Bill ensures good service for cell phone users

By Liz Stoever

With the many cell phone companies that exist today, it’s nearly impossible to decide which one offers the best service.

It can be even harder to sign a contract that binds you to that company, with no provision if service has gone bad. People are often stuck with either a bad company or paying a termination fee.

Since bad cell phone service can happen to nearly everyone who has signed a contract, it’s important to protect the interests of the consumer when producers fail to do so.

Consumer rights may be protected soon, now that the Illinois House has approved a cell phone lemon law bill.

If the bill becomes a law, cell phone users would be able to cancel a contract without any termination fees if problems with their phone persist three times.

This bill would also make it a requirement for cell phone companies to inform consumers of their rights in written documentation.

Illinois is the first state to attempt a bill against cell phone lemons.

Cell phone problems are nothing new to people who find cell phones to be almost vital. If problems do occur, they never go unnoticed.

Cell phone companies fear people will argue their way out of contracts without any major cell phone problems occurring. This bill simply ensures good customer service. If the customer receives good service, it’s unlikely they would even want to get rid of their contract.

While cell phone companies claim prices will only go up if the bill passes, with the large amounts of money people already spend on their cell phones, it is even more necessary that people are protected from losing all of that money to bad service. Just like cars, there should be laws protecting consumers from being taken advantage of.

Companies should be able to keep their side of the bargain without raising prices necessary to keep their customers.

It may seem unfair to punish the company that charges for calls, rather than the company that makes the phone.

However, when consumers want to switch products or brands for cell phones, they often have to change their subscription company, too.

While cell phone companies already offer warranty services for bad phones, it’s not only the phones that the company is responsible for when a consumer signs a contract. The company should be able to provide better service since problems with cell phones don’t just lie within the phones themselves.

Regardless of unintended consequences, this bill’s goal is to better serve consumers who can get taken advantage of too easily when signing contracts.

Ultimately, this bill will be better for both consumers and competition, and would ideally be enough to make cell phone companies improve their service and products.