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Aren't we talking about fees for cell phone service here? It's a robust market with quite a few major competitors. What does paying off politicians have to do w
by harryh 8y ago
Aren't we talking about fees for cell phone service here? It's a robust market with quite a few major competitors. What does paying off politicians have to do with anything?
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago5 cents have been deposited into your account.
- Retric 8y agoBeing able to advertise price X while billing price Y after locking someone into a 2 year contract.
- lev99 8y agoAre 2 year contracts still common in cell phone plans? I've used att for years and never was presented with the option of signing a contract like that.
- JoshGlazebrook 8y agoTechnically they are gone. But now the popular option are device payment plans spread out over 2 years so it’s essentially a contract as if you were to cancel your device the remaining amount is due immediately. Another gotcha are how they discount $200 off a phone. The bill credits are applied over those 24 months so if you cancel early you don’t end up getting the full $200 off the total price.
- harryh 8y agoDon't virtually all the major carriers routinely run deals where they make it extremely easy for you to buy out of a competitors contract? The lock in from these contracts is quite weak.
- greglindahl 8y agoThat's not a solution to bait-and-switch.
- ovao 8y agoI’m a little troubled that consumers would have an expectation that they may have to rely on that as a result of arbitrary rate increases. Do the vast majority of consumers know about those opportunities? I’m definitely for consumers being wise about what they get themselves into, but I’m also of the opinion that a reasonable contract would preclude the addition of arbitrary fees. If I contract you to work for me at $80/hour, for example, I would not be particularly happy if you turned around and forced me to pay you $85, or be forced to pay some kind of fine.
- mcny 8y agoI'm more troubled by spectrum "auctions" than by anything else. If it were up to me, I'd dig up the bones of whoever was in charge of this asinine decision and have them hanged, quartered, and drawn. Then, I would nullify existing contracts and return all their money. There has to be a better way than to grant a single company monopoly over the spectrum slice for a market.
- pas 8y agoYes. Shared network, transparently operated by all the service providers. (See also: in response to a similar what to do comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417243 )
- sanderjd 8y agoYep. It's definitely the contract part of this that is wrong. A price change should trigger a no-penalty renegotiation of the contract.
- chasil 8y agoI love Tracfone. It is a great pleasure to swap the Verizon card for AT&T when coverage requires it, with no change to my billing or rollover minutes/data. AT&T will not be charging me this fee. Let them try.
- meritt 8y agoIt's the additional fees above and beyond the base service. Carriers don't have to advertise these, which makes it incredibly difficult for the average consumer to reasonably compare plans side-by-side. Consumers sign a multiyear contract at a "$100 unlimited" plan or whatever, only to find out it's not actually unlimited and there's all sorts of additional surcharges. And now they're locked into a contract. Competition doesn't really help much at this point. From 2011-2016 the FTC [1] and FCC [2] took significant action against mobile carriers for spurious charges, unadvertised fees, etc. These resulted in hundreds of millions in fines against the carriers and portions of that being returned to customers. The amount of enforcement by these regulatory authorities changes significantly over time due to shifting political winds. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/mobile-technology/mobile-cramming https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/mobile-techn... [2] https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1849 https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders/1849
- briandear 8y agoBefore you sign that contact, you are entitled to read it.
- ovao 8y agoThat’s a given. But I think we have to split the difference on this one and argue that these practices are deeply anti-consumer. If a contract is, in essence, an agreement that one party is free to do effectively anything, and that the other must simply pay whatever the other party demands, subject to change at any particular time, that is less of a contract than it is a pair of handcuffs and a ball gag.
- jacquesm 8y agoExcept of course that in that contract it does not spell out the surcharges that they add without you being any the wise until you receive your bill.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThey reserve the right to alter the deal. Pray they don't alter it further.
- jklinger410 8y ago>It's a robust market with quite a few major competitors If 4 is what you consider quite a few.
- tunap 8y agoThe way the mega mergers are going down, "quite a few" will be 3 here soon.
- odorousrex 8y ago> It's a robust market with quite a few major competitors. 4. There are FOUR major competitors (AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon) and this is soon to be 3, assuming the Sprint - T-mobile merger goes through. (Which it most likely will)
- perl4ever 8y agoI have not found that T-Mobile has enough coverage to be useful. That is, a mile or two from the center of a city, there seemed to be no reception for me. I am skeptical that Sprint is any better based on what I've heard from others. And I think Verizon requires different phones, so I feel for practical purposes I am locked in to AT&T.