How to ditch your cell contract early and get an iPhone
Rumors were rampant leading up to the official announcement of the iPhone at Macworld San Francisco that the device would be exclusive to one carrier. Cingular, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile were all suspected at one time or another of getting the nod from Apple, and for many of us, that meant hoping that only the rumors about our own carrier were true. With that mystery cleared up and Cingular confirmed as being the exclusive carrier of the iPhone for years to come, customers of carriers other than Cingular have to start plotting their contract escape so they can join up with Cingular and get an iPhone.
If you’ve never gotten out of a contract early before, it can be an expensive proposition. Carriers don’t want to sell heavily subsidized phones only to take it on the chin when you bail after a few months, so termination fees can be fairly steep to deter you. There are several options available to those who want an early out on their contract, though. There are now several services where you can essentially sell or trade your remaining contract for a small fee, freeing you from your shackles and giving someone else a potentially good deal on an existing contract. Here are some of those services:
Resellular: For $15, Resellular allows you to post your contract indefinitely. Users of the site can browser the contracts on offer, and once someone chooses to take yours on, you’re off the hook. If you’re just wanting to test the waters, posting your contract is free for the month of February.
Celltrade: Slightly more expensive than Resellular at $20, Celltrade operates in a similar fashion. Post your plan and people can browse to see if they want to take it over. One difference is that with Celltrade you do not pay up front and can post your contract profile for free to gauge interest before paying.
Cellswapper: Another similar service, Cellswapper offers two payment systems. A user can post for free and then pay $15 when someone takes over your contract, or a user can pay $10 up front, though at the risk of not having anyone take over the contract.
Beyond services such as these, there are a couple of other potential methods of getting around your contract without doing anything unethical. One is to set your account on hold, which is also sometimes referred to as a travel or vacation mode. Depending on your carrier, it can be possible to do this for several months, during which time you’ll usually pay something like $10/month, but either won’t be able to use your phone or only at very high cost. If you’re wanting to port your number, this is obviously not a great choice.
The last method is a bit of a technicality, but it can be possible to get out of your contract if your carrier changes their prices or terms of service in a way that affects you. For instance, Verizon recently changed their prices on receiving text messages, allowing some people to use that as grounds for early termination without the fee.
With all of these options to get out of a contract without any penalty, we encourage you to avoid schemes like faking your own death just to save a few bucks. These are just cell phones, after all.
Filed under: iPhone News
You may want to reference MY original article that was reposted from October 2006 in January:
http://fixyourthinking.com/2007/01/how-to-get-out-of-cell-phone-contract.html
It’s linked by a few dozen websites.
Also you may want to reference the original WikiHow which I helped create:
http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Get-out-of-a-Cellular-Service-Contract
Delivering this piece as original without any sources is very unethical.
Umm, Rus…checking the links it doesn’t look like there is anything that’s the same on both sites-certainly not enough to imply wholesale copying. Where do you mention the contract purchasing/trading sitesAnd certainly nothing in the linked articles even approaches proprietary info that hasn’t been around in one place or another over the years.
I see complete similarity and almost blatant copying. If nothing you could have mentioned a Wired article that I used as my source.
Where do you mention the contract purchasing/trading sites?
“Some companies such as Celltradeusa.com and Resellular.com match unhappy mobile customers with people who’d like to sign up - at a discount, of course. You’ll pay a $20 fee to sell your contract on the block.”
My article: Look for your provider to bury changes to Terms of Service with your bill.
The availability of infoprmation does not dictate whether it is proprietary. Either you are indicating by this statement that you did copy and chose not to cite ANY source or you post stories without any regard to pre existing information.
By your end statement it looks like you read the wikihow article and found some of the information objectionable (as I did with the various people revising it) and that’s why you offer ” … we encourage you to avoid schemes like faking your own death just to save a few bucks”.
I’m just saying, I don’t necessarily want credit by name, but I think you should offer your readers a more comprehensive look with the links I provided.