Telephone

The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs announced yesterday that it settled a lawsuit it had filed against Sprint and Nextel over misleading advertising of cellphone plans. Consumer Affairs alleged that Sprint used fine print footnotes to change the meaning of the primary claims being made by the advertisement.  In particular, while Sprint boldly advertised “All incoming calls are free”, the mouse print indicated there was either a 10 cent per minute charge or a monthly fee associated with the service.  With respect to another claim, “Nationwide long distance included. Every minute, every day,” the fine print indicated certain circumstances when a 25 cent per minute long distance charge would apply.

Sprint Nextel will pay the city $295,000 to settle the case.  In its press release, Sprint denied breaking any NYC advertising laws and said, “DCA never contested the truthfulness of the Sprint or Nextel advertisements…”

Hmm.  It looks like Sprint’s press release may have been missing an asterisk and footnote about how it defines the word “truthfulness”.

On their website (as of 3/20/06) Cingular says “With Cingular Nation, never pay domestic long distance or roaming charges!”  That means, with respect to roaming, if your call is routed over another company’s system, you will not be charged extra.

However, after clicking a link to the plan’s fine print terms, one learns more.

*MOUSE PRINT: “Cingular reserves the right to terminate your service if less than 50% of your usage over three consecutive billing cycles is on Cingular-owned systems.”

Translation: If you roam too much, Cingular can turn off your service.