Posts tagged Wind Mobile

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.