Cellphone firms OK consumer accord

Three of the biggest US wireless telecommunications carriers have negotiated a pact with attorneys general in Massachusetts and 31 other states that could expose them to civil fines if they fail to deliver promised new consumer protections, including letting people cancel new service within 72 hours without paying any fee.

Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless, and Sprint PCS said yesterday that they have already implemented most or all of the new consumer protection measures mandated by the agreements with Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly and other states' top prosecutors, and in some cases are already going beyond what the so-called settlement agreements require.

As part of the pact, the three carriers are paying a total of $5 million to the states, including $425,000 to Massachusetts, to fund consumer education programs. The other New England states participating in the settlement are Maine and New Hampshire.

Geoffrey Why, an assistant attorney general in Reilly's consumer protection and antitrust division, said even if the agreements only codify existing consumer-protection promises, they give his office new legal authority under state consumer-protection laws to pursue penalties of up to $5,000 per customer per day if the carriers fail to live up to the agreements.

Why said carriers have agreed in recent months to adopt the new standards, before the settlement was announced, only because ''they knew this was coming down the pipeline."

The multistate settlement requires the companies to let a new customer return a cellphone for any reason within 72 hours, get a refund of the activation fee, and pay no early termination charge, which can run as high as $200.

Customers can also cancel service within 14 days and pay only for the service-activation fee -- typically $15 to $35 -- and for any minutes used. In either case, consumers are responsible only for paying for the calls they made.

The settlement also incorporates an industrywide pledge made through the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association last year to publish more detailed, specific maps that show where carriers do and do not have calling coverage and to offer fuller disclosure about the costs and limitations of wireless service.

Reilly spokeswoman Sarah Nathan said the agreements focus on Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint PCS because of their size and the volume of consumer complaints about them. Nationally, Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint rank first, second, and fourth in the number of subscribers. AT&T Wireless Services Inc. ranks third, T-Mobile fifth, and Nextel Communications Inc. sixth.

Karlen Reed, an assistant attorney general in Reilly's utilities division, estimated that Verizon has about 900,000 customers in Massachusetts, Cingular 600,000, and Sprint PCS 450,000. Since 2001, Reilly's office has fielded more than 1,000 consumer complaints about wireless service, about 60 percent of which named those three carriers.

Reilly said the ''settlement raises the bar for all wireless carriers, and provides a safety net to the growing number of cellphone users in Massachusetts and beyond." ''Cellphones are a staple in our society now. People rely on them for a variety of reasons, ranging from business to personal safety, and the companies that provide these wireless services will now be held to a higher standard."

All three carriers downplayed the significance of the settlement. Cingular spokeswoman Alexa G. Kaufman said, ''Cingular's been working with the AG group voluntarily for more than three years to promote consumer education. The announcement today simply formalizes what we've been doing and will continue to do." Among other innovations, Cingular lets customers call agents and find out coverage levels within a mile of any address, Kaufman said.

J. Abra Degbor of Verizon Wireless and Mark J. Elliott of Sprint PCS said their companies are fully complying with the deal also.

AT&T Wireless spokesman Martin A. Nee said that despite not being part of the investigation, AT&T Wireless has long offered a 30-day ''no-questions-asked" policy for letting people cancel new service, far beyond the 14 days the three other carriers agreed to. ''You're only charged for the actual minutes that you used inside of that 30 days," Nee said.

Nextel's John E. Redman said his company allows new subscribers to cancel within 15 days without paying a termination fee, although it can impose a ''restocking fee" for taking the cellphone back.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.