Victory has found the reader reader who couldn’t get any calls on his Tmobile phone, and yet they wouldn’t let him leave service without paying the dreaded Early Termination Fee. First he called the Retentions department number we gave him. They said they would cut the fee in half, but still charge him. “Considering the amount of time I spent on the phone, they should be paying me,” wrote Evan. Then one of Tmobile’s PR people stepped in, waved a magic wand, and now Tmobile is doing what they legally should have done all along, let Evan go without charging an ETF.

Since Evan’s story posted, we’ve gotten comments and emails from other readers in the same boat. To those folks, we say keep escalating to supervisors or executive customer service (try 1-425-378-4000) and demanding that your consumer rights be respected. I would really like to hear what logic these customer service reps are trying to use to justify still charging you a fee for a nonfunctional service. Just keep a firm grip, that their contract is not legally enforceable if they’re not fulfilling their end of the contract, and thus can’t legally work you over with any punitive termination fee clause in it.

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