Legal Question in Consumer Law in California

This is an example of plain bad customer service on the part of T-Mobile! Of course, it is not their fault if you move somewhere that does not offer service. It is probably not a policy of any phone company to allow a cancellation for such a situation. My review shows that the fees were made illegal in 2008 in California as applied by two companies. T-Mobile was not one of them, but at that time, they were expecting the same result. That is, the T-Mobile case was pending. T-Mobile might have settled out of court with thousands of earlier clients. The cell companies then tried to get the FCC to become involved, but I have not seen a ruling on the matter. The outcome of this was that some companies started prorating the cancellation fees over the life of the contract. This might stick as it makes more commercial sense when one must understand that these fees apply at all because of the subsidy that one gets from the cell phone company when buying a cell phone. A cell phone that would list for $250.00 at retail might be sold for only $50 to a subscriber where the cell company expects to receive the balance of the $250.00 phone price in the form of monthly service charges. With no service charges the cell company would have given the phone away for below market value. At least this is the rationale for the termination fees that seems to be holding up.