Canadians adore their cellphones, their internet and their television. But they despise the companies that supply them.
Canadians love to complain about the prices they pay and the service they get — or don’t get. Pity poor Telus, Shaw, Rogers and Bell: Their only solace is in their vast piles of money.
Now we have new numbers to measure the depths of our disdain, thanks to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services. The agency’s 2017-18 mid-term report says complaints about cable and wireless service shot up 73 per cent in the six months that ended in January.
In that period, complaints reached 6,849, compared with 3,955 the previous year. Beefs about internet and wireless made up the lion’s share of the figures. Given the way we gripe to each other, the only surprise is that the numbers aren’t higher.
Canadians, who are often told they pay the highest cellphone bills in the world, get grumpy about telecoms for a variety of reasons, including problems with bills, poor service, deceptive sales techniques and pricing that seems to cost more no matter what you do.
No industry wants to be hated by its customers, even if those customers have nowhere else to go. Telecoms should learn from the complaint numbers and try harder to meet Canadians’ expectations.
