by Zach Bigalke

Created on: April 09, 2008

Cellular service providers are notorious for linking their customers into long-term contracts. The debate over the fairness of these contracts is charged with the anger of many locked into their service. Yet at the core of the question is this: do those who sign up for long-term cellular contracts have the right to forego entering into these service agreements? If a contract is legal, do the parties involved in the contract have the right to enforce fulfillment of that contract? And, finally, under what circumstances would it not be fair for cellular service providers to hold customers to their contract?

These facts are simple to understand and help us better break down this topic:

1. People increasingly feel, in our digitized and modernized society, that there is an inherent need for everyone to have a cellular phone. While human beings have existed for millennia without the ability to call their friend thousands of miles across the globe while driving a ton of highly-accelerated metal down a hard asphalt highway, it has for some reason come to be viewed as one of life's necessities. This is not the case; yet people continue to sign long-term contracts simply to walk out of the store with the hottest new technology. Our society has become driven by fads rather than a proper analysis of consequences...

2. The law, as is currently written, is geared toward signatories to a contract upholding their ends of the bargain. Each side reserves the right to remain vigilant in ensuring the other meets their requirements. But, when in question, the law will inevitably favor the right of the free market - the cellular service providers - to do whatever the customer will agree to allow...

3. What is a contract BUT a tacit understanding that each party will be held to the terms of the agreement? Should one party be allowed to hold another party to the terms of a mutual and legally-binding agreement?

In this light, I feel it is easy to understand that customers have the right to walk out of the store when they do not feel like signing that long-term contract. People do not REQUIRE the latest technology, at the ready in their pockets, to distract them from the real world going on all around. When an individual makes the conscious choice to sign a contract, he or she is agreeing to abide by the terms set forth within... and if that individual is in breach of those terms, it is the right of the other party in the contract - in this case the Verizons and T-Mobiles and Nextels and AT&Ts of the cellular service world - to hold the contracting party to their terms of agreement...

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