Verizon also charges two months upfront, and their contract cancellation fee is stiff, to say the least. And god help you if you lose a phone--charges for getting THAT fixed, unless you go get your own unlocked phone off eBay and pray you can get them to turn it on for you, are ridiculous.
The thing I hate about cell phone companies is the utter lack of notification about plan changes. My calling plan's price dropped by $20/month, but because I had a contract, it didn't drop for ME until I went in and updated the contract.
If it wasn't for all of the cash you'd have to sink into infrastructure, a reasonably entrepreneurial person could make an absolute crapload of money just by offering sane cell phone service with a easily-readable bill and reasonable contract terms. Couple that with half-decent customer service, and you'd have people burning down Sprint stores to get their contracts cancelled so they could move over.
Hell, look at services like Vonage. Verizon just sent me a letter saying that I had "more reason now than ever before" to come back to them for phone service, because they had improved their line quality and dropped their monthly charge by....get this...$5.
Yep, $5 off a bill that was already TRIPLE what I'm paying for my Vonage service. Are their marketing guys just brain-dead, or did they all fail elementary arithmetic?
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Date: 2005-09-23 01:55 pm (UTC)The thing I hate about cell phone companies is the utter lack of notification about plan changes. My calling plan's price dropped by $20/month, but because I had a contract, it didn't drop for ME until I went in and updated the contract.
If it wasn't for all of the cash you'd have to sink into infrastructure, a reasonably entrepreneurial person could make an absolute crapload of money just by offering sane cell phone service with a easily-readable bill and reasonable contract terms. Couple that with half-decent customer service, and you'd have people burning down Sprint stores to get their contracts cancelled so they could move over.
Hell, look at services like Vonage. Verizon just sent me a letter saying that I had "more reason now than ever before" to come back to them for phone service, because they had improved their line quality and dropped their monthly charge by....get this...$5.
Yep, $5 off a bill that was already TRIPLE what I'm paying for my Vonage service. Are their marketing guys just brain-dead, or did they all fail elementary arithmetic?
I could rant on this all day, honestly.