Roaming Hack has created a blog for the sole purpose of providing information to the masses on how to escape cell phone contracts. He uses Cingular as an example. In the comments (34 at the time I checked), others were giving information on Sprint and other companies.
Dr. Mercola thought enough of this site to post about it this morning. What does Roaming Hack advise? Roaming writes:
"There is a little known secret about your cell phone contract that your wireless service provider doesn't want you to know....You can cancel whenever you want without paying a termination fee....
"There is a very simple way to do this. Become unprofitable. If you're paying them $50 a month but costing them a few hundred - They most definitely will cancel you."
His secret? Create high roaming costs to the company during free weekend minutes, forcing the company to pay another company for your roaming time.
Does this work? The Hack says it does. Dr. Mercola gives it a vote of confidence. Those commenting point out that different companies work different ways, and some provide the contract language for those companies.
Of course, getting a phone on a pay-as-you-go plan saves you from a contract, and you don't have this problem. At $15.00/month minimum, this is probably the simplest way to go: maybe you don't have oodles of cell phone minutes here, but you don't need them. Not really.