It takes five minutes to get a cell phone line. You give your ID, you sign, you get a text message. Your line is active.
Internet subscription is no different. You apply, the modem arrives, the connection is turned on.
But things change when you want to get out.
You get numbers. Withdrawal fee, campaign cancellation, discounts taken back. And you wonder. Did I get a service, or did I fall into a trap with money on the way out?
In Turkey, most mobile and Internet subscriptions are contracted. The so-called “discounted” price actually includes a 12- or 24-month commitment. The bargain is on credit, not in advance. And when you want to leave “we'll take back the discount we gave you” it's called. It's called a withdrawal fee.
On paper the logic is simple, but in reality citizens cannot understand what is a discount and what is a penalty. Contracts are complicated, the invoice does not come as a single clear number; it is broken down item by item, and you cannot understand what you are paying for. Customer representatives read texts and you feel like you can't get out.
I lived it.
Once I called to close my line. “You have one month left, if you close now you will be fined” They said. “Then let's close in a month” I said.
They did not close it.
My line, which I never used, was left open for a year. I was billed every month through automatic payment. In that one year, not a single call, not a single message. Zero usage. I objected, to no avail.
So I paid for a year for a line I didn't use.
The picture is the same on the internet side. It is expensive to leave before the end of the commitment, and even more expensive to stay without a campaign. Penalties even if you change address, even if you can't get service.
This is not the exception. This is the system.
It is legally possible to opt out, but in practice it is expensive. Because there is almost no reasonably priced no-commitment package, everything that looks affordable is on campaign. So the system is effectively saying, if you want cheap, you will connect. This is a choice on paper, but in life it is an obligation.
And who oversees this order?
There is the Information and Communication Technologies Authority on the telecom side and the Ministry of Trade on the consumer contracts side. There are rules, there are authorizations. But implementation is left to the citizen. Everyone should write a petition one by one and spend months on it.
There is a right.
But it is troublesome.
And the question is. If the picture is so clear, why is there no intervention?
In this country we pay for leaving a service. Not for entering, but for leaving.
This is clearly a scheme that penalizes the consumer.
Let me write more clearly.
This system does not protect the consumer.
The consumer is used in this scheme.
Telephone and Internet are not luxuries today, they are basic necessities. But when we want to opt out of a basic need, we are penalized. This is not normal. This is the silent extinguishing of the citizenry.
As easy as it is to get in, it should be as easy to get out.
But here is what is really happening. They are illegally tying up citizens, the company is winning, and the state is watching.