How to (Really) Get Out of your Contract and Switch to an iPhone

Back when the iPhone first appeared, lots of people wrote articles about ways to escape your existing phone contract with another carrier so you could switch to AT&T without paying early termination fees. These ranged from the morally questionable, like abusing free roaming until they fire you, to the absurd, like claiming to be dead. Other people suggested services that claim to help you sell the remainder of your contract to someone looking to get a bargain on one. I enjoyed the former and investigated the latter… but wasn’t successful with either one.

So, there I was. Thanks to a generous aunt, I found myself the enviable owner of an 8GB iPhone in the unenviable position of having 11 months left on my contract with T-Mobile and a $200 Early Termination Fee that I didn’t want to pay. What’s an honest guy to do? Thankfully, I found an answer… and as of yesterday, I am free of my contract, with no fees and a clear conscience. How did I do it? Read on to find out…

The answer turned out to be the internet. (It always is.) You see, many carriers offer a get-out-of-jail-free option called a “Transfer of Responsibility” (that’s what T-Mobile calls it; YMMV). The idea is that, since it costs so much to get a new customer, T-Mobile is willing to let me hand the rest of my contract over to someone else. That new person doesn’t have to commit to a new 2-year contract, I get out of the rest of mine, and they don’t lose an account… it’s a win-win-win for everyone. The catch was that I had to find the right person. This turned out to be harder than I thought, but not impossible.

I wrote a post on my local CraigsList explaining my predicament back on July 24, just over weeks ago. I outlined how taking over my contract was better than opening a new one and I offered my RAZR (which is nicer than the “free phone” T-Mobile offers) as an incentive. I posted the offer at about 10:00 PM and, the next morning, I had eight interested emails. Unfortunately, none of those people could qualify for an account with T-Mobile.

You see, in order to complete the transfer, the new party must pass the credit check… and many people who search online for deals on cell phones do not have the kind of credit the carrier trusts. But I persevered. In the end, I posted slightly different messages three times and sent an email out to my co-workers. As I said, it took about a month and a half, but I am now free and clear of that contract and I didn’t have to pay a dime of the termination fee. Just this morning, I sent the phone off to the new user… who lives halfway across the country!

So, if you’re interested in unloading your contract, give it a shot! If you offer your “old” phone, there’s an incentive (if not, you might have to offer some cash) for the new user and you and (s)he will end up helping each other out. Below is the text of my successful CraigsList post if you want to use it for a guide. If you try this out, post the results in the comments.

Take my cell phone contract and get a **free** RAZR!

I have a T-Mobile contract that I would like to get out of without paying the Early Termination Fee. T-Mobile says that if I can find someone to take the contract over, then I can move on with my life and you can enjoy the great service that they offer. Let me be clear: I LOVE my service and my phone and I have NO complaints about T-Mobile. But I need to switch carriers, so I find myself with a cell phone and contract I don’t need.

If you assume my contract, I will give you the phone bundle. It includes:

A new Motorola RAZR v3
Two wall chargers
An extra battery
Everything that came in the box
The contract includes:
The T-Mobile “Get More” plan (which they no longer offer)
$39.99/month
600 whenever minutes
Unlimited Nights and Weekend minutes
Additional minutes, if needed, cost $0.40
The plan DOES NOT include text messages (they cost ten or fifteen cents each and I don’t use enough to pay for a bundle)
The plan’s contract expires on July XX, 2008

You, of course, could switch this to whatever plan you wanted.

The process is as follows:

1. I create a new account with my new carrier and port my number over.
2. As that will cancel my service, I then re-activate my T-Mobile contract, giving the phone a new, random number.
3. You and I execute a “transfer of responsibility” which puts the phone, the contract and the new number in your name.
4. You can then change the number, keep it, port over another one, etc. It’s yours.
5. I go on my merry way, leaving you with the contract and the phone.

In short, I will give you my new RAZR in exchange for taking over my contract. You will need to contact T-Mobile and clear their credit check. Interested?

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