Lemon Laws Kick Ass

By Alicia Dorr in News on Apr 23, 2007 6:00PM

You heard it here first (and by "here first" we mean "not here first at all, even a little bit"): Illinois lawmakers are looking at passing a cell phone lemon law.

The brainchild of Chicago Rep Susana Mendoza, the proposed legislation would allow cell phone users to cancel their contracts with no penalty if their device breaks three times. On top of that, it would allow users to upgrade or downgrade their cell phone without having to extend the contract period (which would make us love our cell phone companies more than we love cake, or our significant others).

The bill is in front of the full House right now, but critics are fighting hard against it arguing that a.) there are no other laws like this in any state on the books and b.) it would make it hard for cell phone companies to operate here because it would punish the company for a manufacturer's flaw. We argue back a.) shove it and b.) then maybe companies should stop manufacturing pieces of crap!

We're 100 percent for this. Though we generally think it sucks when government regulates too much, gets in the way of business and generally impedes on a free market, we don't think that lemon laws fall under those issues. This lemon law, if passed, would protect consumers from shoddy products. Cell phone use isn't going to go down, and its a big, fat, silly lie to assume that if it was hard for them to operate in AN ENTIRE STATE that they would just pack up and go.

Seriously, are the opponents to this bill kidding us with this nonsense? Fine, then, we dare you to "you'll be sorry" us. Because it would be a cold day in hell if an entire state went without cell phones. The companies, which have a pretty solid monopoly on certain areas and (obviously) on the technology, will make up for the losses elsewhere. In the meantime, we won't be walking about town with broken pieces of crap anymore.

Image via lemon-law.tv.