Number portability fees
I received my final bill from Optus the other day and in amongst all the crap they send is a notice that from the 15th April 2004 an $8 fee will apply “to any customer who switches their mobile phone number from Optus to another carrier or service provider”. That’s pretty low. The number portability legislation came in to encourage competition between mobile phone providers - effectively breaking down some of the barriers to switching. Now admittedly an $8 fee probably isn’t going to stop someone from switching but it’s still pretty low I think.
Fortunately, I changed providers before that fee came in.
February 29th, 2004 at 9:21 pm
Sheesh… I didn’t think that was allowed…!
March 23rd, 2004 at 11:59 pm
Here is my two cents. My 2-year contract with AT&T wireless ended on Feb. 20th, 2004. I called them on 2/20/04 to cancel my service but informed them that I wanted to port my number to Cingular (who is buying them out but that is beside the point). They informed me that because I am porting my number, they could NOT cancel my service until they received the request from Cingular for my number. I stated that was fine, receiving no additional information from them about it. I had already placed my order with Cingular and they said it would be a few days. I figured I would be charged a prorated rate from AT&T for the few days of the billing cycle that I still had my old phone. WRONG! They are charging me $4.95 per DAY! for an early cancel during monthly billing cycle fee, plus the days that I still had service. So my service got cancelled on 2/26/04 - but my final bill is $150.08 for 6 days of service - which I never made a call during that timeframe. My normal monthly charges were $39.95 a month. I would have been happy if they had just charged me that, but they tack on these fees, punishing customers for switching under this new law to cover their costs in testing and implementing the new technology. I am writing the Attorney General about this. I am so glad they are getting bought out. They were a horrible company. My phone’s screen quit working about a year ago so I wanted a new phone, but they informed me that first I had to pay $300 for the absolute cheapest phone they had AND THEN my contract would also be renewed for another two years. Or pay $275 to terminate early. They had me in a bind so I had to use my junk phone for another year never being able to go through my contacts or see who was calling me. And I was roaming when I was at work, so I could never even use it at work either. AT&T - f*** off!
February 11th, 2005 at 10:20 am
Discount Cellnet Cellular in [Florida, California] is charging me $135.00 for a porting fee from their service to another. The fee is supposed to be “reasonable” and it may be no higher than the “cost” of providing the portability, according to the FCC regs. I will be fighting this fee, it goes without saying.
January 26th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
On 12/26/05 I contacted Discount Cellnet to upgrade my cellphone and was advised my contract had expired on 12/20/05 and they would send me literature on the new package. When I received my next statement on 12/30/06 they had charged me for roaming and long distance calls for the month of October. ( I have had their Verizon Nationwide service since December of 2003 and had not ever been charged for this service.) After several calls to their customer service this was supposed to be taken care of. However during this time I never received the literature for the new phone package I had requested and I made several calls to their customer service regarding this and I have still not received anything from them.
On 01/23/06 I received a statement for November and there was a $19.00 late fee and credit for the overcharges from the month before and I contacted them again and was advised they would remove this fee as it was their new billing process that had caused this problem.
I have been with this business since 2000 and had upgraded one phone in 12/03 and since I was told my contract was up on 12/20/05 I decided to switch to another cellphone provider but I received a call from Discount Cellnet saying I had a automatic 2 year roll over in my contact and I would have to pay a 500.00 early termination fee for each phone, a $100.00 port fee for each phone, and a $35.00 disconnect fee for each phone Total: $1270.00.
I have requested a copy of my signed contract but they will not respond back. Does anybody have any suggestion as to my next step.
February 15th, 2006 at 10:46 am
I hope my disconnect from cellnet is not that painful. I have been with Cellnet forever (about 1995ish) and have never had another company. I will after this contract is up I think 3/06. That is what they told me last fall when I had billing “issues”. I never knew that my local Cellnet became this Discount Cellular. I no longer have a local place to walk into with questions. I hate leaving a message for customer service - I want them to answer … I would rather be on hold for a short while. We will see how expensive the dropping of their service will be. I think it stinks to be charged $35 for not continuing service with a new contract. We will see.
July 19th, 2006 at 7:40 am
RE: Discount Cellular and Cellnet:
I finally (at least I think) I am done with them. We wanted to close out our service with them in June of 2006. I told their customer service people that my contract expired at the end of May. They told me that I was on automatic renewal and that my contract had renewed in February 2006. I faxed then a copy of my contract showing the dates my service started. At that point they told me that I could cancel my contract at the end of June. The same day my cell phone was turned off. I called back and was told that “It is standard industry practice to bill people for their last month even if they were not receiving service.” I was mad. I told them that no one would pay for a moth of service when nothing was received. They again told me that this was standard practice in the cellular inductry. i told them it was not and I had never heard of this kind of treatment before! I asked for someone to talk to beside the customer service reps. I was told that there was no one and that they were the final word. I kept pushing back and demanded to talk with someone in a position of authority. I was finally given an email address for some boss in Miami.
After my complaint to him I received an nice email from the customer service rep stating that my charges for the month of June would be removed and all I would owe is the $35 disconnect fee.
I still wasn’t happy with that but figured it was better that what they wanted and I considered it cheep for getting out of their racket.
When my July bill arrived, I figured it would be a closing statement, I was shocked to find that I had late charges and was still billed for the June service that I never received.
Again I called them and was told that the charges have finally been removed from my account. Well we will see what comes on August.
Ken, I would file a compaint with my state PUC and if you have a consumer rights reporter for a TV or radio station in your city I would contact them as well.
Another contact is http://troubleshooter.com/. Tom Martino is great consumers right reporter and has quite an organization. He can get results.
Good Luck,
Bill
September 17th, 2006 at 3:26 am
I have been having the same problems with Discount Cellnet for 3 years now. When my contract was up in 2003 I called to cancel and they told me some garbage about a $35 disconnect fee and that they had to bill for the last month, even though I wasn’t using the service (standard practice). I insisted I would not pay a disconnect fee (which is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard) nor would I pay the fee for a month I wasn’t even using. I asked them to send me a copy of my contract showing me where I signed and agreed to pay a disconnect fee when I cancelled there service. The girl told me she would get it in the mail. I, of course, have all of my paperwork from when I signed up and there is absolutely nothing about a disconnect fee nor paying for additional months. Here I am 3 years later, still with no correspondence from this terrible company, and I have called just about every month for 3 years and cannot get anyone to return my calls. It’s rather mysterious to me that there is never a customer service rep available and that you just have to leave your name and #. I continue to receive monthly bills from these morons and they continue to charge a $19.00 late fee & $2.73 in taxes each month. The only phone # I have to the company is for the one in California (who bought out Cellnet that was in Cleveland Ohio). The phone # I have is 800-611-9455. Any ideas on how to get this resolved? I refuse to pay for something I didn’t agree to and don’t see how it’s legal that this company gets away with this.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Uh oh, you people are scaring me. We just changed from Discount Cellnet and tried to port the phone numbers. They were generous enough to try to charge $100 per line for their service. We were too kind to take advantage of their generous offer and went to new phone numbers (we’re old fogies; there weren’t 8 people who even knew our old cell phone numbers).
We sent them a fax cancelling our service. Haven’t heard back yet. I have my signed contract from Cellnet in Cleveland from 2000 or so. I certainly feel no moral obligation to bend over the table; I can’t imagine there is any sort of legal obligation, either.
Naturally their business is shrinking fast as we all stream to the major corporations. What have they got to lose? No doubt a lot of people roll over and pay them their outrageous fees.
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:20 am
I have been with Discount cellnet since 2000 and have nothing but problems. At one point I upgraded my cell phone and received a new flip phone. It worked for about 30 days and then went dead. I talked to one of their customer service reps (a very nice guy named Naim) and he told me he would send me a new one at no charge and I should send the defective phone back in the prepaid DHL envelope. 2 months later I received a bill for $99.00 for the replacement phone. When I attempted to contact their customer service department I got a lot of nasty attitude and threats. When I attempted to contact Naim - surprise- he didn’t work there anymore. I took 4 months of argument with these people, a complaint to the Ohio Attorney generals office and a letter from a local attorney to get them to back off.
Today I received a bill which was about $75.00 too much because they had somehow managed to bill me on my old calling plan based on 200 free minutes. This problem was fixed rather quickly but it makes me wonder what level of business competence I am dealing with. I have been on my new plan for over a year. These kinds of things should not happen unless this company’s management is hopelessly incompetent or purposely negligent in their billing practices.
By the way the complaint file at the Ohio attorneys General office on this company is large. My advice to anyone considering an account with them is to look elsewhere.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:56 am
I paid Discount Cellular (Discount/Cellnet) a monthly fee ever since March, 1997. When I tried to get a new phone from them with no luck, I asked them to cancel my service. They advised that it automatically renewed and would not expire until March, 2007. As early as May, 2006, I began writing them notices of my intent to cancel at the end of March. I wrote them again in December 2006,in January, 2007, and on my statements in February, and March, 2007. Not once did they bother to answer my letters. I wrote in April after I received another outrageous bill where they not only added charges, but increased the monthly payment. When I received a bill in May, I called this pathetic company and was treated rudely, advising that they were billing me through June, that they were charging a discount fee, etc. When I said I would report them to consumer agencies if they didn’t stop it, the guy told me to do what I had to do. He refused to let me speak to anyone else and refused to giv eme his name.
I am now being threatened by that company to report me to all three major credit agencies. They are unbelievable!
I cannot bring myself to pay this extortion. Any suggestions anyone?