Termination Fees

Today's rant is gonna be short and sweet. Termination fees should be every bit as illegal as price gouging. Although for different reasons. Cell phone companies have been using them for years if you terminate there 1-3 year contracts early. The fees seem to have a national average between $150 & 250 per contract. The reason for these fees is to reduce customer turnover. It brings the companies some stability, however it also stagnates the market for lower income customers. They get locked in and don't want to take the hit from a large fee to change to a plan that will ultimately save them money in the long run with another company.

For the same reasons that monopolies are bad for the economy and consumers, termination fees are also slowing down progress. But instead of seeing them slowly die out as most of us would hope, they are instead starting to catch on in other industries. Check out this article where ISP's are now using them. You can find it here.

Unless you don't have a choice, I say boycott these ISP's. We already lost the battle with cellphone companies, but we don't have to lose the war.