Here, dear reader, is another example of why Canadians rank telecom companies somewhere between Gary Bettman and herpes on the Likability Index:
North Saanich’s Vicki Bridge got a notice from Rogers Wireless saying it was about to charge her $2 a month for the paper invoice she gets by snail mail.
Other cellphone providers already charge for paper statements. Banks do, too. Rogers actually introduced such fees in August 2011 for new wireless customers and those who change their terms of service. This April, it expanded the practice to include existing clients such as Bridge.
Bridge balked. The extra $2 was contrary to the three-year contract she signed two years ago, she argued. “I called Rogers and they agreed with me that a contract is a contract. I can’t give them notice that I will be paying $2 less a month for some arbitrary reason, and they can’t charge me for something that is already included in the contract at time of agreement. They deleted the $2 charge.”
How much, she asked Monday, is Rogers making from similar customers who don’t challenge the fee?
The company can argue that it is doing the green thing in nudging customers toward online billing, saving 1,000 tonnes of paper a year, but this is still the kind of story that drives fed-up consumers crazy. They believe that left to its own devices (as it were), Big Telecom would nickel-and-dime us to death with unexpected charges. We might love our phones as though they came wrapped in bacon, but this does not extend to the phone companies.
It’s against this background of mistrust that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced new rules for telecoms Monday. The regulator’s wireless code will apply to new contracts as of Dec. 2.
The biggest changes:
- Customers will be able to get out of contracts for cellphones and other mobile devices after two years without paying a cancellation penalty. (As it stands, it can be cheaper to get out of a bad marriage than a bad phone plan.) The intent is to make it easier to jump to a competitor offering better terms.
The new rules won’t actually ban longer contracts, as some critics wanted, but the lack of a penalty after two years will likely have the same effect. Contracts of no more than two years are already the norm in Europe and the U.S.
Right now, three-year contracts are standard for Canadians who don’t want to pay the full price of their smartphones up front. While the new rule will make it easier for consumers to walk away after two years, it will also shorten the length of time people have to pay off their phones, which the industry warns could push up monthly bills.
- Companies must “unlock” cellphones within 90 days of being asked; this will make it easier for consumers to switch providers, as locked phones only work on a particular provider’s network. If you pay for your device in full, you can demand that it be unlocked immediately.
- Capping monthly charges for extra data at $50 and for international data roaming at $100 will prevent “bill shock.”
- Buyers will be able to return new cellphones within 15 days, if they’re not used too much.
- Contracts must be in plain language and easy to understand.
In an ideal world, it wouldn’t be necessary for the CRTC to wade in like this, but in an ideal world we wouldn’t feel like we were playing chess with Bobby Fischer every time we negotiated a phone deal, either — roaming charges, $8 caller ID, “administration fees” that moo like a cash cow, fine print strewn with more landmines than Cambodia, trapping us in contracts richer and longer than Roberto Luongo’s. We are keenly, glumly aware of being in an unequal relationship with an industry that is, if not monopolistic, then at least monolithic. Monday, the CRTC tried to balance the scales.
