If you’re thinking about terminating your relationship with AT&T, do it fast. Come June 1, AT&T is raising its early termination fee from $175 to $325. According to the company, this has nothing to do with the impending release of the next iPhone.

Right, guys. Right. That big influx of customers you’re sure to get, not to mention all of us idiots who will re-sub to get the next iPhone, we have no bearing on the decision to nearly double your ETF fees. If anything, consider this your warning if you haven’t made the switch yet. I love my iPhone – believe me, I do – but I loathe AT&T. If you think you might hate it enough to call it quits before your two years is up, be ready to part with $325.

Oh, and in case you weren’t completely convinced this is about the iPhone, AT&T said it will be lowering the ETF for feature phones, down to $150 from $175. So just those new iPhone subs get screwed? Got it.

Source: WSJ

AT&T knows you aren’t happy with your iPhone service. It’s making videos to try to explain away some of your woes, but the company may also be looking to add new iPhone-exclusive features to improve the user experience.

According to a story at Apple Insider, Apple and AT&T are looking into a software update that would add features to improve customer satisfaction. Among the rumored list of features are overage alerts, which would offer push notifications if you’re past your text limit, for instance. There’s also the potential for a “Voicemail” tab in the settings app, allowing you to disable the custom voicemail greetings on your own phone and bypass those greetings when you call other AT&T subscribers.

From what we know so far, this plan is a joke. The phone is fine. These features might be nice additions, but as almost every single survey has shown, iPhone owners love the phone and loathe AT&T. Adding these features to the phone will just exacerbate that issue. Sure, callers can get to my voicemail faster, but if I can’t listen to their messages what does it matter?

I don’t need features to improve my experience, I need more reliable service. When AT&T stops wasting time and money on gimmicks like this and allocates those resources to network improvement the average iPhone user experience will improve.