We’ve seen carriers go to extremes this year to try and lure in new customers, and company’s paying of ETF Fee’s have become commonplace. Big Red has never been one to roll with the tide, and while everyone else is making things simpler, Verizon’s new ETF Fee changes are making it more expensive to get out of your contract.

When you sign up for a new 2-year smartphone contract in the states, there’s always an ETF fee to pay. For Verizon, it’s $350 bucks which is a steep price to pay, but it dropped by $10 for every month you were with Big Red… under the old plan. The new Verizon ETF changes keep the price at $350, and that’s the only good news unfortunately.

Under the new ETF plan, the price stays $350 bucks through the first seven months of you 2-year stint. After that, it will begin to drop by $10 per month as it did in the previous plan. Once your contract is almost up and you make the 19^th month milestone, the ETF fee drops by $20 a month. In a nutshell, you’re paying more to leave Big Red than you have had to shell out in previous years.

While the news of Verizon’s ETF changes may irk some, it unlikely to actually affect the majority of users as we know that T-Mob and the rest will still pay off those fee’s to get your business. Verizon is just trying to make it more expensive on them, and they seemed to have succeeded for the moment with the new ETF changes.

What do you think about the ETF changes at Verizon?