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Text Message Price Increase: Can You Cancel?

Posted March 19th, 2007 by ucansue

T-Mobile said that its new rate increase on pay-per-use text messages will be regarded as a "material change to the terms and conditions of its subscribers' contracts", therefore allowing customers to cancel service without incurring early termination fees.

T-mobile didn't discuss whether customers who agreed to a monthly subscription for bundled text messages would also be allowed to get out of their contracts without penalty. The company also didn't address the customer class that doesn't use text messaging at all. It remains to be seen whether or not these two customer classes will be permitted to cancel their contracts without early termination fees (ETFs).

Even though the four largest U.S. carriers have all increased their pay-per-use rate for text messages from 10 cents to 15 cents, each claims the changes affect customer contracts and ETFs differently.

AT&T''s Cingular Wireless maintains the increase is simply a pricing change for an optional service and that subscribers would still have to pay the fee to cancel their contract. However, Sprint Nextel said it would only allow without text messaging monthly plans would be able to get out of their contracts without the ETF.

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