June 13th, 2008
Nextel: 'We can't charge government those termination fees'
Nextel admitted in internal emails that it could never charge the government the kind of early termination fees it charged consumers, the Associated Press is reporting.
In documents unearthed as part of one such lawsuit, employees at Nextel — now part of Sprint Nextel Corp. — debated whether to assess a $200 termination fee to federal government subscribers under a contract with the General Services Administration.
“The government will never, never accept such penalty amounts and for the most part i think a lot of the (complaining) is real,” then-Nextel marketing vice president Scott Wiener wrote in an e-mail in January 2004. Wiener declined to comment Wednesday about his e-mail exchange.
Nextel ultimately decided against charging the fees to the government, because, according to Sprint Nextel spokesman John Taylor, it would have been against federal procurement laws.
