Carriers, leaving, and ETFs
A quick note, to anyone (especially those jumping off the Magenta ship because the death star is about to eat them whole) considering leaving their current wireless carrier of choice:
Keep an eye on your account/statements/any kind of letters you get from the carrier after you’ve left them. Because I can bet you a million, that if you leave a carrier after your contract is up and/or you are still within your return period (30 days here in California), they will try to slip an ETF in and hope you won’t notice.
Ironically, the only legit ETF I paid was to AT&T, who didn’t try to screw me out of a ton of money. But T-Mobile and Verizon both tried to slam me with false ETFs (and with the latter, I caught them on it and called them out on it, but the former I didn’t.)
Story: With T-Mobile, I had just opened a new line plus had an existing line. The new line was within the 30 day return period. This was around the time the Droid came out, and the Touch Pro2 and G1 I had from T-Mobile were both experiencing a ton of problems. So I returned the G1, and cancelled both lines, opting to pay the $200 ETF on the main line, and $95 for the last month’s bill. I paid it then and there and was on my way.
Then, a few months later, I’m suddenly in collections for around $300, because apparently they tried to hit me with an ETF plus yet another months’ bill for the second line. T-Mobile won’t do anything about it, because they’re no longer in control of the debt. The phone number going to the collection agency is just manned by an answering machine and no one who cares enough to return calls.
Funny thing being that all the T-Mo reps (besides the most recent one*), have said, upon looking at my account history, that the ETF and extra charges *are* invalid. But they won’t do anything about it because the debt belongs to a collection agency—one I cannot get a hold of, try as I might.
And then with Verizon, I had bought a Blackberry Storm2, liked it for a while, then played with a Droid, and decided I wanted to switch. I was still within my 30 days. However, the Storm2 was bought from Best Buy, whose systems went down on the Droid launch day. So I couldn’t return it. But I wanted a Droid. So the Verizon store said to just open a new line with the Droid, then return and cancel the original line when BB’s systems come back up. Fine, good enough.
Finally, BB’s systems came up, and they started processing the return with a Verizon rep on the phone. Verizon’s rep demanded to talk to me, and tried to upsell me on network extenders and even outright refusing to cancel that line because I didn’t have a reason for doing so. Finally, he just went through with it after much arguing in the middle of BB’s mobile department. After that, I thought I was free…
Until, a week later, a $300 ETF charge appears on my bill. A quick call to Verizon, and they realize where they messed up (though not before asking me to produce a receipt of the return and mail it…), and the $300 is voided.
I have yet to see this happen with Sprint at any point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.
Pretty much, the moral of my story is this: If you’re going to cancel with any carrier, watch your shit like a hawk. Don’t be dumb like me and assume everything’s okay. Otherwise you’ll have collection agencies all up in your shit, and that’s never fun. (It also destroys your credit, too.)
