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Dumping ISP May Cost Customers $150
Dumpling$9 writes with a link to an article that seems to speak volumes about the modern consumer relationship with service providers. IBT reports on the outrageous fees facing users who drop their internet service contracts before they are up. "Pricing broadband competition can be difficult. Broadband is rarely priced as a stand-alone service. Whether offered by a telephone company or a cable company, it is usually bundled with other services such as voice and video. The advantage to the customer is easier billing and usually a price break. But the down side is if they drop one of the services to pursue a better deal elsewhere, they lose the discount ... It remains to be seen whether penalties for Internet customers will cut down on churn. Consumers Union in its annual cell phone survey found that nearly half of all cell phone subscribers who were considering switching carriers were deterred from doing so because of early termination penalties."
It's easy to get your ISP to drop you.
download a lot of non-copyrighted material (you don't want to get in trouble) off of a file-sharing network. they will get rid of you and you won't be responsible for the disconnect charge.
easy.
Indeed. Utilities generally have no choice whatsoever. So, say you live in my area, and you want cable? Your choices are:
1) Comcast
Say you want land-line phone service? Your choices are:
1) Qwest
Say you want natural gas? Your choices are:
1) Center-point
Want electricity? Oh, gobs of choices here:
1) Xcel
Is this legal? Perfectly! Does it create competition? Not in any possible way. Does it always screw the customer, every time? Naturally. The US has essentially decided that as long as your monopoly only covers a county or two, it's not a monopoly. Because of course, no one's forcing me to live here. But if I choose to? My utility companies are forced on me.
This creditor is most likely a credit card company and I hardly doubt they want to discourage people from using the phone system.
Rather, they know that the people most likely to need the phone service are poor people without computers who have few other options. These people are more likely to be living hand-to-mouth and not have the money to make a payment until close to when their bill is due. These are the easiest people to screw over while they're down... either pay $15 to post an on-time payment, or send it by mail and pay a $30 late fee (oh yeah, and your new 39.9% interest rate).
They don't charge $15 to recoup fees. They do it because it will extract the most money possible from people who have the fewest options.