AOL tried to squeeze a little over $US100 in fees from a customer for upgrades he hadn’t asked for, hadn’t approved, hadn’t used and of which he hadn’t even been notified. Unluckily for AOL, that customer is a professional writer.
After the Pirate Bay founders were fined $US3.5 million, they swore they wouldn’t cough up a single cent. Instead, they’ve come up with a DDo$ plan of attack that’ll cost the IFPI instead of themselves.
Apple’s Macworld announcement that the entire iTunes catalogue is ditching the God-awful DRM that has kept it back is fantastic news for music lovers worldwide. After all, now you can purchase music that you can listen to on whatever device you want, however many times you want, all for the same price (until their new pricing structure kicks in, I guess). But what about the tunes you’ve already purchased, laced with hidden DRM and holding your music collection back?
Well, despite the fact that you can purchase the same tracks for the same price without DRM, if you’ve already purchased a DRM-encoded version, you’ll need to pay Apple 50 cents per track to remove the restrictions, or $1.00 per track for music videos.
Effective immediately, T-Mobile is eliminating the $18 fee it charges customers to upgrade to a new phone. I’m glad to see that T-Mo came to their senses here—penalizing a customer for upgrading is ridiculous.
The specifics have not been announced, but Sprint will finally join Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T in pro-rating their early termination fees starting as early as December. That means the fee drops each month you spend with the service instead of paying a flat $US200. [Physorg]
A California Supreme Court judge has just ruled that early termination fees from mobile phone companies violates California state law and are illegal. What’s this mean to you? Sprint Nextel has been ordered to pay US$18.2 million in reimbursements to customers who already paid their ETF, and to stop trying to collect US$54.7 million from customers who cancelled and refused to pay. But if ETF fees are illegal, does that mean 2-year contracts—which in turn give you subsidised price on your mobile phones—will be a thing of the past? Tough to say, but we’re headed towards some change. [Mercury News via Yahoo]
Everybody’s favourite consumer watchdog is back in the news, this time as they raise their concerns about mobile data usage and in particular excess mobile data usage fees.
The timing is impeccable, since the iPhone 3G has launched and some Telcos aren’t even trying to compete in the mobile data space.
The ACCC has sent letters asking all the Telcos to outline their strategies for educating users on the excess cost of mobile data on the networks. They’ve also cautioned users to pay particular attention to their contracts so that they can avoid a hefty charge come bill-time.
So, don’t expect anything to change in the short term – this is more the ACCC sticking its head up and telling everyone that it’s watching the situation, not an announcement for upcoming change. Which is a shame, really…
[via SMH]
As promised last year, T-Mobile is finally reducing its early termination fees, so breaking your contract to get some actual 3Gness won’t pound you quite as hard. Instead of declining month-by-month, the fee goes down in weird increments.
According to Ars, one AT&T attorney told the FCC yesterday that early termination fees we pay for leaving our contracts before the designated time are actually a great deal for us. His reasoning was that “ETF-backed term contracts give consumers the ability to lower their monthly charges and upfront handset costs in exchange for their promise to pay monthly charges for the life of the contracts or alternatively to pay the ETF in lieu of the remaining charges.” On the one hand, that’s a punch in the nuts. On the other hand, he kinda has a point.
The FCC might be getting up in mobile phone providers’ collective grill, telling them what they can and cannot charge to customers who quit their service early. A proposal to them outlines some changes consumers want enacted, including free termination up to 30 days after signing a contract or 10 days after the first bill and pro-rating the US$175+ fee depending on how many months you’ve been with the service (some do already). What’s the upside for mobile phone companies? They get let off the hook in state courts “where they are being sued for billions of dollars by angry customers.” [CNN]
