DISQUS

Steve R. · 1 year ago

Cord wrote: "But termination fees don’t just serve the purpose of cost recovery, they also provide an incentive for customers staying loyal to their wireless provider and giving these providers revenue predictability."

Seems to me that this logic is backward. Customer loyalty should be based on providing value to the customer and good customer service. If a company provides value and good customer service than the customers will stay loyal. The current practice with early termination fees is more akin to a hostage situation where you have to buy your "freedom".

The Sprint reference, is a really an example of a company changing its policies out of desperation when it is too late and not really a reflection of the wireless industry developing a warm fuzzy feeling for its "loyal" customers. We used to have Sprint, when I complained about their poor customer service, they essentially said "we don't care"; so we left. Evidently other customers left too and Sprint is now paying the price for this arrogance. This is the free market at work.

When telecommunication companies attempt to screw their customer with onerous business practices that are patently self-serving, the unattended consequence is legislation. If the telecommunication companies don't want to be regulated, provide value to the customer so that they remain loyal. Customers are not revenue units nor a subsidy for your business. If you can't compete in an open and free market you have no business being in business.

cordblomquist · 1 year ago

Open and free markets include contracts of all kinds, not just the contracts that Rep. Markey approves. What if we made termination fees illegal for all types of contracts? In your vision of a "free and open" market, people would feel free to come and go as they please without being saddled with long-term commitments of any kind.

You want to move out of your apartment, feel free! Sure, your landlord won't be able to get a loan to build a new apartment building to house other people or to replace your aging building, but that's his problem, right?

Cell phone service doesn't fall from the sky, it's built from the ground up through massive investments requiring billions of dollars be put on the line. If telcos can't predict how many customers they'll have in a month, let alone a year, we won't see too many towers popping up to give us that next generation of service we're looking forward to.

You say that, "Customers are not revenue units nor a subsidy for your business." No, they're not a subsidy, but they are a business's revenue stream. Like it or not, good will or good intentions don't build nation-wide cell phone network or any other type of successful business. Instead, a business model that's constructed around a long-term vision is what creates modern conveniences like our cell phone networks. By forcing cell phone companies to abandon long-term contracts, they must also give up some degree of long-term planning.

I'm sure the same folks saying that no one ought to be obligated to a long-term commitment will be complaining that businesses can't think long-term when we fall behind Europe and Asia in cellular connectivity.

tiff · 1 year ago

did he actually introduce it yet? i thought it was just draft legislation at this point.