T-Mobile USA subscribers get an out: ETF can be waived over increased texting fee

T-Mobile USA Inc. has confirmed that its recently announced rate increase on pay-per-use text messages will be regarded as a material change to the terms and conditions of its subscribers’ contracts, hence allowing them to cancel service without incurring early termination fees.
“Customers may terminate their contract without incurring an ETF soon after receiving their notification of the pricing change,” T-Mobile USA spokesman Peter Dobrow wrote in an e-mail to RCR Wireless News.
T-Mobile USA didn’t elaborate on whether all of its customers would be allowed to cancel without paying the fee. Customers who pay for text messages in bundles-and therefore don’t pay the per-message fee-as well as those who don’t use text messaging at all won’t be affected by the change and therefore may not be able to claim it as a change to their service.
While the four largest U.S. carriers have all increased their pay-per-use rate for text messages from 10 cents to 15 cents over the past few months, each claims the changes affect customer contracts and ETFs differently.
AT&T Inc.’s Cingular Wireless said it was simply a pricing change for an optional service and that subscribers would still have to pay the fee to cancel their contract. However, when Sprint Nextel Corp. made the change, the carrier said it would only allow affected customers to cancel their service without paying the carrier’s ETF; customers on text-messaging plans were not able to get out of their contracts scot-free.