AT&T to increase iPhone contract early termination fee to $325 - Page 3

Not in the US, so personally unaffected... but I guess it is time for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju3h7yk4Hcg

Even when you mark the spot nothing gets done. AT&T should be smart enough to want to keep the customers and improve the service in the cities that have the most problems such as NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA etc.

AT&T is trying to lock customers in by raising its ETF. But believe me people will pay if the IPHONE comes to another carrier Verizon, Sprint) and the service is good.

BOTTOM LINE: GREAT PHONE, POOR SERVICE, CUSTOMERS BEING TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF BY AT&T.

READ the article again S-L-O-W-L-Y and don't ASSuME anything. I doubt you could cancel because according to the article, the new TOS applies to new sales not existing contracts.

Is that because AT&Tat $325 isn't charging enough and you want to be with a company that has a $350 EEF?

"Wireless phone carrier AT&T within a weeks time hemorrhaged overt 85% of it's smartphone customers. Again, we find it amazing for this to have happened within the span of ONE WEEK!"

More at eleven.

Have some friends that work at Apple. They have the android and love it. Hmm. Does anyone know if you can unlock the iPhone to be used with metropcs. They have crazy low prices but because I never hear anyone talk about it, it makes me wonder though. GWNLUD

Plus their plans stink. I hardly ever use it for web and no free text messages which doesn't cost them anything to provide. I wish we would have goverment regulation, let's face it, no one hardly has a land line except businesses o it should be regulated and a utiliy, like land lines once were, This and the Internet.

Perhaps not but I live in Pasadena California and can drop 2-4 calls a day. When I drive to certain spots on Allen ave, the call will always drop. I get full bars outside my parking garage which has no door and room for 4 cars in the complex, yet when I pull into the garage, the call, 100% of the time, even though I have 5 bars, will drop the call. Plus, where's all the insurance we used to have??? At least offer it to 4 to 5 years users. Evil no but they could lower the plans, halve the data plan price and since text uses packets that cost them nothing, we should get at least 2 to 300 free texts and receiving texts from others should be based on how many time per month they text you and if I send my wife a text, that should count as ine text nit 2, one, me sending 2, her receiving so why they might nit be evil better the pricing on some of these things so we can get mire people to join, then fix the problems we do have.

In Europe, all incoming calls and texts are free. Even if you are on pay as you go and you are out of credit, your phone will still receive calls and texts for 6 months and they are free. That must be more of that socialism nobody wants.

While I don't see AT&T halving their data plan rates, I can certainly see them offering some kind of incentive to keep as many iPhone customers from jumping ship if/when the iPhones finally opens up to Verizon. I imagine that the $325 ETF will be enough to keep many/most iPhone customers still bound by their 2 year contracts from jumping ship, but it'll be a whole other story for those who've satisfied their contracts.

I've said this before, but I'll be staying with AT&T as I can't complain about my AT&T coverage or service. My neighbors with Verizon service still can't get decent coverage at home and it's already been a year and a half since I left V. Good thing I didn't hold out hoping they'd put up a tower or something.

Bad example. It'd be like going to that restaurant and ordering mussels. But you only want ONE, and you expect to be able to come back the next day and get the second a week later you'd like them to cook you one more, and so on.

An ongoing service is being provided by ATT, you don't have the right to use their services at your leisure.

And in the USA we generally get far more than double the texts and minutes when we pay for them. It washes out. If they charged us in the US 5 minutes per call, but gave us 5000 minutes for $60, we'd still be just fine.

We look at your tariffs and see, like, 200 minutes for $30 a month and say, how in the world would anyone want that few minutes? Then we're reminded that you don't pay for incoming minutes, and that in the end it all works out for everyone. Just different billing systems, not different actual usage amounts.

No...it only goes down by $5 a month and only if your contract started after May of 2008. So even though you're on a 2-year contract, it takes 35 months to work down the ETF, but that was based on the $175 ETF. So if you cancel after the 2-year contract is over, you would still theoretically owe $55.

Based on $325 (and assuming it still goes down by $5 a month), you would theoretically still owe $205 if you cancelled at the end of a 2-year contract. I don't even see how this is legal as you've fulfilled the terms of the contract. If they are, in essence, forcing you to stay on in order not to owe the $205, then it's not really a 2-year contract, is it? -- it's at least a 3-year contract.

IMO, this is absurd. If you have a 2-year contract than the ETF should be completely amortized over the two years. And if you sign a new contract without getting a new phone, there should not be a new ETF. In fact, if you don't get a new phone, you shouldn't have to sign a contract at all - the contract should be month to month because you've already fulfilled the obligations of the original contract.

Does AT&T really think that making your customers hate you is a good strategy for growth? They can't compete on service quality, so instead they'll just make it hard to leave?

And for the record (and as I've posted elsewhere), I was in London two weeks ago and I was absolutely shocked at how well my iPhone 3G worked roaming over O2. Much better performance all around than as compared with using the phone in New York. No dropped calls, very high call quality, far faster 3G service than in New York and the phone worked almost everywhere - even on most underground stations and trains. In New York, it frequently can take five minutes to send a single short email, which always seemed to me like a bug in the phone. In London, they always were sent instantaneously. Any suspicions I had that some of the issues were in the iPhone itself were completely erased: the problem is most definitely AT&T.

1) With the $175 ETF it drops off $5/month. With the $325 ETF it drops off $10/month.

2) If you fulfill your contract the ETF is no more. Think of it as the last month the ETF dropping $65 or $95 depending on if you had the $175 ETF or $325 ETF, respectively.

My Verizon plan was much less expensive than my AT&T iPhone plan. I don't remember the exact numbers but at least $20 difference, probably because you can get a plan with fewer minutes on Verizon as compared with AT&T.

How can you use Mark the Spot when the service fails if you don't have service in that spot? I loaded that stupid application onto my phone, then quickly realized it was completely worthless. Besides, I'm sure AT&T knows exactly how much traffic they're carrying and has equipment that tells them how many drops and uncompleted calls there are.

I will give them some credit: for the longest time, my phone didn't work at all on Fifth Avenue in the 30s and 40s in NYC and the phone does now seem to work there. But it still doesn't work on the promenade in Battery Park City, in spite of the fact that it shows multiple bars. And as I've posted elsewhere in more detail, I was in London a few weeks ago and the phone worked just great, far better than with AT&T in NYC.

If AT&T was concerned about keeping people from switching to another carrier and/or attracting new customers, they should simply allow Skype over 3G. All they would be losing is international fees. Most international users already circumvent that situation using wireless or other alternatives. The benefits of offering Skype would be that it would take some load off the voice services, but more importantly, it would significantly increase the company's popularity.

I'm pretty satisfied with my current AT&T service but I do use Skype a lot for international calls so it would be an awesome upgrade to be able to use it over 3G.

I would just like something more transparent in terms of phone pricing. Basically any phones that you get that are less than their marked full price, should be described as "paid for in instalments" and what you owe depends on the remaining unpaid amount, much like a hire-purchase car. The idea of a fixed remaining fee, is just absurd IMHO.

If you pay full price for a phone then it should not be provider-locked.

This is one place that I would like to see regulation step in.

Agreed.

It's definitely time for the government to step in here and step up the regulation of the wireless industry, putting an end to this sort of nonsense, and tightly controlling what fees may be charged and what those fees may be, and, generally, how customers may be treated.

Locking in the early new adopters of the 4g, and those 3G owners looking for an upgrade is the best source of contracts for AT&T. They already got the low hanging fruit and it is doubtful many Verizon customers will switch over.

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Well if they 'compete on service quality' AT&T has nothing to lose. According to Consumer Reports and many people on this forum they're at the bottom.
And here's AT&T logic: People are buying the Iphone not for the calling capability but for the 3G WI-Fi internet capabilty. They realize that People want the IPHONE not AT&T. As long as they were the exclusive carrier no problem. Now as the exclusivity comes to end they are starting to build their revenue streams in preparation. The funny part is you would think that they would improve their service so that customers would want to stay.
AT&T before the IPHONE was on the way out and when the exclusivity ends they'll be on the same road again...........DOWNHILL

Steve Jobs can never be forgiven for making us use the INCOMPETENT and HORRIBLE provider ATT.

Almost never any strong 3G signal inside a building.

screw AT&T

"I don't want to be loved, I want to be feared"

Comments like this are pretty stupid.

You really should learn to read and process information better. Many posts above have pointed out the rationale for this, and the per-month reduction that you get.

What is it about a 'contract' that you sign on to that you don't get?

Agreed. However, you'll find that in almost every market now, minutes and message fees are charged on both ends.

Where I am, it's also not necessarily true that when the contract ends the price stays the same. I had a choice when my 3HK contract (for which I had chosen a subsidized phone) ended. Get a new subsidized handset and keep the same contract price, continue without a contract at the same price, or get a new 12-month contract at roughly half the price. Because I chose the third option, I now pay less than US$10 for more than 2000 minutes. When I need or want a new handset, I worked it out that I will always save money by buying an unsubsidized handset and keeping the low rate.

95% of iphone users feel the same way as this guy.



F... ATT!!

All one has to do is to buy an unlocked iPhone (sold unlocked internationally -- not jailbroken) and go month to month. Then they will neve have to worry about ETF. Hopefully Apple will sell an unlocked, unsubsidized iPhone in the US soon so that Americans don't have to go through the grey market to do this.

It's the same in Australia however we pay a connection fee (or flagfall) on outgoing calls currently around $A0.35 as soon as it connects, calls are also billed in 30 second or one minute blocks.

If you leave one day before the contract you agreed to ends, you are liable for this fee, when the clock ticks over past midnight the fee is gone, such is the nature of agreed terms.

Yeah that's right, forgot Verizon raised it so people wouldn't cancel out of the piece of junk that is DROID to go to iPhone & AT&T.

And for those of you set to refute DROID being a piece of junk, it got the worst rating in the robotic touch screen tests done a little while back. I've personally gotten to work with them in our offices for our employees wanting on wifi. THEY ARE JUNK!!

It could be why. To stop the mass exodus of people from Verizon.

They weren't evil. Sociopathic, yes, but not evil. They do not qualify for that descriptor.

Usually I would agree, but let's not forget AT&T also raised the fee for service when the 3G came out, and I would think it's about time they raised the fee for service with the introduction of the 4G, so essentially, they are gouging because they can.

................AND, to play devil's advocate, they may have information none of us are privy to, such as the, albeit extreme, possibility that their exclusivity IS ending and that it may happen shortly after the 4G is introduced and not exactly THE DATE it is introduced, so to counteract those that may possibly upgrade and jump ship shortly after with a 4 band phone (I still don't see Apple incurring the expense for this, but it could happen) they are increasing their ETF/ECF to make people rethink and second guess whether they want to take up that expense or not.

IOW, it's a trap.

I really don't see myself leaving AT&T for no other reason than the fact the bandwidth they utilize is the same as european and asian countries I visit, so I don't see switching to a carrier who's bandwidth is only used in this country and a few, though not many, choice countries that were either given a discount to utilize a dead technology or just feel they are making it difficult to listen in on their intelligence transmissions.

Perhaps not. But when I had T-Mobile, I had SERVICE. My phone worked. That is what counts to ME; I do not care about "companies looking to do business with wireless companies here in the States".

If I were in an area with no T-Mobile tower, my nothing-burger little Motorola Razr just latched onto some other company and my calling went without event, muss, fuss, or bother. I used to see some of the darnedest names come up on the indicator. Judd's Bait Shop and Cell Phone Service. Mama Margolis' Mattzah Ball Soup and Telephone. Hopp Sing's Chinese Takeway and Cell. OK, I am exaggerating, but not by much. You name the place, and the phone worked. If not, then NO one had service.

Roaming? Never got hit with it.

Compare this with being at LAX trying to make a call with an iPhone. beep-beep-beep or "your call cannot be completed at this time...". All around me, Verizon, T-Mobile, and "burner" phone users are making calls. I know. I asked. (One kind soul lent me his T-Mobile so I could call my hotel).

So, they may be small, and they may not have the cachét of AT&T, but their rates are far lower, their customer service is customer service (not excuse-making).

Full disclosure: My iPhone service started off great, then went to so-so. In the last several months it has gone to a high rate of dropped calls, poor connections (to both cell and landlines), and ghost calls. Yes, I had the phone swapped. Same issues, and the same indifference from AT&T.

July 14th cannot come soon enough.

Which is why I don't think this means V is getting it immediately. If they got it at the same time that AT&T does, then anyone that wants to go to Verizon will not be affected by this. Those that are under contract now and want to switch will pay the original ETF. Those that are not under contract to AT&T can just go to Verizon. In neither case would the new ETF affect people going to Verizon.

For this to be a reaction to V getting the next iPhone, it would make sense that Verizon is getting it later and AT&T knows this. Then anyone that signs or re-signs a contract with AT&T to get the new iPhone would have to pay the new fee to get out and go to Verizon. They would also have to buy a new iPhone unless the new one can work on both networks, but I didn't think Qualcomm had released the hardware for this yet.

isn't that an issue with skype not allowing it on at&t? i recall reading that apple allows it, att allows it, but skype hasn't enabled it in their iphone app, despite claiming months ago that they were ready. i think the app fring allows you to use your skype account over 3g.

(tinfoil hat alert: also read somewhere that verizon may be behind the delay, as they do allow skype over cell. there could be some collusion going on there between skype and verizon to keep it off at&t).

and 85% of statistics are made up on the spot. 65% of people know that!

i think it was reported that verizon turned down the iPhone. redirect your anger accordingly...

That's right, the Skype CEO was whining in December how Apple and AT&T were being unfair by not allowing the 3G version that he stated they'd had ready for months, to be released.

This was in a speech detailing a string of failures to deliver eg Blackberry, Symbian S60v5 etc, the one success (iPhone OS over 3G) he proudly proclaimed was held back through no fault of Skype.

That restriction was relaxed in February and here we are months later and still no Skype for 3G on iPhone's despite Fring being ready to roll on the first day.