Associated Press – Monday, April 9, 2007:
Breaking up with your Internet service provider isn’t hard to do _ but it may cost you.
Customers who subscribe to a high-speed Internet plan may pay $150 or more if they terminate their service before their contract has expired, according to a new survey from Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.
The practice is well known among cell phone providers _ early termination fees in that industry run from $150 to $240 per line, according to the group.
The goals of the fees are largely the same _ to cut down on “churn,” the process of customers dumping one service provider to pursue greener pastures with another.
Jeannine Kenney, a senior policy analyst with the group, said the penalties “deprive consumers of the benefits of competition.”
If Corporate America truly believes that competition and free and open markets are so important, then why do they constantly try to destroy them?!
Phone companies here in Spain tried this with both landline and cell phones and Internet services but the government stomped on it. Cancellation fees are forbidden.
I wish the U.S. government was so forward thinking. Alas our government is bought and paid for by the same entities our government regulates. No conflict of interest here … move along.
The unbreakable union of free republics
Great Russia has welded forever;
Created by will of the peoples, long live
The united, mighty Soviet Union!
CHORUS:
Be renowned, our free Fatherland,
Reliable bulwark of the friendship of peoples!
Soviet flag, people’s flag
Let it lead from victory to victory!
2.
Through tempests shined on us the sun of freedom,
And the great Lenin lit us the way.
Stalin brought us up — on loyalty to the people,
He inspired us to labor and to heroism!
CHORUS:
Be renowned, our free Fatherland,
Reliable bulwark of the happiness of peoples!
Soviet flag, people’s flag
Let it lead from victory to victory!
3.
We developed our army in battles,
We will sweep the vile aggressors from the way!
In battles we settle the fate of generations,
We will lead our Fatherland to glory!
CHORUS:
Be renowned, our free Fatherland,
Reliable bulwark of the glory of peoples!
Soviet flag, people’s flag
Let it lead from victory to victory!
Most of you should have hard ons and tears in your eyes by now
Ron, brevity is the soul of wit. Instead of posting an entire song try this: You bunch of commie pinko bastards!
A contract is a contract, and by right any company can insist the contracted period of an agreement is met. Contract curtailment is a serious matter for any business, the fact they allow it at all is to the credit of the industry.
When I was looking to cancel my contract for my mobile phone, 14 months into an 18 month contract, it was going to cost me about £125 to do it (about $250) So, being the tight git I am, I decided to keep with my company. The reason it was so much is because they charge me the base line rental of the phone for every month I will be cancelling, so my 4 months at just about £30 was what made it so much and I agree with their reasons for charging it.
I signed a contract and was trying to back out. If they were to decide to ignore their part of the contract, I wouldn’t be best pleased, so it kind of makes sense. (I make a point of reading closely any contract I sign now, thanks to my previous job working for one of the UK’s bigger ISPs and throwing a customer’s contract back at them when they started getting very uppity and tried to complain on a non-issue)
спасибо, товарищ
edwinrogers is right… mostly.
The reason these companies have contracts is because there is a minimum amount of time that they need you to be a customer before they begin to make money. This is because there are fees in connection, setup, management, etc.
Therefore, if you terminate a contract early, it may mean that the company is actually taking a loss because of your patronage. This is why a termination fee is applied.
On the other hand, yes, they are stupid (speaking from the standpoint of a consumer), and some companies require setup fees that should cover all the initial costs.
Competition is great for an industry, but it really sucks for companies.
No one held a gun to your head when you subscribed to the service. Buyer beware.
Капитализмом будет единственная система работает
Just say nyet!
If you guys keep posting in Cyrillic I will start posting in Klingon. ghIj qet jaghmeyjaj!
A capitalist will sell you the same rope that’s going to be used to hang him, as long as he gets a profit out of it.
Широкополосные компании отменят контракт, если Вы будете использовать много полосы пропускания по неограниченному контракту.
Not fair at all.
Capitalists are only capitalists only if it is profitable, which it usually isn’t (unless either your customers are idiots/uninformed). It is only natural money-cults/corporations will choose to attempt to lock-out competition. Capitalism is the spirit of free competition. When a corporate stooge talks of capitalism, he really means “dog-eat-dog”.
Has anyone else noticed that the “capcha” for posting here has stopped recently?
yeah wtf is up w/ other languages? Seriously!
“No one held a gun to your head when you subscribed to the service. Buyer beware.”
In my part of the country I’ve got exactly ONE land-line phone provider, ONE cable TV provider, and ONE cell provider…. might as well have a gun when everyone’s got regional monopolies.
Gee…. did the article consider the fact that perhaps these ISP contracts with $150 termination fees included free hardware? If the ISP gave the customer a free modem and/or router to sign up, then it makes perfect sense to charge the customer for leaving early.
That is no different than the exit fees for mobile service contracts that include a free or subsidized phone.
I wouldn’t say it’s the same thing. Usually the cell phone contracts involve a price cut on the phone. The ISPs are just seeing what they can get away with while there’s still money to be made.
I’m not surprised. These cancellation fees is just another sign of the market being made up by oligopolies… 10 years ago, North America had the best broadband services in the world… well, nowadays it’s slightly better performance, but the rest of the industrialized world have bypassed this continent by far. South Korea, Japan, Sweden… they got 100 Mbps to their homes… What do we got? 3, 5, 6, 8 Mbps?
My ISP is my local telephone co-op, they charged me up front for the DSL modem and installation and there is no contract. You can buy performance, I settled for the 768k deal, although there are higher cost/performance options. The perrennial malcontents out there will no doubt think my ISP is screwing me, but I’m tickled to pieces with it. Hell, I even tossed the satellite, and this time it stayed tossed. I did hook up a little rabbit ears/amplifier, and I get ETV and a couple UHF channels, and that’s pretty well all I need, now that I’ve got broadband.
The market isn’t free. Naturally, mathematically, inevitably, they find spontaneous methods of collusion to fix prices and/or control their customers. Adam Smith, rarely read and constantly invoked, said in the Wealth of Nations that no two businessmen ever met that didn’t try to fix their market. The market is only free when the Master of Revels, the Evil Guvmint, regulates what are really thieves in a state of nature.
There’s no reason for a termination fee other than to prevent the customer from finding cheaper service for a period of time. There’s no choice, no free market, when the companies provide the same damned termination penalties. If the market were free, one hero company would offer a no-penalty termination. But there isn’t, because there is a natural collusion amongst the providers to maximize their profit.
Why is this bad? Because it is only a free market for *them*. We, the customers, are treated as marks. We see no competition for our business, only competition to lock us in at the highest rate possible. Corporations are publically licensed fake individuals. They exist, at our whim, our permission, for our benefit, *not* theirs. This is why we regulate them. They exist, as copyright originally did, for our benefit, not their profit. The profit is a secondary consideration.
We just want a free market restored. 22 more months. A little relief from thieves, that’s all we want.
Oh yeah, and what you rightists are saying is the fallacy of the false dilemma. The choice is not between Bushian corporatism and the Soviet Union. The choice is between thievery as a corporate institution and a regulated market. Right now, the thieves are appointed as their own regulators, so we have a lootin’ party going on. But I don’t see the National Guard Blackwater firing at the corporate HQ’s from the overpasses. Depends on how much you steal, I guess. Steal a little, get humiliated on COPS, steal hundreds of billions, you go on the cover of Fortune.
What’s the real failure here?
The Amerikan consumer, as usual. Too many st00pid people accepted the 2-year contract thing. As they “sighn” those contracts (nearly willingly), they sign away everybody elses’ chances to negotiate.
So, blame your neighbor, your best friend, your spouse. They buy long-term leases on cars that they have to give back, they buy overpriced wireless phones for their kidz…
Basically, although it costs money — if it removes even the most minor inconvenience from life, then it’s worth it, and SCREW YOU, NEIGHBOR!!!
That’s right, screw you — you suck if you can’t afford Amerika. Move out. Doesn’t matter how much you contribute and get screwed by the upper class, the eXecutives, the CEOs — just, SCREW YOU LOSER!!!