Cell Phone Empowerment Act Could Radically Decrease Fees

Enormous early termination fees, unannounced changes to your contract, and reams of mystery charges on your cell phone bill may become a thing of the past, thanks to the Cell Phone Empowerment Act, a bill just introduced to the Senate.

The bill, if enacted, would mandate that early termination fees be partially prorated and that cell phone carriers would not longer be able to tack extra fees onto your account aside from those mandated by various government agencies. You would also be able, under the act, to cancel your service when any changes were made to your contract, and all new customers would get a 30-day grace period to cancel, a cellular "lemon law" of sorts.

Naturally, the cell phone industry isn't too thrilled about all of this, portraying the business as filled with nothing but glowing praise for the services it provides and certainly not in need of such government oversight. The carriers point to one survey that says that only nine out of a million consumers file complaints about their cell phone contracts, which seems difficult to the point of outright impossibility to believe. (With such happy customers, it's bizarre that there's always a queue when I call customer service...)

It's still early in this bill's life cycle and it may indeed come to nothing, so don't get your hopes up. But it's a step in the right direction, in my mind. Now, if they can just do something about those dozen government-approved taxes, fees, and levies that take up an entire page of their own on the bill...

LINK: Cell freedom: bill would cut early termination fees, hidden charges