Byline: By richard siklos section: Section C; Column ; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RELIGION (95%); MUSLIMS & ISLAM (92%); AFRICAN AMERICANS (90%); MUSLIM AMERICANS (89%); IMMIGRATION (91%); RACE & RACISM (89%); REFUGEES (67%); CIVIL RIGHTS (65%) Islam; Immigration and Refugees; Blacks; Discrimination
PERSON: Andrea Elliott
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (96%); INDIA (92%); ASIA (79%); PAKISTAN (92%)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Dr. Faroque Khan, left, and Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid serve very different mosques, one on Long Island and one in Harlem. (Photo by James Estrin/The New York Times)(pg. 1)

Yusef Salaam, a Harlem mosque member whose conviction in the Central Park jogger case was overturned, gave the call to prayer at a celebration. Up to a third of the mosque's men are ex-convicts.

Clockwise from top left: Imam Al-Hajj Talib 'Abdur-Rashid at a rally against profiling

congregants at his mosque in Harlem

Dr. Faroque Khan in prayer on Long Island

worshipers there at Ramadan's end. (Photographs by JAMES ESTRIN/The New York Times)(pg. 30)

Imam Talib leaving the mosque with his wife. ''I'd like to think that even if I was a white man, I'd still be a Muslim,'' he said. (pg. 31)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1036 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Warren Alpert, 86, Entrepreneur, Is Dead
BYLINE: By DENNIS HEVESI
SECTION: Section C; Column 1; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 394 words
Warren Alpert, an entrepreneur who sold sheets and towels from his father's truck at age 13 and who two months ago donated $100 million to Brown University, died on March 3 in Manhattan. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.

The death was confirmed by his nephew Herbert Kaplan, president of Warren Equities, a privately held investment management company that Mr. Alpert started in 1950, and of the Warren Alpert Foundation.

The company, based in Providence, R.I., owns oil, wholesale food and tobacco distributorships, real estate and XtraMart convenience stores at more than 250 East Coast gasoline stations. It is regularly listed by Forbes Magazine as one of the nation's 500 largest privately held companies. Last year, it had $2 billion in sales.

In January, Mr. Alpert gave $100 million to the Brown University Medical School, and it was renamed in his honor.

''The scope of the gift is so significant that it will affect virtually every dimension of the medical school,'' the president of the university, Ruth J. Simmons, said at the time.

In 1993, Mr. Alpert gave $20 million to the Harvard Medical School research building, which opened in 1992 and housed genetics, neurobiology and pathology laboratories. That building, too, was named for Mr. Alpert.

''I want cures for Alzheimer's disease, cancer, AIDS,'' he told The New York Times.

Mr. Alpert was born on Dec. 2, 1920, the youngest of five children of Goodman and Tina Horowitz Alpert, immigrants from Lithuania who lived in a working-class neighborhood of Chelsea, Mass. Mr. Alpert never married and has no immediate survivors.

Besides peddling dry goods as a teenager, Mr. Alpert sold hats after high school to pay his tuition at Boston University, from which he graduated in 1942. As an Army private in World War II, he was wounded in the D-Day invasion.

Financial help from the G.I. Bill allowed Mr. Alpert to earn a Master's in Business Administration at Harvard in 1947. Three years later, he started a wholesale oil business in Providence with $1,000 in savings and a $9,000 loan from his brother.

In 2000, Mr. Alpert donated $15 million to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, which named the Warren Alpert Pavilion after him.

''I really don't want my relatives to be rich,'' he said when asked about his philanthropy in 1993. ''I made it and I intend to spend it, and do it my way.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENTREPRENEURSHIP (90%); FOUNDATIONS (78%); PHILANTHROPY (78%); CHARITIES (78%); TUITION FEES (77%); UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION (77%); PRIVATELY HELD COMPANIES (76%); GAS STATIONS (75%); DISEASES & DISORDERS (73%); PATHOLOGY (73%); RETAILERS (73%); INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT (71%); CONVENIENCE STORES (70%); MEDICAL & DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORIES (68%); AIDS & HIV (67%); ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE (66%); MARRIAGE (64%); DEATHS & OBITUARIES (90%); WORLD WAR II (86%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (77%); MEDICAL RESEARCH (75%) Deaths (Obituaries); Biographical Information
ORGANIZATION: BROWN UNIVERSITY (91%)
PERSON: Dennis Hevesi
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%); PROVIDENCE, RI, USA (92%) NEW YORK, USA (94%); RHODE ISLAND, USA (92%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); LITHUANIA (79%)
CATEGORY: Business and Finance
Warren Alpert
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Obituary (Obits)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1037 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

News Summary
SECTION: Section A; Column 3; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 839 words
INTERNATIONAL A3-7Bush's Latin America Tour Incites Fight for AttentionPresident Bush began the first full day of a weeklong trip to Latin America promising job-creating aid in Brazil but found himself competing for attention with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who called the American visit an act of imperialism, adding, ''Gringo, go home!'' A1Trip to Ease Tension Opens RiftA pilgrimage to Israel by Roman Catholic bishops from Germany last week, meant to be a symbol of reconciliation between Jews and German Catholics, caused new tension after two bishops compared the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank to that of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. A3Northern Ireland Vote ResultsThe Democratic Unionists, the Protestant party, emerged as one of the main winners in elections for a new assembly in Northern Ireland. A3Poverty as a Way of British LifeThe conditions in a housing project near Manchester, England, epitomize the social deprivation and alienation that is common across Britain.

And while Prime Minister Tony Blair has made addressing poverty a priority, his critics say there is little to show after his 10 years in office. A5Europe Reaches Climate AccordThe European Union approved a deal that would make Europe the world's leader in fighting climate change, but would also allow some of Europe's most polluting countries to limit their environmental goals. A5U.S. Accused in Iraqis' DeathsAmerican soldiers were accused of opening fire on a car carrying a family in the Sadr City district in Baghdad, killing three people. The allegations were made by a woman who had been in the vehicle. A6NATIONAL A8-11Gun-Control Law Rejected By Federal Appeals CourtA federal appeals court in Washington, interpreting the Second Amendment broadly, struck down a gun-control law in the District of Columbia that bars residents from keeping handguns in their homes. A1F.B.I. Chief Faces OutrageBipartisan outrage erupted on Capitol Hill as Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., conceded that his agency had improperly, and sometimes illegally, used the USA Patriot Act to obtain information about people and businesses. A15th Student Dies in Bus CrashA fifth college baseball player died of injuries suffered when his team's chartered tour bus plunged 30 feet off a highway overpass last week, bringing the death toll from the accident to seven. A9Debate Over Image in TextbookAfter months of lobbying by Sikhs, the California Board of Education voted unanimously to ask the publisher of a seventh-grade history book to remove a portrait of the Sikh founder from future printings. A9Explosives Missing From MineLaw enforcement officials in Arizona are searching for hundreds of pounds of missing explosives material of the type used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. A11Religion Journal A11SCIENCE/HEALTHWarning Issued on Anemia DrugThe Food and Drug Administration issued warnings about overuse of widely prescribed anemia drugs after recent studies suggested they might cause heart attacks or hasten the death of cancer patients. A8NEW YORK/REGION B1-5Crowd Fills Mosque To Mourn Fire VictimsA crowd prayed at a Manhattan mosque to mourn the nine members of two immigrant families from Mali who were killed in a house fire in the Bronx. The mourners joined the father of five of the seven children killed in the fire. A1Javits Plan Is CriticizedMany of the companies that use the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center are criticizing a long-awaited plan to expand the complex, saying the proposal would provide less space than expected and would increase the cost of running trade shows. B3Testimony on Police KillingA grand jury in Queens, weighing evidence in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man in November, heard from the last of the five police officers involved in the case, a police detective who fired 31 of the 50 shots at the man's car. B3BUSINESS DAY C1-9 Google's Commuting PerkGoogle, the Internet search engine giant, now ferries employees to and from work daily, making commuting painless for its workers and the company attractive for new recruits. A1Jobs Report Eases AnxietyThe Labor Department's latest monthly report on employment in February shows added jobs and a lower unemployment rate, which has helped to assuage some anxiety over the state of the economy. C1Labor Shortage in EuropeIn Europe, high unemployment has defined economic life for much of the last three decades, but now some sectors on the Continent are facing a shortage of skilled labor. C1Business Digest C2OBITUARIES C10Warren AlpertAn entrepreneur who sold sheets and towels from his father's truck at age 13 and who two months ago donated $100 million to Brown University, he was 86. C10EDITORIAL A12-13Editorials: Another grim week in Iraq; too many secrets; shutting down fake ''prep schools''; evangelical environmentalism.Columns: Judith Warner, Rory Stewart.Bridge B15Crossword B14TV Listings B16Weather D8
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CHRISTIANS & CHRISTIANITY (90%); LAW ENFORCEMENT (86%); GUN CONTROL (86%); SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE FORCES (86%); ELECTIONS (77%); HEADS OF STATE & GOVERNMENT (77%); JEWS & JUDAISM (76%); RELIGION (76%); WAR & CONFLICT (75%); LOBBYING (74%); EMPLOYMENT GROWTH (72%); JOB CREATION (72%); CLERGY & RELIGIOUS (71%); SUITS & CLAIMS (71%); SHOOTINGS (69%); FIREARMS (68%); APPELLATE DECISIONS (68%); LITIGATION (65%); ACCIDENTAL FATALITIES (64%); MOTORCOACHES & BUSES (64%); APPEALS COURTS (63%); SIKHS & SIKHISM (60%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY SPORTS (60%); HIGHWAYS & STREETS (50%); WORLD WAR II (69%); CATHOLICS & CATHOLICISM (76%); PRIME MINISTERS (73%); BASEBALL (60%); BRITISH PRIME MINISTERS (69%) Terms not available from NYTimes
ORGANIZATION: EUROPEAN UNION (55%)
PERSON: HUGO CHAVEZ (58%); TONY BLAIR (55%); TZIPORA LIVNI (91%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (90%); OKLAHOMA CITY, OK, USA (79%); MANCHESTER, ENGLAND (71%) DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, USA (79%); OKLAHOMA, USA (79%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); ARIZONA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (94%); SOUTH AMERICA (94%); UNITED KINGDOM (90%); BRAZIL (92%); LATIN AMERICA (92%); ISRAEL (92%); NORTHERN IRELAND (92%); VENEZUELA (92%); EUROPE (94%); IRAQ (90%); GERMANY (90%); PALESTINIAN TERRITORY (79%); ENGLAND (79%); EUROPEAN UNION (79%)
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Summary
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1038 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

In Tragedy, Glimpsing Oft-Overlooked Newcomers' Lives
BYLINE: By MICHAEL POWELL and NINA BERNSTEIN
SECTION: Section B; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk; TRAGEDY IN THE BRONX; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1371 words
They began alighting in New York in the late 1970s, these Malian traders riding the currents of the global economy. After a decade, maybe two, of intense work, they sent for their wives who would bear many children and settle in Harlem apartments and cacophonous old town houses on hilly streets in the Bronx.

Before the fire that took five of his children, Moussa Magassa was an early godfather for this tiny but swiftly growing Malian community. He would greet newcomers with a handshake and a meal, and perhaps some cash and help filing legal papers and shipping goods back to Mali.

His brick town house near Yankee Stadium was known even in Mali as a beacon for new immigrants and a symbol of a Malian's success in America.

Tragedy has drawn a city's eyes to this little-known corner of the West African immigrant diaspora. An entrepreneurial group loosely bound by ties of ethnicity and sometimes language, its members have established enclaves known as ''Little Senegal' and ''Little Guinea'' marked by thriving import-export offices and hair-braiding salons.

Some, particularly the Senegalese, peddle African goods -- and knock-off Swiss watches -- and some engage in long-haul trucking while still others drive taxis and run general stores and money-transfer offices.

But as so often happens, tragedy also exposes an immigrant community's secrets. There is the Malians' practice of taking more than one wife, transplanted by some from village compounds in the hills of western Mali to crowded apartments in the Bronx. There is their often-faltering climb up the entrepreneurial ladder, with attendant business failures and bankruptcies. And there is the tricky business of immigration status: Many Malians are here illegally even as they raise children who become the newest generation of New Yorkers.

The West Africans -- who number about 50,000, including 6,000 to 10,000 Malians -- have suffered their share of high-profile tragedies in this city. In 1999 police officers in Harlem fatally shot Amadou Diallo, a Guinean peddler, when they mistakenly thought he was reaching for a gun. (It was his wallet.) In 2003 an officer running through a storage facility on the Far West Side shot and killed Ousmane Zongo, who was from Burkina Faso and repaired artwork.

Now a fire has consumed much of two families, and Malians on two continents are in mourning.

Amadou Niangadou, 46, stood on Seventh Avenue and 122nd Street last night and listened to his cellphone trill. All day he had fielded calls from friends in New York and Mali, disconsolate at the news. He said Mr. Magassa, who is a friend of his and is treasurer of the Association of Malians Living Abroad, was in Mali because he was accompanying a blind countryman home.

''We are a traveling people, but our bonds back home are very close,'' he said. Mr. Niangadou held up his hand and paused to see who was calling him before continuing: ''Mr. Magassa, this guy, he has a big, big heart.''

Few places on earth are poorer than Mali, a land twice the size of Texas where 90 percent of the population earns less than $2 a day. But Mali was home to Africa's first great sub-Saharan empire; it took root in the fourth century and had trading at its heart. Malian traders led camel caravans to the Mediterranean.

Poverty now fuels that diaspora.

''Travel and trade is for the Malians a central part of their identity,'' said Gregory Mann, an associate professor of history at Columbia University and a specialist in Francophone Africa.

France has 120,000 Malians, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Malians began turning to the United States. Mr. Magassa was in that first wave. Many West Africans turned to street peddling. (When the police cracked down, the Senegalese donned sharp-looking suits and carried goods in attache cases -- these traders are nothing if not adaptable.)

Mr. Niangadou, who owns an export business, sat with a dozen of his countryman in Kouyate & Freres, a general store and money-transfer store on 122nd Street and described the climb up the ladder:

''I started off hauling crates and worked in a supermarket,'' he said. ''Then I began selling cloth and driving goods to other cities. I did 4,000 to 5,000 miles a month.''

Soon enough, the first arrivals sent for younger relatives. Women arrived in large numbers in the mid-1990s, some possessing entrepreneurial instincts no less formidable than their husbands'. Others land here without education, steeped in old country ways, and submit to their husband's lead.

Mr. Magassa had two wives, Manthia and Aisse. It is not clear when they arrived in this country, but some of their children were born here. Only two of Mr. Magassa's seven children with Manthia lived through the fire. But all of his four children with Aisse, who lived a floor apart from Manthia, survived.

Polygamy is common in Mali and throughout West Africa. But it is illegal in the United States, and it can bar immigrants from gaining permanent legal residency or citizenship. Many West Africans are uncomfortable talking about the practice with an outsider, particularly so soon after the tragic fire.

But many West Africans say that Mr. Magassa's arrangement is a subterranean feature of life here, particularly for older men who can afford it. At a spacious African hair-braiding salon on 125th Street, Aminata Dia, the Senegalese owner, consulted with her husband before talking about the practice to a reporter. She said men traditionally bring the first wife first, but of late many prefer to bring the youngest.

''I wasn't surprised,'' Ms. Dia said. ''It's our religion that allows men to have four wives. But two wives in the same house, it's not so common -- usually they have one wife abroad and one here.''

A fierce argument erupted about whether this was too volatile an issue to talk about with an outsider. ''All women suffer from polygamy, but our religion says we should not speak,'' said an employee, Aminata Fatou, 29. ''One can't do away with that.''

Countered Ms. Dia: ''If every woman shuts her mouth, she is complicit. I'm against polygamy -- it's bad for the woman, the man and the children.''

Then she added a coda: ''If you leave your country, you have to come with the good things, not bring the bad things with you.''

Nor is it easy, even for the entrepreneurial Malians, to balance the demands of building a life here with sending sufficient dollars back to their families and villages in Mali. Malian immigrants in France, to cite just one example, send money back home that is equivalent to France's total foreign aid for Mali. These dollars pay for houses and schools, wells and, that rarest of things in the dusty desert nation, paved roads.

These immigrants may hail from generations of traders -- many describe learning their trade by working with fathers in Gambia, Senegal and the Ivory Coast -- but the financial hardships are great.

Mr. Magassa held several jobs, including one as a carpenter at the New York City schools, before opening an import-export firm. His older brother, Mody Magassa, owns a shipping firm in Midtown Manhattan.

But they and a third brother have all filed for bankruptcy. In his 2000 Chapter 13 filing, Mr. Magassa cited $214,700 in assets, $170,000 of it in his house. And he cited $132,124 in liabilities.

In the general store, Kouyate & Freres, on Thursday night several of the Malian men sipped tea and talked about being laid off from jobs as drivers and clerks.

Lurking behind their economic troubles is another reality. Roughly 3,5000 Malians enter the United States each year on temporary visas. But precious few attain achieve citizenship: About 85 Malians a year, and as few as 19, since 1996. Only a handful have been granted asylum, typically women seeking refuge from genital cutting, which is widespread in West Africa.

Evidence of the precarious legal status can be seen in the case of Mamadou Soumare, whose wife, Fatoumata, and three of their four children perished in this week's fire. They lived on the top floor of Mr. Magassa's house. Mr. Soumare wants to bury his wife and children in Mali. But people who know the family said that immigration issues could prevent him from accompanying the bodies home.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CHILDREN (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); IMMIGRATION (91%); IMPORT TRADE (78%); FAMILY (78%); WAREHOUSING & STORAGE (75%); GLOBALIZATION (73%); WIRE TRANSFERS (70%); STADIUMS & ARENAS (69%); LAW ENFORCEMENT (67%); HAIR STYLING SERVICES (66%); SHOOTINGS (65%); REFUGEES (70%); ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (69%) Fires and Firefighters; Immigration and Refugees; Illegal Immigrants
PERSON: Michael Powell; Nina Bernstein; Mamadou Soumare; Moussa Magassa
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (94%) NEW YORK, USA (94%) MALI (97%); UNITED STATES (94%); SENEGAL (93%); GUINEA (92%); AFRICA (93%); WEST AFRICA (92%); BURKINA FASO (79%) New York City; Mali; West Africa
LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2007
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photos: Manthia Magassa, who lost five of her seven children in a Bronx house fire, left the Islamic Cultural Center on East 166th Street yesterday. (Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)(pg. B1)

Akima Brathwaite, right, has her hair braided by Seynabou Diop in a Harlem salon yesterday. At the salon, owned by Aminata Dia, a Senegalese immigrant, the talk was of polygamy, which is common in West Africa. (Photop by Todd Heisler/The New York Times)(pg. B5)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

1039 of 1258 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
March 10, 2007 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

A Challenge Worthy of Houdini
BYLINE: By DAMON DARLIN
SECTION: Section C; Column 2; Business/Financial Desk; YOUR MONEY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1301 words
The two-year contract. It is the bane of a cellphone owner's existence, especially one who must have the latest hot phone at a discounted price.

Two years is a long time, and few other marketers can get away with demanding it, much less adding to it. Every time you walk back into the cellphone store or call the customer service operators, it seems, the contract is extended. Lose the phone or ask for a replacement, and the contract is extended. Sign up for a family plan, same thing.

But try getting out of a contract early? You can do it, but you will have to pay an early termination fee of as much as $240.

Cellphone companies do not make it easy to break two-year contracts. But it can be done through shrewd negotiating or by turning to the innovators on the Internet who match contract sellers with people who want to assume the contract.

Early termination fees are intended to compensate phone companies for the discount they gave on the phone upfront. Most mobile phone companies charge the full fee no matter when the contract is scheduled to expire. Verizon Wireless recently decided to prorate the fee, and some of the other companies do that in certain cities.

The companies will waive the early termination fee if you die. Pretending to be dead, however, does not work well as a way to break a contract. Sprint Nextel, Verizon and Cingular, for example, may ask for a death certificate. T-Mobile says it does not. ''They want to take people at their word,'' said Graham Crow, a spokesman for the company.

Joining the military can sometimes work to break a contract if you are going to be stationed overseas. Sometimes, though, the company will suspend the service for the duration of active duty, which is not a great deal. Upon returning home, you would still be stuck with the remaining period of the contract and a much older phone. Buying a new phone would only extend the contract further.

Next to death, moving to a place where your phone company does not have service may not seem so draconian. Each company provides maps on its Web site or at its stores that show the general service area, so you can easily figure that out. But companies will ask for proof of the new address. The T-Mobile spokesman warns that it has to be a legitimate address, and post office boxes will not work.

There is an intriguing escape clause in contracts with phone companies that offer ''roaming'' services, though it is intended to give the carrier a way out. When a cellphone is used outside the provider's network, calls are routed through another company's network. The consumer pays a monthly fee for this service, which the carrier uses to pay the other phone companies to handle those calls.

Roam too much and your phone company starts losing money. Find a place where your phone goes into roaming mode and make at least half your calls from there. Every carrier said they would cancel the contract, though it might take them a month or two to notice.

A more practical approach has been bandied about on a number of blogs since October, when many carriers raised the price of text messaging. They pointed out a clause in contracts that says if changes adversely affect your rates or service, the consumer has the right to end the contract early without paying a penalty.

It was not that easy. Some companies, like Cingular, now AT&T, refused to budge, according to its spokesman. Sprint was more accommodating, though a spokeswoman said Sprint approached early termination requests on case by case. That means the consumer has to argue with customer service.

Sprint says a customer will be released from a contract if a price change has a ''material adverse effect'' on the customer. In other words, prices have to go up, not down. The customer has to be actually using the service in which the price changed. How much they are using it is the critical factor. The spokeswoman said Sprint's ''customer care representatives'' have guidelines, but she was not going to reveal them.

Though the contract says customers have 30 days after a price change to get out of the contract, Sprint may be more generous. ''They can always call customer care and see if there is a way to reconcile,'' said Emmy Anderson, the Sprint spokeswoman.

Liza Tremblay, a 26-year-old owner of Bay Burger in Sag Harbor, N.Y., gave it a shot to get out of her contract with Verizon and avoid paying $175. (She wanted to use Cingular because colleagues told her the reception was better.) She followed a script she found on Consumerist.com. ''I used a lot of big words, and I think I got across the idea that I meant business,'' she said.

But then the Verizon service representative threw her a curve ball. They wanted her to fax her contract so they could see the clause she was referring to. She dug through her papers and found an old one -- she had been with Verizon almost 10 years -- and after a few more transfers to call center supervisors, they let her out. ''Obviously, they had a copy of the contract,'' Ms. Tremblay said.

More often than not, the company will steer the customer into a new calling plan rather than breaking the contract. ''Typically, a customer calling up is not dissatisfied with the service, they are dissatisfied with their plan,'' said Brenda Rainey, a Verizon spokeswoman. Nonetheless, she said, Verizon demands to see that a price increase has a significant impact on the consumer. ''We are going to look at usage patterns to see if it is material,'' she said.

In other words, after a lot of machination and arguing, you may not win in the end.

The solution might be, as it so often is these days, in the power of the Internet. All of the companies allow a contract to be signed over to someone else. So a number of entrepreneurs have created a new online business in trading those contracts. The best known are Celltradeusa.com and Cellswapper.com . For a fee, $20 at Celltradeusa and $15 at Cellswapper, these companies will match a contract holder to a buyer. The contract buyers pay no fee, providing them a way to save on a phone and on activation fees.

The sites have search engines so you can find a plan length, minutes and price that you like. Once the match is made, the cellphone company arranges the transfer.

The risk is that you may not find a buyer; Cellswapper, however, does not charge a fee until a match is made. Adam Korbl, the chief executive of Cellswapper, said his service makes about 100 matches a week and currently has 350 plans listed.

Be careful if you want to keep your phone number when you trade your account, which you are allowed to do. Some of the phone companies use this as a pressure point for keeping you on board, so make sure you arrange with the carrier to keep the number before you transfer the contract.

Derek C. F. Pegritz, an English composition instructor at Waynesburg College in western Pennsylvania, wants to switch cellphone carriers because of dropped calls, but he isn't sure how he'll do it.

''I'm shelling out $90 a month for a phone that basically sits there and collects dust,'' he said.

But getting out of his contract will cost him $170. Mr. Pegritz has tried to explore other ways to be released from the remaining year of his contract, but the best he hopes for is a compromise by Cellular One. ''I'm looking forward to that about as much as I'm looking forward to getting several teeth pulled next week,'' he said.

Follow-up Tip: A reader recently suggested a handy tool for bypassing automated call routing at call centers. Get Human (www.gethuman.com/us/ ) is a database of call center numbers and the secret codes needed to get to a human.

A list of useful cellphone company numbers can be found at http://consumersadvocate.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/cell-phone-company-phone-numbers/.