T-mobile just made a bad move. They sent out a notice (unfortunately, I don’t have mine handy at the moment, otherwise I would scan it in here) saying that they will be raising their incoming and outgoing text message rates from $0.15 per message to $0.20 per message.

I don’t have an SMS plan on my T-mobile account — basically because it annoys me that carriers charge so much for text messaging. It is the cheapest part of their service and they rake in the money with it. TechCrunch had an post about this as well.

Well, since I am under a contract with T-Mo, but they changed the rates on me, I called them up and told them I would like to terminate my contract with T-Mo since if they want to increase my rate, then I should have the option to cancel my contract. The customer service rep directed me to their cancellation/retention department. There I spoke with the agent and she informed me that I have until August 18th to change carriers. As long as I change carriers by August 18th and transfer my numbers over to a new service by that date, then I would not be assessed the early termination fee!

So for any other folks out there on a T-Mo contract, the SMS rate change may be your ticket to get out of the T-Mo contract and switch to an iPhone (or anything else) you may want to. I hate AT&T just as much as anyone can, but since Apple extended their exclusivity on the iPhone, I guess Mr. Jobs leaves me no other choice but to give in to AT&T if I want to get with the times.

Anyhow, your mileage may wary on getting out of your T-Mo contract, but feel free to post in the comments and let me and others know how it goes. I’ll update this post depending on my experience soon.

Update: The cancellation worked successfully. An early termination fee was assessed and I had to call up T-Mobile once again to complain about it and then they took it off.