In case you’re excited that the iPhone is finally on Verizon and it’s essential to switch, that excitement was probably short lived once you realized the fee that switching involves. Here’s the way to make the switch totally free to you.

Determining the Cost

If you’ve gotten an iPhone on AT&T and it’s not fairly old, you’re probably going to ought to pay an early termination fee (ETF) to get out of your contract. This fee could be as much as $325. Fortunately, whenever you’ve had your iPhone 4 for even a month, that fee isn’t quite that bad. It goes down $10 a month. When you’d want to work out the exact cost of your ETF, the Consumerist points out a handy iPhone ETF calculator (courtesy of Wolfram Alpha ). In case you’ve had your iPhone for under a month, chances are high that you may probably return it. That is a bit of a nusiance, since you’ll must work out some other phone to take advantage of if you wait until Verizon actually releases the iPhone on February 10th, but it surely’s better than getting stuck with a several hundred dollar ETF. Whatever your situation is perhaps, when you’ve determined the price of leaving AT&T we will move on to avoiding it entirely, or at the least partly (reckoning on your situation and level of ambition).

Making the Switch

Making the switch for gratis is going to take slightly work because you not only have an early termination fee (ETF) to handle, but the pricetag of a new phone in addition. Nonetheless, a mix of slightly Craigslist (or selling online regularly) and artistic negotiating should get the job done.

Sell Your AT&T iPhone 4

Presumably you won’t need your AT&T iPhone 4 in case you’re making the switch to Verizon. It won’t work on Verizon because the technology is different and you’re going to ought to buy a new phone anyhow. We’ve taken an in depth inspect tips on how to upgrade to the recent iPhone free of charge , and those principles still greatly apply to this case. You’re not likely upgrading your phone, but you might be upgrading your network. In case you have an iPhone 4, you furthermore mght have the benefit of selling the current model. The resale value of an iPhone drops significantly when a more recent model is released, but the iPhone 4 you presently own is likely worth enough to cover both the ETF and the fee of your new phone (or as a minimum come close). Why? Because your iPhone is contract-free. When you really need to up the resale value, you may also jailbreak and unlock the phone. Most people pay extra for this service because they don’t understand how to do it themselves (or just don’t feel comfortable trying). While the basis of promoting your iPhone on craigslist (or through other online classifieds) is pretty straightforward, getting the proper price takes a bit of work and patience. For the entire run-down, you’ll want to read our guide on upgrading to the most recent iPhone at no cost .

Circumventing the Early Termination Fee

While you buy your phone hardware, you’re probably aware that you just’re getting a coupon at a price: you’re tied, via contract, to the carrier for a specific amount of time (generally two years). It is a legally-binding contract, and carriers currently have the correct to charge you a fee if you would like out early. This shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s owned a cellphone in their lifetime, but you could not take note of how much your ETF actually is. As mentioned earlier, either call AT&T and learn how much it’s going to cost to kill your contract or use this iPhone ETF calculator for a quicker answer. That’s the straightforward part. Getting out of your obligation to complete your contract or pay an early termination fee is where it gets tough.

Negotiate Your Way Out

Of your entire ways you may get out of your fee, this is often my least favorite. You did sign a contract and you did comply with finish it, so you’re basically cheating AT&T by looking to get out of it for free of charge. That said, the explanation so many have wanted to exchange to Verizon is because, for plenty of, AT&T’s network performs horribly for them. In case you’re not getting the service you’re paying (likely) upwards of $100 per 30 days for, you’re getting screwed. Negotiating your way out of your contract can take the time and it could be stressful, so whenever you’re not ready for varied calls to customer support and logging every dropped call you get from today forward, it’s not for you.

If you must take this ethically questionable route and complain your way out of your ETF, here’s what you want to do:

Log every dropped call for a higher week. It shouldn’t be hard to get numerous them, but try making calls in areas where you know you’ll lose service. In the event you can manage about 20 a day, that’s a number of dropped calls. On a normal time out in L. a., I drop 8-10 calls. Use your phone more and you won’t have any problems hitting 20 pretty quickly. Try this for every week.
Upon getting your data, file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau .
Complain to AT&T. They won’t do anything, so log some more dropped calls and complain again. After they do nothing, let them know you’re filing reports (in spite of the fact that you already have). If they provide to send you a free femtocell device to improve your signal, know that’s only for a single location and refuse it on the premise that your calls drop just as frequently outside of your property. Let them know you will have out of your contract because your service has been so terrible, especially with the most recent iPhone. If they won’t allow you to out of the contract, you’re going to want to call back again.
In your last complaint call, you’re going to want to head all out. Get to a supervisor or have the call escalated as quickly as one can, because you’re going to have a troublesome time getting out of your contract with just an ordinary customer service representative. You mostly need to be as kind as possible during this process, by the manner, or nobody should want to enable you to. It’s best to make your situation seem tragic. You have to engender sympathy, not anger. When you’re with the supervisor it’s good to let them know you’ve filed reports and go over the entire dropped calls with him/her. Ask nicely to be let loose your contract so you could try other carriers. Once you can’t get out of the ETF at this point, it’s not really going to happen. While you’re a bit emotionally manipulative (that is another place this technique gets ethically questionable), however, you shouldn’t have any problem talking your way out of the cost.

Note: it also helps to be an undesirable customer. When you still have unlimited data on AT&T, use it. Download huge amounts of knowledge in your iPhone. This can be far easier in case you jailbreak it, since you may remove the 20MB cap and just let it download endlessly, but AT&T should want to remove you in the event you’re hogging their bandwidth. An identical goes for phone calls, to a lesser extent, so make use of those unlimited minutes while you’ve got ‘em.

Use Contract Changes as a means Out

Cellular providers change their contracts for all time and you’re just about forced to conform to the most recent terms. Whenever this happens, they’re usually obligated to assist you to break the contract within 30 days of receiving and ” agreeing” to the brand new terms. Keep an eye fixed out for these contract updates and check the newest contract you’ve got. In case you’ve received it in not up to 30 days (this may occasionally vary, but that’s the standard timeframe), canceling your cellular contract fee-free could be as simple as making a handy guide a rough phone call.

Give Your Contract to Some other person

Whenever you can’t get out of your contract in your own, you may always transfer financial responsibility to someone else. In case you know someone who will take over your contract, that’s an attractive quick strategy to solve the issue. In case you don’t, you should use a domain like CellSwapper or Cell Plan Depot to search out someone. Generally this isn’t as simple as just giving your contract to someone else-they’re probably going to wish something for taking up the load. Nonetheless, it’s often cheaper than paying your ETF and you will give you the chance of trading with someone who has a Verizon contract.

Collectively, all of this should earn you a price-free switch to a hopefully better carrier. Got any good tips of your personal? Let’s hear ‘em inside the comments!


You may contact Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com. You can too follow him on Twitter and Facebook .

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This post is tagged: ambition, excitement, iphone 4, pricetag, termination fee