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Get Out of Sprint Free
hyades1 writes in to let us know that Sprint has extended to Jan. 31 the time in which subscribers can switch carriers without paying an early termination fee. "Last month we learned that Sprint was increasing its administrative fee to $0.75, giving customers until January 1 of this year to back out without a penalty. It seems that $0.75 wasn't going to cut it as Sprint has raised its fee yet again, this time to $0.99. Customers now have through January 31 to sever ties sans-ETF, so if you missed the boat last month you're in luck. Though some customer care reps apparently aren't yet aware of the change, we did confirm it with Sprint so keep trying and as always, contacting them via chat seems to go a bit more smoothly than calling them up."
If so, I expect to see a story about how T-Mobile customers can get MyFaves for free, since that's also something people on mobile phone forums are talking about.
Seems like every time I get close to getting out, my phone breaks and I have to extend my 2 year contract again...
Namaste
Virgin Mobile raised text and speech pay-as-you-go rates with the only warning being, get this, at text message which costs YOU to recieve. Where's my back-out date?
Do any of you know of a way to escape contract with Alltel without paying the early termination fee? I'm sick of the 5-7 day delay in getting my voicemail messages! ):
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
Seems as though the only people I know who actively choose Sprint choose it because Sprint is the only viable option where they live. The GSM carriers' coverage really starts to suffer in the big, wide-open spaces of the Midwest.
Breakfast served all day!
I mean come on ...
Seems to me, that since they are breaching the contract, you can terminate at any time. What's with the time limit? Once they increase the fee, all contracts with Sprint are, by law, NULL AND VOID.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I checked my bill, and sure enough the administrative fee has gone up. However, I don't recall getting any notice of such. Is this a state-by-state deal?
PS: Sure enough, the SA has the materially adverse clause in it.
PPS: Sprint sucks.
I have been with sprint for almost a decade and don't have any problems with them.
Their customer service sucks but for some reason I never had much problem with it.
Being in southern California the coverage is damn good and the data service is fast.
During my long commute I stream Internet radio over my phone and it just works.
I must have just been lucky.
I saw the post about termination or transfer of services without early termination fees.
I run multiple phones and a couple of phone that don't work in necessary areas..
Can I terminate these and or switch to new carrier without the 150-250 term fees...thanks
The same thing happen about a year ago with international messaging rate hike. I called to cancel my plan but the rep. tried to argue that it doesn't constitute a "material change" to the contract. Seriously? Anyways, after threatening to call the California Public Utilities Commission failed, I actually called the California PUC. The PUC rep. told me that before I file a complaint, I should speak to their executive accounts customer service people so he transferred me over to their number. Some Sprint person picked up and was about to redirect me to retentions again but I told him very clearly that I've been forwarded by the PUC and am about to file a complaint. At that point, he actually forwarded me to their executive accounts people. I spoke to the lady and laid out my argument by reading the back of my bill, which contains the terms, along with the notice of the rate change. She put me on hold for a few minutes to check some stuff over and agreed with me. She even went so far as to put my account on hold and save my number so it can be ported to a new carrier. I switched to Virgin, who ironically is on the Sprint network, but having no contracts is awesome.
Hope that helps anyone trying to leave Sprint. Don't let the retention rep scare you. If you have something like a PUC backing you up, use it! Know your rights.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
How does this work? Say I want to cancel my Sprint account and go to Verizon, but I'd like to keep the phone number I currently have. What order do things need to be done in?
Does anyone know if I can use this to end my 2 year agreement but continue my Sprint service? I don't plan on switching carriers, but I would like to be able to sign a new agreement for an upgrade in a few months when the Pre comes out.
The recession must have caused Slashdot to lay off some editors. Last time I checked, $0.99 was 99 cents, and that's not much of a "penalty" IMHO. $99.00 on the other hand... that's real money.
Wasn't there a bill in Congress to eliminate early termination fees (or at least force carriers to pro-rate them)? What happened to that? (As if I had to ask -- I'm sure the lobbyists got their way.)
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
$0.75 ... so that's seventy-five dollars?
-1 not first post
This get out of contract free stuff happens roughly twice a year, and is mentioned extensively on appropriate sites. I am having a very hard time understanding how this is appropriate slashdot material.
That being said, I have never had a problem with sprint, and with the SERO plan, my bill is roughly the same as what I paid back in 1998.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Google death certificate and legal documents. Get a letterhead from a law office and fill it all out to sound good. Send it in. See what happens. Never tired it but it just might work. Do you really think they are so bright as to check up on every single legal doc?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Leave sprint and come back in later for the decent stuff. I.e. by mid year they are supposed to have a handful of android devices and of course the palm pre. Leaving sprint and going for a month-to-month prepaid carrier may be appealing.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I just called Sprint and after being put on hold for about 5 minutes, the rep (Julie) removed the ETF and said that my service would discontinue after I ported my number to another service provider.
I'd like to post a counter to some of the horror stories. I just now called *2 (following the options for contract modifications) and told them about the rate hike and that I wanted to leave the contract without the termination fee. The fellow on the phone agreed right away and was very pleasant as he took my information. He even kept my service open so I could transfer my number to a new carrier.
I just think it's worth pointing out that forum posts skew towards reporting the negative experiences, and it's worth point out that that's not always the case.
Now, I'm off to the apple store!
When using phone, you are talking, and so all your voice undertones are being served to the other side, and vice-versa.
That will make things harder to untangle, as they get more personal, some times too personal...
Chat doesn't have that issue, with the plus side of the reliability of information conveyed in that way... ;)
Of course, they'll still advertise your plan as $35.99 even though there are now $20 worth of fees you have to pay on top of that.
I'm finally free from that awful Sprint Data plan with my PC Card.
The first month was great. 2+ Mbps.
After I was unable to cancel my contract within the "trial balloon", speeds dropped to 100Kbps--on a good day!
I've been shelling out money for this UNTIL NOW.
I called them up, had to bark at the customer retention rep as he claimed that they couldn't waive it because they can do what they want neener-neener-neener take this $10 line item discount and be happy! And finally, after must protest, they cut me loose.
Just be forceful and adamant about it!
I am free! Sprint's service in the Greater Phoenix Metro area is abyssmal. Calls drop as often as they go through.
I was able to terminate my 2 year contract (after one year) with Sprint for no charge. I just told them I was moving out of their service area. I assume this technique would work with other carriers (landline included) as well. This was about 4 years ago though ... YMMV.
I've always felt that contracts for cell service are a scam. Why? Setting up cell service is entirely computerized and there is almost no effort on the part of the sales or customer service people. Contracts are instead a replacement for good customer service. If you are in a contract and the service sucks it seems like the customer service rep and retention reps could care less. However, if there is nothing to prevent you from leaving, they actually have to work hard to keep you.
So a year or two ago the same thing happened with Verizon and people in howardforums went over how to get out without an ETF.
MOST people got out without an ETF that wanted to.
There IS an alternative way a company can handle this, though, which once or two people in the forum had Verizon reps do... the rep's like "Oh 24 cents? Yeah I'll put a credit for that, I'll go ahead and put a note on your account here so you'll be have no trouble calling in next month for your credit." Or the variant "OK, 24 cents for the next 2 years, yeah here's a $5.76 credit to cover that". I expect the reps got to take some credit for "saving" someone from leaving. The guys weren't terribly pleased not getting out of the contract, but did have to admit they were then not materially affected by the change, since they got the 24 cents credited back.
It seems that $0.75 wasn't going to cut it as Sprint has raised its fee yet again, this time to $0.99.
Is this about NINETY-NINE PENNIES or are you people using Verizon math? Seriously, what is going on? I thought an ETF (early termination fee) was more like $200 dollars (or $2 with Verizon math). Seriously, WTF?
I think the key is *in a few months*... you might not be able to do what you want, the way you want. Of course, if you're willing to pay extra fees in the short term, signup for a pre-paid account and switch back later! Just make your decision before the 31st, it seems...
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act" -- George Orwell
Fido by default on my account charges that stupid "system access fee."
However, it didn't actually mention the SAF on my account, and I recently discovered that Fido has *other* plans that DON'T have a SAF. It seems to me that by charging the SAF on some plans and not others, what they're really doing is adding an undisclosed extra charge on top of the actual plan, in an attempt to make the plan look cheaper than it actually is...
The contracts aren't technically required for cell phone service, and are not a 'setup fee'. In the US, most cell carriers subsidize the cost of the actual mobile phone that the customer carries around by 'rolling the cost' into the cost of service. So, you sign up for new service, and you get can a "$300" phone (I put it in quotes, because who knows what the actual price is the cell phone companies have to pay, and thus subsidize) for, say, $100 dollars, with the cell phone company providing a "$200" discount on the phone. The contract, then, is to get that subsidy.
The problems with this system are:
The mobile phone companies, it would seem, have everything figured out. Unfortunately, there is no chance the FCC will do anything about this arrangement, to provide fair treatment of customers, because the government makes too much money off of spectrum auctions for the licenses the mobile phone companies need for radio frequencies (I think each of the phone companies have spent 2-4 billion dollars on their licenses - they have to make that money back somehow, and turn a profit; the whole system of frequency auctions is, IMO, a corrupt collusion between government and the mobile operators to ensure that US consumers pay the highest price they can squeeze out of us).
I've given some thought to getting rid of my cell phone altogether when my current contract expires. But, honestly, just me cancelling my service wouldn't change anything. If I knew that several 10's of millions of other subscribers were going to do it too, in an organized boycott, I'd totally do it, though. Lacking that, I'm just going to do the next best thing - switch carriers when my contract expires, to one that provides slightly better terms to me.
Buy a replacement at full price? You must have friends, right? Those friends must have old phones they don't use anymore because *they* got new phones to extend their contracts.
Just find a friend with a phone they don't use anymore -- they'll probably give it to you.
If you don't have any friends, just buy a used phone on eBay for a couple bucks.
I just canceled my service and the customer rep mentioned that I had until March to complete this. He didn't give a specific date.