Terminating Internet Service Not Easy

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The Washington Post says that customers subscribing to a high-speed internet plans could pay $150 to terminate their service before their contract has expired. Anyone ever run into this?

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.
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I'm fine with it as long as I get free stuff and lower rates per month. e.g. I signed a 2 year agreement with t-mobile and got 2 razors for free.
 
I haven't run into this before, but I have never had a contract with my ISPs. Wait, I lie, I had one of those deals with Comcast where I got 6 months for $20/month and a free cable modem after rebate, so I wasn't going to be canceling in that period of time anyway.

However, I sometimes see ads on TV for Verizon DSL with special pricing of like $19.95 for 3 Mbps/768, special pricing with 2 year contract, and the fine print on those is something like $200 termination fee if you cancel before 2 years are up.
 
AT&T Does this. It seems they dont want you to have service at all unless you are under one of their contracts. I didnt want to sign up for a contract at all when my last one ran out, as it seemed to continue the same payments. AT&T basically threatened to disconnect me if I didnt enter into a new contract with a 150 (might have been 200) early termination fee.

I had hopes that maybe someday Verizon Fiber would be available.. and didnt want to get locked down. Seems I didnt have a choice. Due to this policy, the second theres something better available, ill be leaving AT&T, no matter the fee.
 
Netscape *dialup* does this. In order to get their $9.99/mo rate you must sign a 1 year contract. The fee for terminating the contract early is the remaining balance on the contract so, after 1 month of service, it's $110 to terminate.

When my parents were moving they got Netscape dialup (because they thought it was a reputable name) until they could get their Hughesnet dish setup, when they called to cancel a little over a month later they were informed of this contract they signed. Absolutely despicable business practices, I've steered dozens of customers away from them since.
 
Rogers will do this as well, although for Rogers its 100$. Frankly 100$+ to terminate internet is ridiculous and I will not pay it.
 
I have a 2 year contract with Qwest for DSL. I did it because you get 7meg for $36/m. Around here that's a damn good deal when the cable company wants $60/m for 5meg service. The early termination fee sucks, yes, but barring any moves, I don't plan on dropping it for a long while.
 
I just switched over to AT&T business class because it was the cheapest business class in the area. They want you to have a verbal one year commitment. But when it comes down to it, a verbal commitment doesn't hold up in court. So if you wanted to take it that far, you would probably win.
 
When my contract expires, I'm going to take a baseball bat to mine. I don't want the fukin' thing anymore. I do enjoy watching the "txt monkey's" poke away at their phones. So pathetic...
 
I think this is mostly a dialup and DSL thing. I have never had this with cable. But then again, I hear comcast is pretty shitty on their cable service turning people off for going over "unlimited" bandwidth so you never know what they might have in store next.
 
My sister in law was stupid enough to agree to something like this with AOL. Saved her a whopping $2 a month.

Comcast started offering it where you get a pretty good digital cable package, 8mbit broadband and VOIP for something like $158 a month ([plus all the usual fees) and $150 termination fee. IMO if you find the package attractive, suffering one extra month of billing isn't that big a penalty.
 
moral? read the fine print. shaw in ol canada is the shit. I can move addresses and no hookup charge but the real plus is calling them. they've revamped things lately I think and cannot priase about them enough. they do what you tell them with a smile. finding that in this day and age is far and inbetween. and yes telus, you suck!
 
This is one of the reasons that I avoided AT&T's DSL service in my area (the fact that they told me the 'servers are full didn't help either). They make you pay $200 for canceling before the end of your 12 month contract. Which is $14/mo.

I may hate Comcast's customer service, not to mention the ephemeral ~200GB limit on unlimited usage....But they are contract-less and there are no cancellation fees.
Also, their service has been nothing short of stellar for me, including the reps that came out to install it all for me (I could have but I am lazy).
 
Comcast is such a monopoly they offer the three for $33 (triple play) a month for 12 months so how much is it after the trial period? Plus they include an early term fee that is a rip off. They purchased my local cable/ISP and then they jacked up my internet fee 10 dollars for no increase in speed or any extra features just because they can. I cant wait till I move to an area that has DSL I will be using satellite for my HD TVD and DSL for my internet connection.

I used to work for EarthLink and they charged an early term fee for DSL/Sat customers I believe it was $175 for DSL sat was allot more, apparently that covered the costs for opening/closing the line through the consumers local telco. So I think early term fees is fairly common for DSL and ISPs that rent the line instead of owning them.
 
Umm duh? Telephone companies have had termination fees with broadband since broadband became "affordable" and came out.

Now the practice I think is absolutely disgusting is that once your contract is up, they'll still continue charging the same rate even though their monthly non-contract rate is lower than what you're paying, so you really need to be on top of things with the current pricing.

I think my AT&T is only $25/month for 3Mbps down and this doesn't require a contract (for once in my life!) of course there's always a catch as they always say this is the "internet price" but whenever you try to sign up it doesn't allow you to.
 
I'm with Rogers cable internet, and I've never heard of this before, maybe different in Canada?
I have contract with my cell from Rogers, but only if you want the phone for free.
If you pay for the phone, you don't have to sign a contract. and I think thats reasonable.
 
Contracts themselves aren't a problem really. It all depends on the company. Would I sign a contract with AT&T ( or any telecom for that matter )? No way in hell. Would I with Speakeasy? Before the merger, sure.
 
G'ßöö;1030885309 said:
moral? read the fine print. shaw in ol canada is the shit. I can move addresses and no hookup charge but the real plus is calling them. they've revamped things lately I think and cannot priase about them enough. they do what you tell them with a smile. finding that in this day and age is far and inbetween. and yes telus, you suck!
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Plus Shaw told the ESA and RIAA to eff themselves and they will not turn over any information to them. I just wish I wasn't stuck with Rogers.
 
I work at an ISP that does this. We do it because we're dependant on verizon's lines and they charge us out the ass for provisioning fees. We're basically taking a loss for the first few months on our lower speed service without the setup fee, and if the customer cancels early, then we have no way to recoup it. We do refund about $100 of it if the customer returns the modem.

Verizon on the other hand, has no excuse for charging a similar setup fee.
 
they dont have contracts for internet here, all the introductory rates last just 3 months then its full price. It would actually be nice to see some contracts since the prices for cable is outrageous (over $70 after crazy ass taxes). DSL is by far the cheapest, $35 bucks for measely 1.5mb, thats the cheapest rate you can get, since for some weird reason the 256k speeds cost exactly the same. Although we should have fiber optics in the rich neighborhoods in about 3 years since a new company was voted to provide competition to comcast, who knows when the normal neighborhoods will get it, comcast will have to lower prices at some point.
 
I have Verizon DSL and they made pretty obvious that this was the case when I was signing up. They had three choice a two year contract a one year contract and a no contract pricing plan. Well since I was going into a one year contract I just assumed that there is a penalty for canceling a contract with them. And it stated so. But I did not mind because my only other option is the crappy cable company we have here (Hotwire Communications) who I had for about two months and for a "super fast high speed internet" I never hit the 3mbps speed limit nor did it even ratchet up to 1mbps except on those rare 1 am occasions. Otherwise normally I got oh about 10kbps If I was lucky. Sometimes I couldn't even get a whole kilobyte. It was absolutely embarrassing. So I had no issue with going to verizon for the contract since I had no other real choice.
 
We have FIOS. There is no contract, I can have it shut off anytime I want. But Im very happy with it so I wont.

One thing bugs me, I have the 15Mbps and there are not that many places on the net that actually can go that fast. ATI and NVidia, sometimes MSoft, hit 10Mbps but most places are 1/2 or 1/4 that.
 
^^^ Yup that's true. I have 16mb ADSL2+ over here in Germany and that's not many site that I can download at 1800kbps speeds except a few you named above and filefront, gamershell etc at 5 in the morning :eek:.
 
FIOS here too and I love it, I was on a DSL contract but when they put FIOS in my neighborhood they voided my DSL contract because I switched over. The advantage of FIOS isn't that you can pull 15-35mbits from one source, it's that you can be pulling down a file at 3 or 10mbits (max for most broadband) and still play a game or stream some video without even a hint of lag or frame loss. I'm thinking about switching over to the lowest tier business package though cause that 2mbit upstream and blocked inbound ports are a bit of a pita.
 
G'ßöö;1030885309 said:
moral? read the fine print. shaw in ol canada is the shit. I can move addresses and no hookup charge but the real plus is calling them. they've revamped things lately I think and cannot priase about them enough. they do what you tell them with a smile. finding that in this day and age is far and inbetween. and yes telus, you suck!
Click to expand...

I have both Telus and Shaw internet. Neither have ever been on contract, nor would I consider signing a contract. Shaw has absolutely horrible service in my area, by that I mean ping times, download/upload speeds, they've gotten better but there is no way I would consider using them for my gaming. Their tech support however, has been awesome, for 5 years and running now I don't have a single complaint about that. Telus on the other hand, they screwed up my account signup and to this day it is still screwed up, they set my email address as my phone number...and messed up a number of other things which I had to call and rectify, never did correct all of it. However, their service has dropped one time in the 2 years I've had them, always consistant and exactly what I was looking for when I got it hooked up.

Contracts rely upon consumer ignorance/impatience, who wants to read some lengthy agreement when you're jonesing to play with your new toy, same thing with manuals. You might read it after the fact, but maybe not, and by then its too late. I wish someone would force these companies to be up front about their contracts, they should have to sell it to you. As it stands they treat month to month like the plague, although I did manage to get a pretty good deal out of Telus on the month to month by telling them I was switching to them hehe, I just never cancelled the Shaw.
 
I got Optimum Boost at 30 down / 5 Up. I got the whole package deal and yep...there's not much out there that can take advantage of that speed, but its correct I can suck down huge files and game without so much as a blink of an eye. Had to upgrade my router to the DGL Gamerlounge because my old netgear choked on the bandwidth....
 
Yeah, DSL is infamous for its early termination fee's. Cable for the most part doesn't need to use contracts. Cable is known for its faster speed over DSL (typically that is, some cable providers aside, cable is generally faster than DSL), thats what attracts people to cable. DSL had to fire back with cheaper prices. However, the hook is that you are stuck in a contract. Same thing with DISH and DirecTv.
 
xX_Jack_Carver_Xx said:
We have FIOS. There is no contract, I can have it shut off anytime I want. But Im very happy with it so I wont.
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O RLY?

From Verizon's FIOS website-

One-year commitment required and your Verizon FiOS Internet service must be billed to your Verizon telephone account. $29.99 monthly fee applies for the first six months only and reverts to $39.99 for months 7-12.
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If service is cancelled between months 2 and 12, $69 early termination fee may apply, and router provided at no charge must be returned or $99.99 equipment fee applies.
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Granted, it does say that month to month plans are available. But according to their pricing page, you pay $10 more per month for that "privelage". So how much are you paying?
 
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