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The Irksome Cellphone Industry
gollum123 writes "David Pogue of the NYTimes wonders why Congress is worrying about exclusive handset contracts when there are more significant things that are broken, unfair, and anti-competitive in the American cellphone industry. He lists text messaging fees, double billing, handset subsidies, international call rates, and 'airtime-eating instructions' among the major problems not being addressed by Congress. 'Right now, the cell carriers spend about $6 billion a year on advertising. Why doesn't it occur to them that they'd attract a heck of a lot more customers by making them happy instead of miserable? By being less greedy and obnoxious? By doing what every other industry does: try to please customers instead of entrap and bilk them? But no. Apparently, persuading cell carriers to treat their customers decently would take an act of Congress.'"
DOUBLE BILLING In Europe, youâ(TM)re billed only when you place a cellphone call â" not when you answer one. And youâ(TM)re billed only when you send a text message â" not when you get one. In this country, thatâ(TM)s how itâ(TM)s always been for landlines, too.
That's not completely true. You are billed if you receive the call, provided you are not in your home country (if you are in France spending a few days of vacation, and your contract is with a Spanish operator, then you get billed if you got a call while in France). Fortunately, the European Comission is working on reducing the prices for that double billing. It is something that I guess lots of people in USA would like to see Congress doing.
TEXT-MESSAGING FEES Why has the price of a text message gone to 20 cents, from 10, in two years? There was no big technology shift. There was no spike in the cost of electrons. And speaking of anticompetitive: Is not it a little fishy that all four big United States carriers raised their text-message fees at essentially the same time?
That is not a question of being nice or not being nice - if that's true, their behaviour is illegal, plain and simple, and should be punished.
In Japan the situation is pretty similar, while probably cheaper overall. From a few years back, the trend is the sale of a device for zero yen, while subscribing a 2-years contract. The "zero yen" is actually "You pay xxx yen monthly and, monthly, the carrier reimburses xxx yen" giving a zero-yen illusion (xxx being the actual devicePrice / 24). You may cancel the contract at anytime, but you'll have to pay the xxx * remaining-months (24 - months you paid) yen to the carrier. It is a good way to keep customers for at least 2 years. The iPhone 3G for instance is "free" (2 years contract) since March 2009.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
switch carriers, dump AT&T, get a TracFone at your local dept. store along with an airtime card sign up anonymously online with the info from the card and nobody can attach your real identity to your new cellphone, only give the number to those that you approve of
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Break out the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and get them to stop. Answer the phone and get their name and address and all the info about the debt. Mail them a written request for verification of the debt. After that, all contact needs to be by mail. They are already doing things they shouldn't like calling late at night. They are supposed to have mailed you a description of the debt. Keep a log of all of the calls and violations. Send them to the FTC if they don't stop. You can even sue them and get $1000 in damages for violations.
The iPhone and Blackberries would bounce up to more normal $800+ pricing.
I call BS. You can buy an 8 gig ipod touch today for under $200. According to the iSupply teardown, the GSM chipset in the iphone costs $2.80.
$179.00 + $3.00 != $800
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.