Bill seeks to help cell phone users

Hell hath no fury like a state legislator whose cell phone has eaten her calendar. That’s what happened to Sen. Pamela Gorman. And the Anthem Republican said repeated efforts to get that and other problems resolved proved fruitless.

And that, she said, left her with two options: live with what she said was substandard equipment and service or move to another cell phone provider. But that would result in an early termination fee, which Gorman said effectively traps the customer.

So Gorman is pushing legislation that would mean a customer of any cell phone company violating any terms of the contract is free to walk away without a penalty.

More to the point, she said the phone company can’t report that walkaway — or the failure to pay the termination fee — to a credit agency.

The measure has picked up opposition from cellular companies.

Michael Bagley, a spokesman for Verizon — the company with which Gorman has her cell service — said the legislation is overly broad. He said customers could simply write a letter and walk away, using any claim that the company did not live up to its obligations.

And Susan Bitter Smith, who lobbies for the Arizona Competitive Telecommunications Association, the league of cell phone companies, called the legislation unnecessary. She said consumers already have legal rights when cellular providers don’t live up to the terms of the deal.

But Gorman said her own experience proves otherwise.

She said she purposely purchased a phone with a calendar that would synchronize with the one on her computer. Not only were there problems linking the two, Gorman said, but the Verizon phone actually deleted everything in her calendar.

“They told me they’re not responsible for that,” she said.

She got a different model phone which she said “has all kinds of problems,” something Gorman said Verizon’s own tech support people acknowledged. And the only options she was given was to buy another phone at her expense or cancel the contract and be charged an early termination fee.

Bagley said he can’t talk about Gorman’s specific problems. But he said Verizon does work with customers and will sometimes let them out of a contract.

“We have tremendous customer loyalty,” Bagley said.

Verizon lobbyist Mike Gardner said there already are various laws that govern contractual relationships. He said the Legislature should not be setting up special rules that govern only contracts between cellular phone companies and their customers.

Gorman, however, said those laws don’t really work in this kind of situation.

“You would have to hire a lawyer that could take on the big-pay lawyers at the wireless industry to get out of a contract that maybe only costs you $150 to get out of right now,” she said. “There would be no cost advantage for you to hire a lawyer to fight this issue.”

But the bigger issue for many customers, Gorman said, is when a customer refuses to continue service based on a dispute, the company reports the failure to pay to a credit bureau.

“(People) do whatever they have to just to get away from the company because they don’t want it on their credit, they don’t want it to affect their ability to get insurance and mortgages and rent apartments and things in the future,’’ she said. “So they just pay it (the early termination fee) and walk away.’’