fee

After my rant last week on T-Mobile's upgrade fee, I check with the other major carriers to see if they subjected their long-time customers to the same thing. Though T-Mobile isn't alone in charging $18, other carriers may apply it under different circumstances.

AT&T: AT&T also charges an upgrade fee for long-time customers. This is true even if the customer is out of contract and is singing a new one with a higher monthly cost.

Sprint: As some readers pointed out on my previous blog, Sprint also charges customers off contract to upgrade from … Read more

Simple, powerful, easy to use--these assets go in the credit column for this app. This home-accounting package will help you realize your desire to reign in your spending practices to make sure outgo doesn't outweigh income.

Millionaire 2020 launches a simple tabbed interface--plain but functional--with a row of buttons. A robust Help feature provides details on how to get the most from the app, but a first-time user can determine how to use this software just by looking at the interface. This app performed very well during our tests. We liked the simplicity it provided for entering recurring items, … Read more

Despite what you might think, I don't believe all cell phone carriers are evil. Like any big faceless corporation, they're not always going to get it right, but I'm confident that carrier execs don't just plot to screw the customer.

Yet, every so often something happens to shake that confidence. On Sunday, I accompanied a friend to the main T-Mobile store in San Francisco. He's been waiting for weeks to finally ditch his clunker Nokia 6133 and upgrade to the MyTouch 3G. As a five-year T-Mobile customer who had been off contract for three years, … Read more

Try as I might, I can't get that worked up about carrier exclusivity. If a cell phone carrier and a manufacturer want to pair up and offer a handset for a certain period, I'm not going to oppose it purely on principle. Granted, such deals may not be fair to absolutely everyone, but I'd argue that there are much bigger problems with how the U.S. wireless industry operates.

Yet, a few U.S. Senators don't appear to agree. On July 7, a few weeks after a Senate committee grilled national carrier reps on device exclusivity, Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) wrote letters to both the federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department's antitrust division asking the agencies to investigate the issue and suggest possible regulatory proposals.

"The practice of large cell phone companies gaining exclusive deals to the most in-demand cell phones is a serious barrier to competition," Kohl wrote. "Consumers are unlikely to obtain cell phone service from companies if they cannot obtain desired handsets."

I'm no carrier lackey, but I find it fascinating that Congress is just now noticing that carrier exclusivity exists. The practice, which is hardly unique to the United States, has been around for a long time. So from where is the sudden interest coming?

… Read more

Buying airfare online continues to get cheaper.

Web travel sites Orbitz and Travelocity have followed Expedia in forgoing booking fees they had charged for domestic and international flights.

On Monday, Orbitz announced that it had permanently done away with the fees, which range from $7 to $12, and Travelocity said it would continue to waive the fees.

The slumping economy has forced vacationers and business travelers to stick closer to home this year. Online travel services are reducing prices in the hope that they can make up the lost revenue from a fee reduction in volume, according to a report … Read more

Class action suits against carrier early termination fees (ETFs) are nothing new, but now it appears one case may come to an end.

Though it has yet to be approved by the court, T-Mobile has proposed a settlement in an $11.5 million class action suit filed in August 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The suit alleges that T-Mobile broke federal and state laws when charging the ETFs.

The settlement would cover T-Mobile subscribers who were charged a flat-rate ETF from July 23, 1999 to February 19, 2009, or those whose service … Read more

It's been almost a year since a judge in Alameda County, Calif., ruled that Sprint Nextel's early-termination fees are illegal, and yet Sprint and every other major U.S. wireless operator still charges customers a fee for canceling their services before a contract expires.

So what gives? Why are these pesky early-termination fees still around if they are against the law?

That's a good question and one that many readers have asked me over the past year. Because I get so many questions about these fees, I decided to put together this FAQ to help people understand … Read more

As fast-growing Facebook closes in on MySpace in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors later this year, it's burning through millions of dollars a month (some claim it's as high as $20 million), with no magic levers to reverse the trend in the short term.

In November 2007, when Facebook took a $240 million stake from Microsoft, the investment was at a $15 billion valuation. Now it's down to $4 billion and probably less. As Caroline McCarthy reported a few days ago, rumor has it that "one potential investor submitted a term sheet for … Read more

In not-so-shocking news, iLounge is reporting that third-party headphones and headphone adapters for the new buttonless iPod Shuffle will require an Apple-licensed authentication chip.

This doesn't come as any great surprise to us because exacting licensing revenue from iPod accessory makers has become a brilliant way for Apple to add to the company's bottom line. But that "Apple tax," so to speak, does get passed on to consumers, and iLounge and others are now assuming that Apple headphone adapters will cost a minimum of $19 and possibly as much as $29. The handful of VoiceOver-compatible headphones … Read more