TELUS Canada royally hoses its wireless broadband subscribers
TELUS, one of the large Canadian phone companies, is playing really scummy tricks on its wireless broadband subscribers. A Slashdot post has the dirt:
"Canadian telco TELUS sold a bunch of (expensive) Unlimited EV-DO aircard accounts last winter and are now summarily canceling them or forcing people to switch to much less valuable plans. TELUS is citing 'Violations,' but their Terms Of Service (see #5) are utterly vague and self-contradictory. The TELUS plans were marketed as being unlimited, without the soft/hard caps that the other providers had at the time. They were purchased by a lot of rural Canadians who had no other choice except dialup. Now TELUS is forcing everyone to switch from a $75 Unlimited plan to a $65 1GB plan, and canceling those who won't switch. Have a look at the thread at Howardforums, a discussion of the TELUS ToS (in red at the bottom), an EV-DO blogger who's been a victim, a post at Electronista, and of course Verizon getting fined for doing the same thing! Michael Geist has taken an interest as well."You know, for a developed nation, Canada has some amazingly crappy broadband providers with decidedly medieval ideas about the Internet. TELUS Forcing Customers Off Unlimited Plans
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I just spent two years in Canada, but am now back in the States. Even though broadband ain't what it should be here in the US, compared to Canada, its heaven.
My girlfriend (still in Canada) and I will both start downloading the same thing (oft. TV Series/Season). By morning, I have it, by then I usually get an email from her that say, "I still have 2 wks left on my download and I got an email from my ISP saying I've already used up my month's bandwidth allocation."
Canada has very weak anti-trust laws, so I have been told. Even compared to America's not great anti-trust laws, this makes a big difference not only in business operations but also seems to affect people's sense of accepting that businesses operate on an un-level playing field with everyday citizens.
Canadians, please correct me if I have been mis-informed. Extra bonus points for words with Queen's English spellings and any Mackenzie Brother cliches ;-).
I removed myself from Telus' customer lists more than a year ago, after more than 10 years, because I felt so raped so much of the time.
My current cellular provider is Fido (Rogers subsidiary) and they just changed one of the playing fields as well: text messages to the US used to be treated like Canadian ones, and there was no extra charge. I had a couple hundred texts included in my service "bundle" and used a fair number of them texting my boyfriend in the US. Then my bill for last month came and it was 75% higher than usual...because now they're charging for US texts.
My bad for missing a fine print notice, but the ability to change a contracted agreement on the fly, to me, is wrong. I should have another year and a half with free texts all over North America, IMO. What happened to grandfathering?
I'm being hosed, eh?
> You know, for a developed nation...
It's regressed quite a bit since you left, Cory. Within a year of the Conservatives implementing a business-friendly meat inspection process, we're now in the middle of a listeriosis outbreak that's killed some 15 people. It's just one of their great gifts to the land, and that telecom gets away with this crap and Bell's throttling is just the digital side of that recklessness. It's not the Canada you grew up in, that's for sure.
Par for the course.
Telus knows it has virtual immunity from prosecution and is incredibly arrogant because of it. This isn't even close to the first time they have started a program where they breach contracts with thousands of their customers.
In another case - Telus "Sales" CSRs for the home internet division will tell you that they can reduce the bandwidth transfer limit at any time even when you are "in a contract". They will charge you overage and send you to collections. Sure, you can complain to the government, but it's a waste of time. ETF if you want to change to a provider who thinks contracts only work 1 way. This illegal and customer hostile attitude is common among all departments.
Yes, if you hire a lawyer and sue them, they will often waive overage and settle. But you're out the legal fees for the lawyer. The only way to win is not to play.
About 2 years ago, they tried to push bandwidth limits down as much as they could - down to 20gb for the home package. Keep in mind that your limit in the states will be probably around 200-300gb.
It's back up to 60gb, I guess someone figured out that the cost of 40gb of data was less than the cost of people tying up CSRs on the phone. Still. Virtually no ISPs in the states have anything close to a 60gb limit.
Telus also blocked access to the telus telecom workers union website during a labour dispute. Classy - it was on BB
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/24/phone-company-blocks.html
Virtually no repercussions.
Oh... plan pricing details... $40 for 8mb of EVDO sounds reasonable, right? Ditto with the "overage" billed at $8/mb
http://www.telusmobility.com/on/business_solutions/connect_megabyte_rate_plan.shtml
Canada needs a cleansing of its telecom companies. All the incumbents suck, provide crap service and support and charge an arm and a leg.
#2 - There is supposed to be oversight, but the problem is that the people doing the oversight don't care / refuse to punish bad behavior like this.
#3 - Think you're getting screwed? What's cool is the new "fee" for Rogers wireless prepaid.
Not only does Rogers charge you when people leave you voicemails, they also charge you when you listen to them. Nice double ding.
The new "fee" is that you are charged a "voicemail received" fee (1 airtime minute), even if someone didn't actually leave a voice mail.
Do keep in mind that this isn't isolated to Canada. Equally abusive things have happened south of the border in the last year. The cell phone companies are terrible for this sort of thing - Incoming texts didn't used to be charged and now, people, whose contracts stated incoming texts are free are now being charged for incoming texts / spam.
I used TELUS before but changed since they tried to bitch at me for bandwidth. I'm with Shaw right now, and btw I download stuff just as fast as the counterparts in US. I like how people from US act all superior about their internet, but yet they are getting anally raped by their providers i.e.: Comcast and AT&T.
Speaking of Comcast, here in Pittsburgh they dropped 4 channels from their analog lineup that had shows my SO and I watch (MythTV FTW). The CSR I spoke to assured me that they were a business, and had made a business decision to drop the channels to support more HDTV content. How does that help the customers to have channels dropped, and still pay the same ammount? Their CSR robot read pieces from his script.
Of course, there are no alternatives to Cable Internet, even though there is a separate provider that services the folks across the street. DSL is a sad excuse, FIOS is not available in the City, and just having basic cable drops the price of Internet from $65/month to $45/month (at a cost of $12).
Although I do get a better HD signal from an antenna, and get all the channels Comcast provides, they do include TBS -- one additional channel above the federally mandated absolute minimum. My choices are to pay, pay more, or pay alot more -- not really a choice.
cough cough FTA cough cough
Keep in mind that "wireless broadband" is not the same as regular broadband ... because it's wireless.
:)
Canadian cellphone company divisions are ten times worse than their landline counterparts, with one exception: TELUS. My experiences with their crap DSL service took place about about 3-4 years ago, and I understand that they've improved a teensy bit since then on the landline/DSL side, but I doubt that it was enough. I still have a TELUS cellphone, however, and that contract is over in 2009. Not renewing. The packages are just too expensive for too little in return.
For actual broadband, I use Shaw. Shaw is awesome - responsive, fast, and affordable. I use them for Internet, Landline digital phone, and cable (with their Motorola PVR). The only issue I have with them is actually just with that Motorola PVR. It has some bugs ... heh. Everything else is great, and way better than TELUS.
I kind of wish that Shaw would get into cellphones ... but I fear it might ruin them if they tried. It seems to have done that for everyone else.
To no. #10. If you notice a month ago or so when the government sold the spectrum rights, you notice there was an Alberta ltd company that has purchased a bunch of them. If you do a search on that company it says it's owned by Shaw, so in a year or so I think we will be seeing something coming out of Shaw.
The nice thing with Shaw is that they are bad for investors but good for customer. Yes they have a steady low percentage growth *which investor not like, they want money now and not later*, but they are customer service driven company.
PS: I don't work for Shaw
Telus also switched users to paying for incoming and outgoing text messages this week. However, at the same time they did that, they switched their text plans so that instead of unlimited messages for $15, subs now have to choose more expensive bundles of services they may not want.
It's all about unethical wringing of every last dime they can out of their customers.
These kinds of stories make be glad I live in Saskatchewan where SaskTel, the govt-operated telecom, provides great internet and digital cable services at very competitive prices. Not only is the service (generally) top notch, but it also means local competitors have to offer similar deals to stay in business. Not surprisingly, Telus doesn't have much of a presence in the province.
Canadian regulators are toothless old lions, and the big corps like Shaw, Bell, Telus et al. have a great deal of pull in Ottawa.
We just don't have the population base to warrant a whole batch of companies coming in to generate a lot of competition. The Big Boys have the market locked down, and there just isn't enough of a customer base to allow newcomers to have a reasonable chance of success. Instead you get companies creating subsidiaries (FIDO, KOODOO) that provide an illusion of there being more competition.
When you don't live in a large urban centre in Canada your choices can even be fewer.
I switched to Telus from Rogers purchasing a new Motorola Q for $299 with a three-year contract only to find out that I received no reception in my building. After explaining my dilemma to customer service and higher up, the continued response was "we don't guarantee reception and you signed a three-year contract. There is nothing we can do but you can pay the cancellation fee of $20/month for your 3 year contract."
Basically $720 was the only way out of their service contract. All together out of pocket was $1019 for the phone and to cancel service that didn't even work, not adding taxes in. In response I had to switch back over to Rogers and finally after 2 1/2 years of paying $45 per month for nothing, I have cancelled my Telus account and am paying a final cancellation fee of $120 left on 6 months for absolutely no used service and a phone that was never used.
If this isn't proof not to go with Telus, I don't know what is. They are thieves and don't care about their customers, only their pocketbook.