Few industries have higher dissatisfaction rates than the cell phone industry. That's probably because Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile continue stubbornly to force people into lousy two-year contracts. When you sign up, you get a phone for a very little or free that comes with a two-year agreement, usually printed in mice type. The contract is like a handcuff that forces you to stick with the carrier whether they're doing a good job or not. Fortunately a lot of the growth in the cell phone field has been with under-the-radar players like MetroPCS, Cricket, Boost Mobile (a division of Sprint) and others. Many of these companies offer unlimited calling with no contract. Verizon is staring to wise up slightly and now pro-rates its fees for cancelling a contract. But AT&T still claims that contracts subsidize the cost of free phones. So how do they explain the fact that the iPhone, which retails for between $500-$600, has a two-year contract? There's no logic here.

AT&T recently lost a lawsuit in a federal court of appeals that will now pave the way for a number of class-action lawsuits. The company had hoped to prevent customers from going the class-action route by forcing them into kangaroo court arbitration. But the courts ruled this practice is illegal. Now one of the class-action suits coming down the pike alleges AT&T continued forcing customers into contracts even when its network couldn't handle the number of subscribers and the company's call reliability dropped. Keep in mind that you can try getting out of your contract by trading it away if you're not the class-action type. CellTradeUSA.com is one company that charges a fee of about $20 to transfer your contract to someone else. And remember that when you get some mice type in the mail saying the service fees are changing, that is your opportunity to exit from your contract without paying a cancellation fee.