I agree.
I should mention that my data plan plus world roaming was 145 dollars a month for the past year and a half with AT&T. Since I no longer need that, I wanted to drop both (and just pay the 69.99 a month (plus about 20 in taxes).
All carriers don't do it on all plans (or even all postpaid plans).
T-Mobile has two sets of plans, "Even More Plus" (no contract, no phone subsidy) and "Even More" (2-year contract, $20/month more, phone subsidy of up to about $250). Maybe this will start a trend among carriers.
Don't like contracts and ETFs? Try buying a used smartphone on eBay or Craigslist (or you can buy the phone from T-Mobile at an unsubsidized price) and get one of the Even More Plus plans. (Of course, it needs to be compatible (GSM and on the T-Mobile frequency bands))
I sure hope so!
It's wrong to charge customers the jacked-up "hardware subsidy recovery" price for a service plan if that customer paid full price for his phone and never actually received a hardware subsidy.
Just to report back, the cell phone is working just fine. Of course, if AT&T wanted to, they could just shut down the service to my cellphone but they apparently don't want to.
If they did, I would just switch the SIM card to one of the other unlocked cell phones I have lying around so it wouldn't be a problem.
I don't think AT&T uses the IMEI number for anything at all (except maybe warranty repairs which I have no intention of doing).
On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 04:28:01 +0000 (UTC), Elmo wrote in :
IMEI is used in the blocking database of lost and stolen phones.
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