Use Early upgrade to get out of contract?

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Posleen Killer

New member
I have been an AT&T subscriber for years and we have upgraded our phones a few times through AT&T. I have an early upgrade period in October that will be for both of the lines I have on my account. In feb. our contract ends. Could I use the Early upgrade to sign a new 2 year contract then use the 30 day concellation period to cancel my contract with no ETF fee?
 
If you cancel an upgrade, your old contract is reinstated to expire at its regular time. It might be cheaper to reduce your monthly recurring charges to the lowest value for the four months remaining on your contracts than to pay about $280 in total Early Termination Fees on the two lines.
 
My ETF on each line is only 175 and at the end of this month I will be though 18 months of the contract so my ETF for both lines should only be about $170. I am going to hang back and wait though. I really want to see what happens with the Epic 4g on Sprint. I wouldn't mind sticking with AT&T if they hadn't gone crappy on the smartphone data. Plus I live in a 4G city so that would be nice as well. Thanks for your input, I figured it was crafty and AT&T would figure some way around it :-p
 
I must have calculated from 2010 instead of 2009. My figures should have been about $120 less. If you cancel your contract, you would have the final bill, ETFs, cost of new phones with the new carrier plus the monthly bills for the new carrier. What is so intolerable that you cannot wait four months and eliminate having to pay the ETFs? You would not be able to sell the new phones to get money back. If you cancel a contract in fewer than thirty days, you have to return the phones. After thirty days you would have to pay the new ETFs.
 
Well your costs are a bit exagerated. Yes there would be the ETF fee, the charge for service is correct but only for the time I acctually used. If I cancel 3 days into a billing cycle I am only charged for those three days, not the entire billing cycle. If I was to upgrade my phone through AT&T then I would have to pay for handsets then as well. Really the only added cost is the ETF.

I am a heavy data user, even with my dumbphone I go through about 4gb a month from streaming music. It sounds like a lot because it is. I stream from the time I go to work until I am done at the gym and heading home. I want to make the move to a smart phone and the Samsung Captivate looks fantastic, but if I stick with AT&T I have to move into the crappy data plans they have for smartphones. More companies looks to be moving to the tiered plans now, so the faster I can get grandfathered into an unlimited plan the better. By the time my contract acctually expires the major networks may have all moved away from unlimited data. It is a gamble but if I loose the window it may be a gamble that costs me more than the 170 etf fee that I would face in october.
 
You pay for the full month for voice service regardless of when you cancel. The charges for data and messages are prorated.
From the AT&T Terms and Conditions for Voice Service:
 
If you are going to transfer your number to another carrier, you cannot cancel your service with the present carrier. The new carrier takes care of the cancellation of service with your old carrier. If you cancel service with your old carrier first, you will lose your number. Then you would get a new number with your new carrier. Go to your new carrier when you intend to transfer your number. The date the number transfer occurs will be the date that the service with old carrier is automatically cancelled.
 
Everything has probably been answered because of how long this thread is, but I'll rap everything up in one easy to read post.

As a wireless customer, you have four important dates to know. 1) You're bill cycle date, 2) you're contract end date, 3) your upgrade eligibility date, 4) your early upgrade eligibility date. There may not be a difference between 3 or 4, depending on your plan. Some carriers allow you to upgrade (without a special discount) and just pay 2 year pricing at one year. That would be number 4.

Upgrading ADVANCES your contract a FULL two years (or one if you sign a one-year). Upgrading does not effect your previous contract that is in place, therefore, if you upgrade and then cancel, you will still be held accountable for any ETF up until your original contract end date. You may actually even experience advanced early termination fees if AT&T chooses to go based off of the new contract date.

You will be forced to pay for a FULL last month of service. This is usually because most wireless carriers do not shut off your service the day you request it. I'd be willing to say almost every carrier waits until the last day of your bill cycle to turn off your service, this is always a policy at Verizon...not quite sure about AT&T.

In order to port your number to another wireless carrier, you must keep your AT&T line of service on and you must be current on your AT&T bill with no late payments within the last 60 days. The number is property of AT&T until they release the number to whomever you port to, therefore, they will get what they want before allowing the port. Porting is also the ONLY way to get your service to end immediately. They WILL prorate your voice and data usage if you port out.
 
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