Sour on Contracts, Illinois Pursues Cell Phone Lemon Law

Illinois—not about to be bullied by Sprint, AT&T, et al—is working on a cell phone lemon law, a sort of phone user’s bill of rights, as it were.

A lemon law is a consumer protection device that benefits mainly buyers of automobiles these days, with purchasers able to get financial remuneration from dealers who knowingly sold damaged or dead vehicles. The Illinois bill would apply that protection to cell phones, in a matter of speaking.

The nitty gritty is that if you have to get your phone repaired or replaced three times, you can opt out of your contract with that cell phone provider, who has no legal recourse against you at that time, not even collecting an early cancellation fee. You can also switch to another phone and stay with the same provider, although why you’d want to stick with the company that sold you bad goods in the first place says a little more about you than it does about them.