fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
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1 edit | reply to Rick
Re: Not sure I agree said by Rick:If a person negotiates a contract the terms of it should be adhered to on both sides. And, in these types of contracts the number of minutes and price per minute is a key point of those agreements. There is your problem. This happened to me with Sprint/Nextel, and they wanted to up my contract.. they only told me this AS WE WERE ENDING THE CALL.
Please, tell me, when was anything negotiated?
In fairness, you are correct. When two sides negotiate. This is not a negotiation, rather, this is a policy. Policy and a negotiated contract are two different things.
They got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and now they are getting slapped.
On the other hand, the telephone industry has been regulated for years. This is a good reason to regulate them again. You should NEVER be forced to extend a contract to add minutes or change a plan. (Unless you want to change to a non-qualifying plan that was already agreed to)
Extortion comes to mind in this case. It would be something like this:
customer: "I would like to increase my minutes per month from 400 to 800 because I'm going to use more"..
them: "ok, but I see you have 4 months left, you must re-up a 2 year agreement to do so"..
customer: "I don't want a new contract"
them: "then pay the .40 cents overage.
me: "would you like the $200 ETF now on my credit card? or you just going to bill me. Because your ETF doesn't scare me. You can have the ETF but you will lose the monthly billing.. I'm going to a company that doesn't try extortion.
The ETF fee NEVER scares me. I could have paid the extra up front or on the back side, should I need it. It's a gamble and one that I'm willing to take. Sadly more people don't exercise the ETF and pay it.
On another note. I purchased my own phone on a previous contract.. it expired. (It was on a plan with a business partner and the contract was fulfilled) I took that same phone, to the same carrier, opened up a new line of service, and Nextel told me I had to agree to a 2 year contract with them simply to activate the service.. WTF?! They gave me no phone, they gave me NO promotion, but to simply sign up with them, it was a 24 month commit?
The law suit was LONG over due. These companies can't simply compete and sell their service.. they have to rope their customers in.. it's the only way.
Today, people still bag on Cable TV all the time, but be thankful that they don't require contracts on their service. Even landlines are making it a requirement when you take any promotion these days. SIMPLY WRONG! Contracts are a sign of a poor product.
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"Complaining is the least path of resistance for the self-serving, the lazy, and I’m told it’s a woman’s prerogative..." |
