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CellSwapper Review (with animation!)
Written by Allen Stern - January 11, 2007
Got some news from a new startup last evening. Cellswapper is a new service which was designed to help you get out of your mobile contract quickly and for a reasonable price vs. the early termination fees. Some of these fees exceed $200 and with all carriers basically requiring a 2-year contract (such crap), this may be a way to get out quick. Luckily I finished my contract about 2 years ago and can go at will (you hear me Cingular!)
The process appears to be pretty easy:
- Signup and post your contract
- Pay a fee "success" of $15
- When someone is interested in your plan - Cellswapper makes the transfer with the carrier
- You are now out of your contract and free to purchase an iPhone (ha)
I think the service could certainly have some strong interest especially with these new 2-year requirements. I do have a couple concerns:
- First a simple one - fix the type in your footer - the type looks "cheesy" and not on the level when it matches the background - appears as though they are trying to fool the search engines.
- Could an evil purchaser have access to the former user's account?
- What about the phone! This is a big one. Do I get your phone? I didn't see a clear answer to this. Since some of the carriers require certain phones (i.e. cdma), how do we get a phone without a new contract unless we go eBay or pay crazy prices for unlocked and free from contract phone.
- We have big usability issues... for example, when you do a search, the results flip, but there is no way to get back to the previous option, so if you miss it I guess you have to wait until it flips again? Same thing happens on the buzz page.
- U.S. only at this point
Here is a video that Cellswapper created to explain the service. It's a cute cartoon.
COMMENTS - Add New Comment
Resellular has been around for a year already -- and they are offering their service completely free this month as a reward to any curious users. http://www.resellular.com
If your looking to get out of your cell phone contract use celltradeusa.com
I used celltradeusa.com a few months ago to get out of my cell phone contract :) Just wanted to share my positive experience that I had since nobody here is talking about them. I learned of celltrade through a smart money article an decided to give them a shot. It was really easy. I posted all my plan details and phone model. I had quite a few responses pretty quickly. Anyway I call T-Mobile and told them my situation and that I found someone through celltrade and they where willing to take over my contract and 15 minutes later it was out of my contract penalty free! I am a celltrade fan for life :)
The "success" fee is deceiving. You have to pay approx. $19 to correspond with potential buyers and a transfer is not guaranteed. You can post your plan for free, however when buyers show interest in your plan you have to fork over money to correspond with them. In addition, it is very hard to sell you plan because when a buyer agrees to take over your contract s/he has to agree to take over the term of your contract, in addition to signing up for an additional 11 month contract (this is the case for Cingular).
I had a very bad experience will Cellswapper. I paid the fee because someone posing as a buyer pretended to be interested (there is a possibility that this is run internally by Cellswapper, but that's my guess), however, once I paid the fee the buyer was no where to be found. In the end, I never sold my plan, now I can tack on an additional $19 to my termination fee.