Released: July 14, 2006

Transferring your cell phone contract

Source: By Aleksandra Todorova, SmartMoney.com

29-year-old Mark Girgis decided he’d had enough of T-Mobile’s dropped calls on his frequent business trips to upstate New York, Vermont and southern New Jersey. The problem: Dropping his contract seven months early would have cost him a $200 early-termination fee.

So when a co-worker told him about Celltradeusa.com, a web site that would help him find someone to take over his T-Mobile contract for a $19.99 registration fee, Girgis decided to give it a try. It paid off immediately. “I got emails the same day from people who wanted my phone,” Girgis says. Within days, a buyer from Delaware got approved by T-Mobile to take over the contract, the transfer was completed and Girgis promptly switched to another carrier.

Many folks don’t realize that they can drop their cell phone contract without paying a termination fee, which typically runs as much as $150 to $200 per line. All they have to do is find someone willing to take the contract over for its remaining term.

Granted, this may not be easy: Beyond your family and friends — who probably have contracts of their own to gripe about — who’s there to ask? That’s why a year ago Eric Wurtenberg and his brother launched Celltradeusa.com, which connects consumers who want to get rid of their contract with those looking to assume one. This way, sellers can drop their cell-phone carriers for a fraction of the penalty fee, while buyers can get a contract with a much shorter term than the now-standard 24 months, pay no activation fees and, in most cases, receive a free cell phone from the seller.

The service is free for the buyers, who can search ads posted by sellers based on criteria such as cellular company, contract length, monthly price or type of phone offered. The $19.99 fee that sellers pay is due only after they start receiving emails from interested buyers and in the case they want to access the sender’s contact information. Since it launched a year ago, about 75,000 users a month have visited the site, which typically sports at least 1,000 active “for sale” ads, according to Wurtenberg. (A recent search yielded 1,179 listings.)

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