What ticks me off is you pay for 950 minutes a month (59.99-Verizon) but you only use 500 (most months); then you LOSE the 450 minutes you paid for.  I think you should get a credit for the next month and see how everything washes out by the end of your contract.  It gets mundane on how the public continues to get 'screwed'.

Verizon is a rip-off!  Plain and simple.  The 2 year contract is nothing but blackmail!

AT&T's service is highway robbery. They should be ashamed of themselves. No wonder this country is going down hill -- the greed of large corporations is just out of control.

AT&T service is way over priced. I am switching to Sprint in Dec when my current contract expires because Sprint offers package deals. I will be paying a little less than I pay now with AT&T but I will have more features on my phones since Sprint offers package family plans.

They are off the chart in excessive charges; and then they prove their greed by those outlandish and questionable fees. I can get sattelite internet outside the US for under $25.00 a month. My combined verizon fios service is the worst i have experienced. To prove my point, i have made over 25 calls and they have replaced the same set top box 3 times and the problem still remains. I've been subscribed to the service for a little over 18 months. i cannot wait to opt out without penalty.

We have two phones through Sprint. The plan we have cost just over $100 a month after all the fees and taxes are tacked on and for that amount of money we just do not get the service we need. I hate that we have so few "plan" options available to us. In order to get enough texts for both of us to use(this is our main form of communication with friends and family), we had to go with the higher plan. We never even come close to using all of our minutes, yet we cannot downgrade to the cheaper plan or we would go over on our texting every month. Since we are charged 25 cents per text over our allotment, that would add up really quickly. Now mind you, we have no internet service available on our phones, no special ringtones or games and such, and yet we are still paying about $100 per month. I call that just ridiculous. I have looked around at pay as you go providers, but they don't have anything that would work for us (most still focus on talk minutes instead of texting) and their prices aren't much better after I add in the texting feature that is really the focus of our needs.

Beyond all of that though is the frustration that I am charged for every incoming call that isn't from a Sprint customer and every text no matter who they are from. That just doesn't make sense to me. Why am I paying for Sprint to send me a text about their latest products? Why am I paying for my parents to call me when they already pay their phone bill to allow them to make the call?

The cellular community is full of crap if they say that we get some of the best per minute rates in the world. There needs to be a la cart pricing or build your own package deals available at every cellular provider so we, the customer, can get exactly what we need/want without all the extra expense of the stuff we don't want that is bundled in their "packages".

People yell about not wanting a socialist society, but phone companies, health insurers and financial institutions prove that some businesses must be kept on a short leash, and the government has to be the one holding the leash.

Mine is one of the cheapest services available yet still too much compared to my actual usage on a brighter note, here on the Denver Metro area service drops out in pretty much all the same places it does for those paying far more for their services but somehow that doesn't leave me with any warm fuzzy feelings. It's easy to understand why cell service was so pricey years ago when all the infrastructure was going into place but over the last decade if there has been any significant increase in infrastructure it sure isn't showing up as better service.

Although I think my monthly bill is way too high ($95 which is the cheapest for an iPhone), My biggest complaint is the coverage. I get crappy to zero coverage from AT&T at work and at home and just about every building I enter. If I want to carry on a conversation without dropping the call every minute or so I have to go outside.

I am ashamed of our additudes. When I sign a Contract, I can not change it . Yet they raise our interest, change our contracts, and we don't fight back. As a person, a client, without us they are out of business. No more messing with us. LD

It is completely ridiculous. You have to overestimate how many minutes you MIGHT use, then lose the ones you don't (as mentioned above). BUT, if you go over a little the next month, you get charged $2 per min. SO UNFAIR!

Plus the spam calls on cell phones and spam text messages are on the increase, so in addition I get to pay for my spam. Yay!

The 2-year contracts have got to go. They say it's to compensate for the subsidies they provide on the phones... fine, let some people pay the full price for the phone if they want! If someone wants to pay $500 for a BlackBerry and not have a 2-year contract, then let them!

i am stuck in a contract with verizon.. i have the "alltel" htc total piece of s--t phone. actually it is the 3rd one because the first two failed. have only had it for a week and the technicians cannot get it to work right so i am getting my fourth htc piece of s--t phone because i don't qualify for an upgrade until next july. i know these phones probably cost them 25 dollars to make and they charge you 3 or 4 hundred dollars to buy them. health insurance and cell phone bills are crazy.

I wish/hope there was a way these comments could be sent to the clowns/CEOs who run Verizon, AT&T, AllTell, SPrint, and the rest of the providers. I know the customer service people are the ones who are pulling the stunts that make our lives so miserable, because you don't get the same answer from two people on the same day.

Here it is folks. If you don't like what you have switch. A business will charge what the market will allow. And everyone wants something for nothing. So turn off the cell phones, cancel your contracts and go back to land lines or shut up. it's that simple

Consumers in rural areas are getting gouged by cell service providers. There is very little competition (1 or 2 carriers.....and usually only one has good service...and they know it!) so prices are much higher than service in metro areas! I have compared bills with friends and there is a huge difference in price and services offered!

Many companies (and primarily the communications industry) needs to back down from "trying to get their share asap" or it is likely to cause major societal problems. From an economic standpoint, they are no better than the pusher on the street handing out free drugs (free phones, 6 month trials, free HBO previews, etc.) And then once you're hooked (contract, need for use, etc.) your their's. Criminal at the very most and extremely questionable business ethics at the very least. With the money our tax dollars are being spent on now for things such as the mating habits of the ring-necked South American Butterfly the government really needs to investigate this industry thoroughly. Starting with the largest.

Everybody claims they have the best network, but at times I cannot get clear reception - sometimes none. However, I am tied down with a two-year contract which I will be penalized for if I switch company before my contract is concluded. Why Shouldn't we be able to breach contract if we do not get satisfactory service without penalty? Who will step in?, and how we afford an Attorney-at-law to resolve these matters?

The lowest family plan I could get when I signed two years of my life away with Verizon was 700 out-of-network minutes. I use maybe 200-300 minutes a month. Why can't they come up with a plan that's more flexible with less minutes at a lower price? Why.....because like the insurance companies, banks, the medical and legal professions, mobile phone companies are out to rape you of every cent they can by telling you that you're paying for R & D, or investments in new equipment to make your experience a better one (yeah, right) or just because they have to make the profits to pay the stock holders.

Let's take cable television, for instance. Why should I have to pay for channels I don't want? You are given maybe a half-dozen channel "packages", and every one of them will have at least two Spanish-speaking channels, two women's programming channels, two home shopping channels, five channels geared towards kids, etc. Why can't I just get a "cafeteria-style" plan, where I pay a monthly fee for unlimited watching of the dozen or so channels I do watch? I can pick through the list of channels, each with a monthly fee, and I should be able to do this without being locked into a two-year agreement. I get socked with an early termination fee for breaking a contract, yet they can go up on our rates whenever they feel like it. Comcast is infamous for such shady practices as this, as well as moving towards tiered pricing for their so-called "super-fast" internet access. Didn't Congress put a stop to the FCC allowing the elimination of "net neutrality"?

Just like the medical profession (the whole greedy lot of 'em)....charging obscene rates for office visits, tests, drugs....it's no wonder they are against any government intervention into their little slice of profit heaven! Because they know that once true low-priced competition enters the ring, the greedy insurance companies will be forced to lower their rates or go out of business. It can be done....they just don't want to lose all those fat profits!

Same with the mobile phone companies. There can't be true competition among phone companies when all of them are colluding with each other to keep the overall rate structure as high as they do. As soon as one independent company breaks ranks and refuses to play by the "good ol' boys'" rules, the big boys try their hardest to put that company out of business or, in Verizon's case, acquire the independent company through hostile takeovers.

It's my contention that, if the free market system in America was left to function completely unobstructed and unregulated, relying solely on supply-and-demand philosophies, we would have monopolies everywhere, that would set controls on pricing. You want what they can provide, you'll pay their price for it or you will have to do without. There has to be limits to what companies can charge for services or products, or soon the middle class will be in the same boat as the poor....can't afford phone service, cable television, health care, legal services. The one-tenth of one percent of the country that would be considered wealthy would have to rely on selling their wares or services to their own kind, which will eventually put them out of business, as well. Then we'll all be in the poorhouse!

Regulate now....and help the middle class to thrive and prosper. It's our only choice to survive as a free nation. Either these companies can regulate themselves (fairly), or the government can do it for them. It's their choice!

What a racket! I have 2 phones (AT&T) and pay about $118 mo. Highway robbery plan is the one I got. 2 yr. contracts, overpriced, and weak coverage.

When will we Americans wake up?? This is just another way big companies control our everyday lives... And we say Hell No to Socialism??? We live in a Communism state where big business and their CEO's are our Dictators. Come on America.... Take a look at the freedoms that our Socialistic countries have. They are has free has we, yet we are losing our jobs, our homes, and our respect from all other countries around the world. We people, who have never had much, will only get poorer and the rich who run the heart of what we need most, oil, communications, food, health care, will only suppress us to earn all that they can.