The Holy Trinity of Happiness
Bad Customer Service, @Telus Be Thy Name.
UPDATE: I just spoke to a front line CSR at Telus and she was really great! See my next post where I take a new perspective on Telus.
On a side note, before I begin, I wanna say that WordPress for BlackBerry kinda sucks. I had this post all written up yesterday, saved it to drafts and it’s nowhere to be found!
Moving on:
Courtesy of Wirelessnorth.ca
Well it’s official, the Canadian cell phone carrier market is a real crapshow. Did you know that Canadians have the most expensive cell phone carrier plans in the world? This is not an exaggeration! Here are the stats to prove it! I think they problem is caused by the “Big three” carriers who have up till this point had a complete monopoly on cell service. Although this year we finally got some competition in the market from Wind, Mobilicity and Public, I’m not really seeing prices go down on service and what’s more, based on personal experience, it doesn’t seem that the big three, particularly Telus, are hungry to beat the competition!
Why? Because although the new cell phone startups are indeed pretty good, the big three knows that unless you’re in a major city center like Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver, you’re pretty much S.O.L. and stuck with choosing either Rogers, Telus or Bell (and maybe Fido). Maybe in the future, IF the new guys can build enough cell towers and coverage to compete we may see some real movement but until then the big three are still running the show.
I had a run-in yesterday with Telus retentions and I’ve gotta say that their retentions department was a nightmare. Here’s the skinny: I signed up almost a year ago with Telus with an unlocked phone and got a whole lot of features without a contract. They must have been so worried about Wind that they were willing to go the extra mile. Up till now I thought Telus was great and after being a mistreated Bell customer for years, I was happy that Telus was so accommodating. But this lady from retentions tells me that unless I sign a contract, the features I enjoyed for the past year will be charged to me AND that I must buy a new phone in order to enter said contract. Why the hell would I have to buy a new phone to sign a contract!? They said that “it’s the only way to enter a contract.” Ridiculous. To read a censored transcript of our conversation, click here. I tried to keep it as accurate as possible, at least from memory. I censored out the parts where she got all personal and went into semantic when I was trying to stick to business. Those of you who I’ve done business with know well that when I am in business mode I am very stuck to the facts.
You need only take one look at an iPhone or BlackBerry forum and look around a bit and you will see people foaming at the mouth about bad service. You would think that with the new kids in town on the scene (Wind, Mobilicity etc) that the big three would be a little more professional in being competitive.
So here’s the deal Telus. I’m not buying a new phone from you unless I need one. I don’t want to go on a contract but if you just can’t live without it, I will sign one for a year and then you can grandfather my features when it’s over.
I’va had good service with Fido so far, but that,s not without having to speak to many supervisors at their call center. I dropped my nice Sony Ericsson in a puddle in march. It was un unlocked phone I got from when I was in the UK. I chose, willingly, to go with Fido, and everything was good. Until I dropped said phone in water. I called them, wanting to get that Blackberry for 0$ with a 3 years (YES THREE YEARS) contract. But no, since I was already with them I would have to pay 150$ to get said phone.
My answer ? Guys, I am willing to give you business, even sign a friggin’ contract and be stuck with you for 3 years, and yet, you can’t give me the Blackberry at 0$ as advertised ?
Answer : No, unfortunately.
Me: Ok, so since I don’t have a contract with you, I can just choose to go give my business to Telus, since they will give me my Blackberry for 0$ with a contract. I mean. You are giving your customers away right now.
Answer from them : OK I will speak to my supervisor.
Got my Blackberry, 0$, end of story.
But yeah, to have experienced cellphone service in the UK, I can say Canada really does suck. We have high cellphone bills for half of what the family is getting overseas. They are starting to implement some nice features, but it will never compete with what I used to have back in Europe. Thanks to the CRTC, who first didn’t even allow competition inbetween companies, so they could charge astonomic bills to their customers without the fear of loosing them to a competitor, since every single company was charging pretty much the same thing for their services. This has changed, but how are the new companies supposed to be able to compete with the bigs guys who have been around for YEARS ? The game’s not won yet.
Yeah my point was the same. I was even willing to sign up and they still give me all that BS. What’s the point of having a retentions department if they don’t do anything for you that a regular frontline CSR can already do!?
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I’m looking at this link you referenced – and it seems according to the 3rd chart, we’re actually paying less ARPU than most countries, based on penetration rate. That says a lot to me – that we may be the “most expensive” but when you take into consideration the size of this country and the penetration rates of mobile, we’re actually not at all the most expensive.
Geographic size of the country has nothing to do with it!
Look at Russia which is on the very edge of that list and has a larger geographical area than Canada. Area to be considered when judging coverage is not even really based on geography but rather it is based on population.
Canada’s population is NOT spread out. 51% (according to the 2001 Census) of all Canadians live in the 401-Autoroute20 corridor (from Windsor to Quebec City) which is not that big of an area to cover. (It takes about 15 hours to drive and is around 1400km according to GoogleMaps). Size of the country in this discussion is largely irrelevant. When and if the cellular service providers actually start building networks to cover literally all of Canada they can start complaining about cost of building out and maintaining a network that covers a country Canada’s size. Until then, their task is not that much more difficult than most small countries and definitely not to be compared to a place like the USA with 10 times the population spread out over a geographic area not that much smaller than Canada’s (and I am pretty sure if you don’t include Hudson’s Bay and other huge bodies of water the USA would actually be larger). Oh and the USA’s ARPU might be only a couple dollars less than Canada’s but remember that they charge NO ROAMING OR LONG DISTANCE.
Thanks for the comment Dan! You make a very good point about Russia – didn’t even see them there on the list.
So where does mobile penetration fit into this equation? Because Russia looks to have 150% subscription rate per capita while Canada still sits at 65%. Don’t you think that would account for some higher costs? It’s fixed costs to a carrier spread over a smaller customer base, no?
Well then we get into a chicken-egg debate owing to the question of did cheaper prices mean higher penetration or did higher penetration equal cheaper prices?
Also when you look at 150% penetration how do they factor out dormant or unused accounts? Remember in Canada the subscribers kill prepaid accounts that havent been used within 3 months (MAYBE 6 months). I am pretty sure the same rules don’t apply in Europe.
Also it is a completely different market there in that their landline payment/plans are set up completely differently allowing them to have had unlimited free incoming on cell phones since before 2000! (A relatively recent feature here in Canada and something used as a trade-off for less outgoing minutes on a plan whereas there it is just a fact of cell service)
Further, the CRTC has barred any foreign company from investing in Canadian cellphone companies to the point of controlling interest in the company. Therefore, it has kept the major world players like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, etc out of the Canadian market because why should they invest in building a network when they don’t and can’t control it. The CRTC which is ostensibly ‘protecting Canadians’ is what has allowed Rogers, Telus, and Bell to have a triopoly/triarchy in the Canadian telecom market and charge whatever the heck they want because no competition could come in to challenge them for the past 20 years.
Yes, it does seem to be a bit of chicken or egg debate around those two.
But thanks for the information on how this is calculated. I appreciate it.
I’m not sure if the size of our country has really an bearing on this, considering our population is less than the state of California. True the numbers may be skewed because although our country is big, it’s most densely populated along the southern border.
That aside, we actually pay less than the US for voice plans, but it’s the fees over top of everything (according to the wirelessnorth article) that drives the prices over the edge. You will recall system access fees.
Completely different comment – Michael, re:WordPress for BlackBerry. It seems to think there’s a difference between phone drafts & regular drafts so things that are drafts on your phone DO NOT get sent to your regular drafts folder. It is annoying I agree, I’ll often use something like Evernote to do the transfer from BB to PC
bell is really bad too….
i had to call them three times in the past two months and go back to the store once…
won all the arguments but still…
wasted so much of my time….
I have to agree. I had funeral pictures for my Father on Monday, on Wednesday morning my BB 9900 went bust. I brought it into a Telus store, the girl knew right away that it was the display had blown, she said it is happening alot. They proceeded to make me pay a deposit for a loaner phone - a cheap curve and told me all my pictures were lost. They said it will take 3-6 weeks to fix. I got upset that after 8 months the BB would break, I got upset because they are charging my credit card $150 dollars for the loaner. I got upset because I lost 3 weeks of emails because I didn’t back up because I was busy with a father in the hospital. I had to cancel all my appointments (funeral home follow up to pay, meeting with bank to change account information, meeting with MP office for change of CPP) so that I could get home to set up the new phone with passwords, old emails, etc. It took me 3 hours to resync, back up, restore etc…..and still the phone is awful and I have also lost all the condolences sent by family and friends….now I don’t know who to say thank you to. I called Telus to complain, all they did was give me the run around . They offered my $20 dollars off my next bill. I spent more than $20 dollars in gas rushing home to set up my phone. Telus blamed it on technology and pretty much said since I have a good plan already they won’t do more than that. I am furious and will not let this rest now. They lost pictures I will never get back, I lost emails from all people sending condolences, and I lost 1 full day running around trying to get back up. I will be writing a letter to the Head of Telus, Mr. Darren Entwistle to let him know all this – if something isn’t done they will not hear the last from me…..BTW the Telus Loyalty department sucks !!! Thanks for nothing Curtis and Melissa !!!!! Funny how quickly they threw Blackberry under the bus saying it’s just Blackberry technology . Funny they quickly had Blackberry to blame, but when I asked them why do they sell it at top market prices if the product sucks and can’t last 8 months…..that’s not their concern. Basically Telus will sell you anything for top dollar and not stand by the product they sell. Round 1 to Telus, but this is a heavy weight battle of 15 rounds of bare knuckle brawling now.