telling them I'm moving out of their service area, and being genuinely surprised that I'd have to pay the early termination fee. But if a clause to that effect is in a legal contract that I willingly entered into, then I wouldn't have a leg to stand on. And neither does the SC in the original post.

[JustADude]

If the phone company is no longer providing you with service, you are not obligated to continue paying for services not rendered.

BannedAnna, that's the key flaw in your argument as I see it. The company is still providing you with the service you agreed to pay for, i.e. the ability to place calls with a cellular phone using their network, and (usually) the providing of a no-cost phone to go with it. The service is still available, and the fact that you are choosing to move to an area where you can no longer access said service is not the responsibility of the company. Once you've signed a written, legally binding contract with the provider, you're responsible for honoring the terms, no matter how stupid you think they are. If you don't like the terms, don't sign it and do without coverage.

[Bella_Vixen]

In most areas, tenants are only required to continue payment on a broken lease until the landlord finds a new tenant

When we signed the lease on this hellhole, they made sure we understood what would happen if we broke the lease, which meant that we would have to pay until they found a new tenant. (We have a second floor walk-up, so it shouldn't be much of a problem for us...) If you ever think/know that you can't commit to a 1 year lease, you can always do a month-to-month or 6 month lease. May cost abit more, but at least you won't be at their total mercy.

[JustADude]

So legally, I am fairly certain that a person could legally get out of the contract with no cancellation fee and only paying the difference in the discounted phone (if applicable).

As stated in a previous post, that's exactly what (at least MOST) companies charge the termination fees for. Some prorate the cost of the phone (and thus the fee) over the life of the contract, while others want payment in full for the phone no matter when the contract is canceled. Yeah, the ones that want PiF are assholes, but I see nothing wrong with them wanting me to cough up the $90 or so for the part of the phone I haven't paid for yet if I cut out 10 months early.

Of course, I wonder if they'd waive the ECF completely if you provided your own phone from the start?

[JustADude]

IIRC, the OP said she'd just upgraded and renewed the month before, so there wouldn't be more than a trivial amount of pro-rating anyway, less than $10 if anything.

My main point was that yeah, it sucks, but nobody hides the fees from you if you take the time to actually read what you're signing. I would be a hypocrite if I bitched at SCs ignoring the return policy at a store, even when it's printed right there on the receipt and posted in big letters behind the return desk, but said they should be able to get out of the specified fees because they didn't know/didn't like them. Yeah, I know, earlier, I said that those who want PiF are asses, but prorating is a courtesy not a legal requirement, and they're fully justified in making you pay the full cost of the 'free' phone for failure to see the contract through.

Another way to look at it is that the COMPANY are offering the CUSTOMER payment, in the form of a discounted (often to $0 net cost) phone, in return for agreeing to subscribe to their service for a certain term. My logic is as follows: 1) Rate plans don't REQUIRE a contract, and 2) The same discount is applied regardless of the plan agreed upon.

In that light, the patron has gotten PiF up front when they began their contract, so the company is fully entitled to collect up-to and including the full remaining balance of monthly payments for early severance of service, as they have provided all specified items in the contract while the customer is desiring to break contract by ending their subscription early.