You better frickin’ like your full-price iPhone because if you don’t, AT&T plans on charging you the full $175 early termination fee, even though the phone’s cost isn’t at all subsidized under a long-term-agreement.
Cellphone companies usually justify early termination fees on the basis that it’s meant to recoup the cost of discounting a new phone to a new subscriber.
But if the iPhone is selling for the full price, why would AT&T impose the same high fee? Oh wait, because it’s the iPhone, and they can. (See: Veblen goods). — BEN POPKEN
Boston.com via AppleInsider
(Photo: presta)
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boohoo.
No one is holding a gun to your head to buy the iPhone. You are buying it of u’r own free will and the terms and conditions are known to u before hand. So get over it.
If you are cribbing about how expensive or restrictive it is then the iPhone is not for u.
-not-an-apple-fan-boy
@anti-corp: When was the last time you let the local phone company (land-line service) tell you which phone to buy?
Not quite as long ago as you might think actually. AT&T (technically called Bell System at that point, prior to multiple company break-ups) used to only allow company-owned phones on subscriber’s landlines that the subscribers leased from them.
To many people, Bell Systems (or Ma Bell as it was better known) is still the original man to be hated when thinking about big business DRM and monopolies.