[Tomcat68]

I don't know about phones, but when I worked for DirecTV the only times I recall being able to waive an ETF was when a soldier was reporting to duty outside the country (they had to fax a letter from the military proving so) and when it was determined that they could not get a signal from the satellites from their service due to a line of sight issue from something outside of their control. To terminate the later of these 2 though, we sent out a technician to verify and charged the customer $80 for a service call that told them what they already knew (that they couldn't get a signal).