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It'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
by meritt 8y ago
It'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.
- mikeash 8y agoThe contract was drafted by a team of expensive lawyers over a period of weeks or months. You, a complete legal novice, are going to read it in five minutes. Who’s more likely to win?
- ethbro 8y agoFurthermore, the economy presumably has more productive uses for everyone's time than expecting them to be amateur lawyers...