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Wouldn't you want to be if you were worth 177 billion dollars?
Keep it coming....
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...aims_court.php
From your link:
AT&T's contracts don't guarantee any type of service quality. Actually, they explicitly state that they are able to do what they need to in order to manage their network. Show me an AT&T contract that guarantees unlimited data at a certain speed...Originally Posted by trash
Here's what AT&T's Wireless Service Agreement states:
If their service doesn't work for you how you would like it to, go to a different service provider. I've never understood why someone would pay for something that doesn't work right.Originally Posted by AT&T
Its called an ETF. They charge you for not doing business with them.
At least one judge agrees that AT&T is liable, and awarded a settlement to the plaintiff. AT&T decided not to appeal, and the winner would not surrender to a non-disclosure agreement AT&T tried to get him to sign.
You are not forced to pay the ETF if you cancel within the first 30 days of service. In my opinion, a month is plenty of time to figure out how well a cellular carrier works in a given area. I understand there will be a few people that have great service, and then move to a place with lousy service (or change jobs), but it's not near as many people as you hear *****ing about AT&T's service.
However, if you are after the 30 day window, and you have problems, you have to pay the ETF. 30 days might not be long enough to realize that bandwidth caps may impact your experience. So understand that just not paying for service is not always an option.
Its unknown if the plaintiff in this case was subject to an ETF (perhaps not), but for some reason he didn't want to just quit the service, most likely because he couldn't find another carrier that would offer him unlimited data service on his existing equipment. I'm in that same boat, myself.
The user's AT&T phone can be resold to recoup most (if not all) of the ETF.
You have to admit that they deserve some sort of reimbursement when they sell an iPhone 4S for $199 and the customer leaves after six months. The customer's payments to AT&T would barely cover what Apples charges AT&T for the phone.
I'm not saying their pricing/ETF model is a perfect science, but it is put in place to prevent fraud, basically. There are other ways around an ETF...
I wish U.S. carriers could transition to a model where customers purchase their device independent from their service provider, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
As far as I know you can still bring your own device to AT&T and get a postpaid account with a month to month contract and no ETF.
If you want to do it like Europe, AT&T accommodates that. No changes to the system have to be made.
There are some masochistic people out there. And they look rather foolish when they continue to complain about a product/service yet continue to use it. Similar to the battered wife syndrome, except I feel more pity for those women vs. the people without the common sense to switch products/service providers.
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