Sprint Early Termination Fee Is Illegal, Says Court

It’s enough to drive a parent crazy. Being forced into contracts to get decent cell phone service is one of the things that’s unbelievably irritating when you live here in America. My overseas friends who visit always say how stupid we are to put up with market manipulation like Sprint’s early termination fees. Granted I’m a Sprint customer who has decent service from the company, I don’t like early termination fees from anyone.

Now a California court has declared the approximate $200 fee to be illegal. What a blessing! It’s nice to see things work for the little guy and not large corporations.

Now I can only imagine how cellular companies and their lobbyists will argue against it. The most obvious point anyone will bring up is that they will not be able to subsidize the price of a phone if you don’t stay with them for a whole contract. It’s the whole basis why the Apple 3G is only $199.00 right out of the gate.

But let’s be honest about something. The idea of a cell phone is to be able to communicate ANYWHERE without be connected to a land line. It’s not about building up a collection of horrible pictures because you were gouged on price for a piece of junk camera to be built into the latest toy. It’s not about being connected to the web with an effective monitor that’s the size of a postage stamp.

So if the cell phone companies don’t like not being able to stick it to you on a contract, I’m more than happy to represent the majority of adults in saying, “Boo hoo!” They can feel free to think of it as revenge for us having to pay up to $0.25 for a text message! We can only hope the appeals will be shot down on this case of Sprint’s early termination fees now being illegal.