walkah: Wireless rates in Canada
9
Apr
2007
Wireless rates in Canada
Alternatively titled "up yours, Rogers". I've had a post like this brewing for a long while about how completely out of whack wireless rates are in Canada compared to the rest of the world (including, shamefull, the US). I grumble every time I get notice of my most recent Rogers. I'm not a telecom-industry expert, what I know is that my friends in Europe and the US (and even when my brother was in Rwanda!) pay a whole lot less for their mobile phones than I do - a lot less. Well, sure enough, TorCamper Thomas Purves posted an interesting graph on his Flickr stream clearly illustrating just how.... messed up the situation is:
A picture is worth a thousand words...
UPDATE: Tom has posted more on his site. Depressing, really.
posted 2:30pm:
James Walker
@BeCircle @timmillwood @JohnAlbin thanks for the reports, guy... the ops guys are looking into it ... I'll let ya know soon :)
2 days 18 min ago
I am switching to a U.S.
I am switching to a U.S. plan because even with roaming it's cheaper. I've had enough of the price gouging. Rogers in particular has pulled some interesting and unscrupulous things since I signed with them and not just once but, several times. It's not just the data rates that are over the top either. Comparing U.S. plans to any Canadian plan and I'm voting with my feet. Rogers must be getting a clue because their buy out price has gone from two hundred dollars PER PHONE to four hundred dollars even for existing customers if you add ANY new service to your phone plan. If you add any "features" such as extra minutes your buy out automatically goes to the higher priced buy out and you are not always told this. In fact you are rarely told this at all.
One rep warned me not to add anything else to my plan at all till the contract ran out as I would be automatically put on the higher buy out rate. Well, it was too late. I had already been switched to the higher buy out without my knowledge. If landline services do things like slamming it's against the law. How are they getting away with things like this?
I was also lied to when I was sold the plan. Yes, lied to. I bought a Sony phone that had a memory card with a certain amount of room on the card at a very high plan rate. The very next day they had the SAME phone in the store with double the space on the card. They admitted knowing that by nine the next morning I could have got the same phone with double the room for the same price but, said I'd already signed the contract and therefore if I switched phones it would add another year to my contract!
I will continue to write the news papers about this issue but, I'm done with Canadian wireless services for the time being. High rates, poor service, choke hold contracts, enough. Are "The Sopranos" running our wireless services here? It certainly seems like it.
Write to the competition bureau
Write to the competition bureau
http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/internet/index.cfm?itemID=130&lg=e
Great blog!
Great site. Was searching for some blogs similar to mine and I just added your rss feed to my reader! Look forward to the next post!
Someone's being paid off.
I can't believe that the mobile phone industry - including their rates. Obviously most Canadians are upset about it. Sure - it's money right? I for one think that the average Canadian doesn't mind paying what's fair or right. But when our neighbors are being charged WAY less for almost every single service - it's hard to swallow it and smile. Their internet - TV etc, WAY cheaper. But as you've outlined - when the rates for usage and data plans are where they are with the choke hold contracts are where they are - it would seem evident that some people pretty high up that are in a position to change things are being paid off.