BerryReview.com - BlackBerry News and Reviews
Forgot? | Register
Shop The BerryReview Store

Verizon Raises ETF to $350 – Sprint Kills Call Forwarding Fees

by Ronen Halevy on Nov 17th, 2009 at 2:30 pm EST
7 Comments »
 

Verizon-ETF I am always interested in the trends that happen in the wireless carrier industry. We told you last week that Sprint was going to kill the call forwarding fees that they have been charging customers 20 cents a minute for using YouMail and other voicemail services. Other carriers have been just using your minutes for call forwarding but from what I am hearing Sprint made it totally free so it does not cost you a dime or use your minutes. Makes me wonder if other carriers will follow this trend…

While Sprint is catching up Verizon is trying to set their own new trend. As of this past Sunday Verizon has upped their Early Termination Fee (ETF) to $350 for any “Advanced Devices” which means all BlackBerrys. Engadget spotted the change officially made in their consumer agreement at this link. That means you will still have a $120 ETF in the last month of your 2 year contract since it only goes down $10 a month. This is a trend I really hope will not catch on with other carriers since the SMS price fixing that all the carriers have adopted is really starting to get ridiculous.

So what other trends have you been noticing? Is Verizon going to start torturing bunnies if you cancel your contract early?

Please Share With A Friend!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 and is filed under News.
Tags: , , , ,

If you enjoyed this article, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed to stay on top of the latest BlackBerry news you can use.

Previous Post: »
Next Post: »

If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:

Latest Articles:

7 Comments to “Verizon Raises ETF to $350 – Sprint Kills Call Forwarding Fees”

  1. Posted by: DavidB
    November 17, 2009 at 5:00 pm EST

    Looking at it logically, what choice did Verizon have? With their BOGO’s, unscrupulous folks where taking the second BlackBerry for free, cancel and pay $175, then sell it on ebay or CL for a tidy profit. The higher ETF effectively ends that practice.

    I do think it is unfair they didn’t also double the monthly prorate to $20/month so that your ETF is zero by 18 months into contract.

    as for those who argue against ETF’s in total, what, you want to penalize ALL of use by forcing us to all pay the full retail not subsidized price for phones? Thanks!

    From my BlackBerry Storm…

    Reply
    • Posted by: Ronen Halevy
      November 18, 2009 at 12:11 am EST

      I echo your thoughts but at least they could have been honest and made the ETF go down to $0 in your last month of contract. The fact that there is a $120 ETF the day before your contract ends is just bullshit!

      Reply
  2. Posted by: papped
    November 17, 2009 at 9:44 pm EST

    Bottom line is VZ can do whatever the hell they want because they’re bigger than Sprint and not bleeding customers… They could raise the ETF to $600 and still gain customer base.

    Reply
  3. Posted by: tim
    November 18, 2009 at 12:59 am EST

    That is until they are bought out like alltel. Its no matter a matter of if but when.

    Reply
  4. Posted by: tim
    November 18, 2009 at 1:05 am EST

    I’ve got an idea – pay the last month if you are that close. Etfs are meant to be a penalty. You agreed to something for 2 years and are not following through on that. Thus the penalty.

    The only people who are being hurt by this are the crooks. You don’t need to pay the etf just to get a new phone. You can pay full retail or get an annual upgrade.

    Reply
    • Posted by: papped
      November 18, 2009 at 4:11 pm EST

      I don’t think the point is people being “hurt” by this, rather the unattractiveness of the carrier in general when you go to sign a 2 year contract.

      Plenty of people break contracts for legit reasons. You will think harder if it’s a higher $ value (although I doubt this will really affect VZ at all).

      Reply

Subscribe without commenting

Leave a Reply

Save yourself some time by quickly logging in or registering

Note: Any comments are permitted only because the site owner is letting you post, and any comments will be removed for any reason at the absolute discretion of the site owner. FYI: Links will automatically be hyperlinked so there is no need to use HTML