Your wireless service provider really doesn’t care that your life just isn’t going to be complete without an iPhone G3. Instead of wishing you well and letting you go, they want you to pay an Early Termination Fee of a couple of hundred bucks or so before they’ll release you from your contract.

And in fairness to the phone companies, you agreed to that contract’s terms when you got your phone. You also, in theory, got a discount on your phone in exchange for agreeing to be a customer for two years at a specific price. That Early Termination Fee (ETF) is supposed to recoup the price of the phone. Whether that’s true or reasonable is something you should have considered before you cheerfully signed away your soul to your cell phone provider. You could have opted to buy a phone outright and signed up for a pay-as-you-go plan. That said, there are some nice and not so nice ways of getting out of your cell phone contract or at least lessening the fees you are supposed to pay for your fickleness.

Go Pro: Sprint, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile now all offer pro-rated ETFs based on the length of time remaining in your contract. If you qualify -- some service providers only offer pro-rated ETFs to people who signed up after a certain date -- you can generally save about $5 on the original ETF fee for each month you’ve had the contract. So, for example, instead of paying $175 to break free of your Verizon contract if you have 6 months left to go you’d only pay $85 with a pro-rated offer. Check your service provider’s website for details.

Swap It: All wireless service providers allow you to sign over your existing contract to someone else so use the awesome power of the internets and sublease that unwanted contract. That someone else will need to pass a credit check the same as you did when you first acquired the phone plan, but they won’t have to pay sign-up or activation fees. All you have to do is call your provider and tell them you want to sign over your contract, they’ll tell you how to proceed -- and while you’re at it, ask them what you need to do to keep your existing phone number, assuming you want to retain the digits you may have to port your number to another phone within a specific amount of time. If you can’t find someone to sublease your contract on your own, consider placing an ad on Craigslist or signing up with cellswapper.com or celltradeusa.com. Celltradeusa charges phone owners $19.99, Cellswapper is $18.95 or $24.95 for a “Showcase” post. Both services advise would-be swappers to throw in their old phone for free as an extra enticement, and you’re also free to offer any other (legal) deal-sweeteners that may occur to you.

Be Basic: If you can’t get out of a c ontract that is nearing the end of its life and you opt to buy a new phone now anyway, check to see if it would be cheaper to switch your plan to the most basic, barebones service plan offered by your provider rather than paying the ETF. Just make sure that switching your billing plan doesn’t magically add additional time to your existing contract -- sometimes providers extend contracts when services/plans are changed. You may also consider telling your wireless provider all about your impending extended trip out of the country, and ask if there are any “Vacation” plans available. Some providers let you put your contract on a hiatus while you’re away and only bill you $5-$10 a month during your time out of the country.

Run Away: If your cell phone provider doesn’t offer service in a particular area, and you happen to be moving to that area, you can legally get out of your contract. You will need to provide a new address, and it can’t be a P.O Box. And while we’d never advise you to lie about your relocation plans to your phone company (because that would be evil) the chances of them having the time and inclination to verify your new address is pretty slim. Of course if thousands of people suddenly call their wireless providers this week and insist that they are moving to Southeast Asia, it’s likely that the phone companies will understandably get increasingly pissy about letting people out of their contracts.

Roam Around: The “Roaming Hack” is meticulously detailed on many blogs so we’re just going to give you the highlights. The idea is that if you roam domestically too often -- the sort of roaming where you aren’t charged an extra fee -- you become an unprofitable customer for your phone company. Check your contract to see what terms your provider can use to terminate your contract, look for lines referring to the required percentage of usage on your providers own systems, many companies cite over 50% of calls outside of their systems for three months are grounds for contract termination. Then check your provider’s coverage area to see if there is a nearby location that puts you outside of their system, go to that place and make a long call to an automated service like movie phone. Do this repeatedly until your phone company notices and terminates your service. Frankly this seems like a lot of work to us, but it may suit your schedule just fine.

Play Dead: When you shuffle off this mortal coil you won’t be taking your cell phone with you and even cell phone companies understand this. If you happen to have a blank death certificate around and you’re so desperate for an iPhone that you’re willing to do truly unethical and illegal things to get it such as, say, briefly faking your own death, then please don’t tell us about it -- we really don’t want to know.

Do the Right Thing: If your conscience isn’t about to let you pretend to be dead or lie about moving to another country and you can’t sublease your phone contract, the best case scenario may be to pay a prorated termination fee and donate your old phone to charity. The Collective Good accepts cell phone donations, and CellforCash, GreenPhone, and ReCellular offer cash or store gift cards in return for unwanted phones. Make sure you wipe your phone’s memory before you send it off to a new home, to find out how to purge your passwords and other private data check the excellent advice provided by ReCellular.