By Eric Pettifor
A lot of folk have been doing away with their land lines these days and using their mobile phone for everything. I was on the verge of doing the same, until a major gig I’ve been doing for the last five years began to look uncertain, and I started to look for ways to economize. Since they laid me off last week, I’ve been congratulating myself on my foresight.
Initially I’d held on to the landline because I thought I needed one for ADSL, but that’s no longer the case. After that it was primarily an issue of reliability. My landline has 
no batteries, and its signal strength doesn’t vary with the weather. But when it looked like belt tightening time, I had the brilliant idea of dropping to the cheapest mobile plan I could find, and then using the mobile phone essentially as a kind of deluxe pager.
I did my research with regards to mobile plans here in Vancouver, and came to the conclusion that the best option was a 50 minute plan with free evenings and weekends ($20), plus voicemail and call display (part of a $12.00 option bundle) with Koodo. This was back around the end of August. I signed up for the plan and cancelled my plan with Telus Mobility.
Here’s where things began to go south, so pay attention if you’re planning to try something similar. Telus’s call centre lady seemed aggrieved that I was going with Koodo, especially since she could offer me a special deal which was very similar, but for half the price. For a moment I was tempted, but I was a bit pissed that they didn’t mention this on their web site. That’s because, the woman said, it was only for long time customers like me. In truth, I suspect that it’s secret because they don’t want long time customers paying through the nose to know about it, and will only pull it out when they think that they’re about to lose a customer. I told her to cancel, and she said my Telus Mobility account would cease to be on September 9th.
I got a cheap Samsung phone from Koodo which was better than the cheap Samsung phone I’d gotten with my Telus Mobility account. The account worked as advertised, other than the fact that even though Koodo and Telus Mobility are both owned by the same parent company, Telus, their web sites are obviously the product of different shops, with Koodo’s being the inferior. I never have seen its “minutes used this month” feature work, and the tab tracker is inconsistent. (The tab is Koodo’s version of a contract, so they can say they don’t have contracts but still ding you for the phone if you leave early.)
A couple of days ago, a Telus Mobility customer loyalty rep calls me up, again with the same half price offer. This time I decide to take him up on it since it really is a great deal, 50 minutes plus call display and voice messaging for $15; that’s much more like it. He also mentions that the Telus Mobility site has time-used tracking as well.
When I logged into telusmobility.com today to check things out, what did I discover, but that the lady who had said she was cancelling my original Telus Mobility account had not, in fact, cancelled it, so there was money owing on it for September. An angry call to Telus support revealed that it wasn’t cancelled because my call was marked “call dropped.”
That had me recalling how aggrieved this call centre worker, probably in India, was that I was cancelling. Seriously, why should she care? The only reason I can think of is that they have a system of rewards and penalties to incentivize workers, and that it’s a very bad thing there to allow a customer to cancel their account. So she just recorded it as a dropped call.
If they don’t reverse the September charges, I’ll be cancelling the bargain account as well, since there is only so much evil I’m prepared to tolerate. In my opinion, there are no good mobile phone companies, they all suck, but that will pretty much cement Telus Mobility’s place for me at the top of the suck list.
The lesson to take away from all this? Research the various options out there and pick the one that looks best. But before signing up for it, call your current provider and let them know what plan you’ve chosen to switch to. You may be surprised by what they’re prepared to counter offer to ensure your “loyalty.”
Then be careful if you do decide to switch, as they may attempt, if only as a consequence of their call centre policies, to screw you over.
DO NOT USE KOODO. What koodo has done to me: 1. Very nice at first,we made several long distance calls BETWEEN THE TWO PHONES and were never charged. 2.I ordered 2 phones for my 2 kids,was never able to hook them up because service was never available and after waiting for over an hour for a customer service representative she didnt know what to do.3 I missed a payment,they cut me off,I paid and set up pre-pay with my credit card,they activated my phone at no charge. 4. I recieved a text that all calls between family members were free including long distance. 5.This year at no time did I recieve any form of communication that you had to sign up for free long distance or roaming charges.Their commercial completely gives people the impression that only new customers have to sign up and considering the text I recieved and previously not being charged. I thought it was a non-issue. 6. They took advantage of my credit card and charged over 1,600.00 for 3 months worth of calls between my two cell phones.Credible companies will call you to inform you that you are being charged. 7.They refused to speak to the BBB. They have since charged me 25$ just to talk to their idiots and get no where,and have cut me off twice for not paying and extra 862$ and then charged a 60$ recconection charge twice without my consent.KOODO IS A SCAM
Hey,
Telus does the same thing to me all the time. During your call on the call center, they write notes, these notes don’t reflect what they’re telling you. I went over the notes with them hundreds of times, and to my surprise, the next time I call up, the notes are different?!?!?
It will be your best interest to make them write all the notes, then call back, and get another rep to read them out to you, they can’t change the notes, so you can always get them to write new notes that fix the old notes. After doing that, you should call back once again to confirm with another rep, that the notes say what you’ve agreed to in the contract. That’s the only surefire way to make it right with these crazy companies. The telus rep doesn’t care! Cover your own..
Cheers.
Following up: Telus Mobility rectified their mistake. Interestingly, when I called Telus support up about my landline and taking off a long distance package since I intended to use one of those services that give you a much cheaper rate if you dial a bunch of numbers prior to the one you actually want to call, they informed me that they could give me ultra low long distance rates. Not only that, but they’d throw in a free service, like voice mail or call display. And for a dollar less than what I was paying before!
Seriously, make it an annual event, possibly on your birthday, to look at what the competition is offering for high speed internet, mobile phone, and even land lines (esp. with regards to long distance). These companies want to keep you and may come across with much better offers. If you loyally pay the same rate for the same service year after year, you are a chump. Loyalty isn’t rewarded, threatened disloyalty is.