Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges 91
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service. The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks."
Those Jerks! (Score:1)
So many extra fees (Score:5, Informative)
Bell is horrible for the extra fees.
On my Landline, I have a 911 fee, I have a network access fee and I have a touch tone fee.
Yes a Touch Tone fee. Bell Canada has not moved the extra fee for touch tone service into their service packages. I cannot get a new pulse line, nor can I have touch tone removed from my line. There are customers who still had only pulse and so they did not get charged this fee, but you had to actively refuse touch tone service when it was being rolled out. This was ~25 years ago.
911 fee is from when 911 was being rolled out and was mandated by law. Bell put the fee there to show that it was required by law and that's why your bill was higher than before. This was 15-20 years ago.
The network access fee is the fee for Bell Canada to connect to it's own network. This was from when their monopoly was dismantled and 3rd parties were given access to their lines. Bell Canada's end user arm had to pay for access to their network. So they put in the fee to explain why the bill was higher. This also was 15-20 years ago.
You give Bell a reason to put in an extra fee, they'll take it and never give it back, no matter how unnecessary it has become.
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Rogers put the 911 bill on their bills too. Probably because Bell does, and they don't want their bills to look higher. It's all BS really
Re:So many extra fees (Score:4, Interesting)
That is why I got rid of Verizon here. I had two lines, one for business and one for personal. Both were charged the tone dialing fee per month and the personal line was being charged $3/month to be unlisted and unpublished and the business line was being charged $3/month to be listed and published. Funny.
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That's funny to the point of being absurd. One has to wonder what would happen if no fee were paid.
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One has to wonder what would happen if no fee were paid.
You haven't been listening. That's an impossible situation, like divide by zero.
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No, I saw it. Thanks. The impossible situation was what I meant.
"Ok, sir, now would you want your number listed or unlisted?"
"I don't care."
"But, sir, you have to choose."
"No, no I don't. I choose not to choose."
"But, sir...."
"Tell you what, you decide. I'll accept whatever you choose. But since it's your choice, then you pay for it."
"[pulling hair in between muttered imprecations and threats]"
That's what I saw as the absurdity that AC pointed out. It's simply an outgrowth of the way companies find wa
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Then you'd be charged the No-Fee Convenience Fee, which is only $4.95 per month.
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Ouch.
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Uh... Bell IS a monoploy (Score:5, Informative)
While they're slowly losing to cell phone companies and such, the Bell company in question DOES have a legal monopoly on the land line system in the area. Given that things like the 'touch tone' fee are known to piss people off, it's probably because they're regulated on what they can charge as part of the 'basic fee', having to go before a board or whatever to get that increased. Meanwhile, with sufficient justification they can add a fee, but no regulatory structure to REMOVE said fees, thus the continuation of them long past when it made sense.
Sort of like how we had a tax here in the USA meant to pay for the last spanish-american war* that was finally ended less than a decade ago. Or how tolls will go up to 'pay for the construction' of some road or bridge, but never get taken down, even after all the construction costs have been recouped several times over.
*Which a lot of US history student don't even know about.
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Bell is one of the largest cell providers in Canada, it's not losing to anyone. Especially since in Canada there's a defacto monopoly on providing services since we have "canadian ownership rules" which dictate whether a company is even allowed to operate here.
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Bell isn't a true monopoly. Not anymore anyway. They are a defacto monopoly because when deregulation happened Bell was not forced to sell of their lines, or spin ownership of them into a separate company.
They are required by law to share, and do so as begrudgingly as they can.
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But a little while ago they were planning to raise their data rates, which meant *everyones* data rate was going to go up, no matter what their service provider, because Bell owns the vast majority of the internet lines across the entire country.
They *are* effectively a monopoly, just as our cellphone carriers (Bell included) charge roughly the same high rates (Canadians pay some of the highest fees in the world) because there is *no* real competition, just the appearance of it. Most of the smaller provider
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While they're slowly losing to cell phone companies and such, the Bell company in question DOES have a legal monopoly on the land line system in the area. Given that things like the 'touch tone' fee are known to piss people off, it's probably because they're regulated on what they can charge as part of the 'basic fee', having to go before a board or whatever to get that increased. Meanwhile, with sufficient justification they can add a fee, but no regulatory structure to REMOVE said fees, thus the continuation of them long past when it made sense.
Sort of like how we had a tax here in the USA meant to pay for the last spanish-american war* that was finally ended less than a decade ago. Or how tolls will go up to 'pay for the construction' of some road or bridge, but never get taken down, even after all the construction costs have been recouped several times over.
*Which a lot of US history student don't even know about.
I cant understand your remaining with a landline. I took a voip provider (minimum use, with North American calling, caller id, call waiting, conferencing, emails with missed messages and whatever. I got their little adapter box onto the router. I bought a ups for the router, the adapter box and for the cordless phones in the house. Last time we had a power failure (I test by pulling the main breaker), I still had phone service for hours. I used Vonage.
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I cant understand your remaining with a landline.
I don't have a landline. I said that they have a legal monopoly on landlines. There's a difference. I'm also not in the area.
Still, some reasons:
1. Comes effectively for free with bundles. The only reason I don't have one is to avoid the various taxes and fees, which actually end up being more than the basic charge for one. From memory: $2.50 for local 911, $1.50 for state 911*, USF charge of $5, sales tax, regulatory fee, etc...
2. Remote monitoring. Living in an area where freezing is a real proble
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The Fees are historical. They were added on at a time where the service was controversial, so they were separated from the service price in an effort to be transparent. But now that those services are common and expected, they leave the fees there so their advertised price will be lower than the actual price. Right now I'm paying $50 for a service that was advertised to me for $30.
I'm not happy and intend to leave, but my line was in bad shape so I'm having work done on it so I don't want to change my servi
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I know I used to live there and it was great. I don't understand why we have to do it ass-backwards here in North America. The tipping in restaurants and bars is a great example. in Europe the staff gets reasonable pay and serve all customers equally, here they pre-judge you based only on your appearance and if they think you're not a good tipper they won't give you any attention. Awful.
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At least in Ontario and Canada for the GST the taxes are separate so that you know exactly what you are paying and it is broken down. So the store IS charging $25 for the toaster, and the gov't is taking an additional 13%(in ontario). They thought about having both prices on the tag, but that was lobbied away as being to complex to implement.
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No I agree the sticker price should be after tax, I was just explaining WHY it is what it is here. The gov't wants you to know exactly what they are taking and the retail establishments want to only put the lower price on the sticker. the reason it's not separate with gas is because we pump before we pay and it's metered. If it was pay before pump the could easily have it as a separate item.
There are reasons for everything, they may be stupid reasons but there are reasons.
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*sigh*
I never said I agreed with the reasons, I just explained why. If you're going to refute something, you better know the position of the other side through and through otherwise you could be blindsided.
Everything has a reason, not all reasons are good.
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In BC we've had successive right wing governments that campaign on lower taxes as they're good for the economy. So instead of having a tax on that toaster that is a percentage, they have an environment fee that's $10. Since the fee is the same whether you pay $25 for the toaster or buy the $100 toaster it hits the poor the hardest. There are many similar examples so that many purchases are way higher then expected, especially if you're poor. Since obviously the rich need to keep all their money, it's only l
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One of the reasons that is bandied about is that advertising regions do not match up with state borders so differing sales taxes would cause the advertising to be wrong. It does piss me off when nothing in a $1 store is actually $1 though. I'm glad Europe got its shit together to get rid of most of these extra unavoidable fees.
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Europe generally has national taxes so prices are consistent throughout a country. The U.S. and to a lesser extent Canada have a hodgepodge of state/province and local taxes. If we required stores to post after-tax prices, it would make comparison shopping impossibly complicated. A widget would be $10.77 at one Best Buy and $10.45 at another, while someone else would post saying they got it at Frys for $10.55. By adding the tax on afterwa
I don't care about taxes (Score:2)
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"you can do the same thing with the European system. On the receipt you just have to break down the advertised 9.95 Euro price into merchandise and taxes."
The national sales tax (VAT, or the local-language equivalent) is always printed on the receipt in the EU. Other taxes that come to mind: tourist tax on hotel stays, which is also printed on the receipt (city-dependent fee, not always listed up-front) and "extra costs" on plane tickets which used to be treacherous but must be included in the ticket price
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You can still get that information over here, it's typically printed on the receipt.
So the sticker will say simply â19.95 or whatever, but the receipt will list the actual item-cost and the taxes separately.
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So BS to it can't be done. And as posted below it would be nice to be able to compare after tax.
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The fact that some of our states are larger them some of your countries might give you more of an understanding of why every state is different. Honestly why should those that live in one street town USA pay the same rate as those in huge cities with a massive infrastructure.
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And yet, living in an economic union where national and county taxes differ (and even currency might differ), I can order something from anywhere within this said union and know upfront what it will cost since all prices are all inclusive. The sheepfarmer on a Greece island pays the same for a product itself from the same store/seller as the business man in downtown London. Only variable is shipping costs.
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Why wouldn't you include the taxes in your comparisons? Still money out of your pocket.
In my experience (extensive) places where tips are not expected or where they are added to the bill have uniformly horrible service.
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The waiter/waitress here still gets paid and are subject to minimum wage laws. The tip is just extra (tips are more a cultural phenomenon anyway - in some places it's actually an insult to leave a tip).
If by 'here' you mean the U.S., you should know that there is a 'special' lower minimum wage paid to waitstaff based on the argument that tips will make up the difference. If nobody tips, they will certainly not be able to pay the rent.
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You can't generalize that across all of Europe, unless "minimal tipping" means anything less than 15% in a restaurant. Tipping conventions vary quite a bit over Europe (based on the travel guides that I've seen). And for instance, in the UK, the 10% service charge on restaurant bills seems to be optional in some cases, although I don't visit the UK often enough to grasp the substle det
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My dad refused to pay for touch tone in the US, and he had his ancient, black Bakelite indestructible phone upstairs for decades. It was idiotic for the phone company, which had long since converted to computers for both signal types. But they wanted to charge for the "premium" touch tone.
As for this, the company claims it's required nationwide by regulation. Fair enough. Show the money went for 911 elsewhere, and not oopsidentally into your pocket.
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"oopsidentally" - what a fine, wonderful, sensical word!
I'll return two for the gift: u-trou, and flutterby (perhaps the best descriptive noun I've met)
I wouldn't mind having my old desk telephone. Tedious when in a hurry; perforce gives time to think before speaking.
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Gotta love the old bakelite phones. If someone breaks in, you can bash him over the head with the phone confident that it will still work so you can call the cops to collect the body.
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Every hardline in North America still can use pulse. It's required. So the computers that run the switches understand pulses (also it'll work on any phone, just hit the button to hang it up enough times to dial). My Grandmother in law never got touch tone, so she was never charged for it. Until there isn't a single client that has pulse only service the fee could be argued as valid.
It's stupid, but valid.
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It's not really valid since it costs nothing to provide and landlines are still regulated monopolies.
Re:So many extra fees (Score:5, Interesting)
My parents still have pulse dialing.. Every once in a while Bell tries to sneak the Tone dialing onto their bill and they have to call and have it taken off. The funny thing is, I bet is costs Bell more now to supply Pulse dialing than Tone.
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es a Touch Tone fee. Bell Canada has not moved the extra fee for touch tone service into their service packages. I cannot get a new pulse line, nor can I have touch tone removed from my line. There are customers who still had only pulse and so they did not get charged this fee, but you had to actively refuse touch tone service when it was being rolled out. This was ~25 years ago.
Almost as bad as the AT&T white page listing fees. It's $0.35/mo to be listed in the phone book, and $0.45/mo NOT to be liste
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tell them "both" and then angrily call demanding a refund for whichever one they failed to do.
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They're all horrible. Telus charges me $5 for not making enough long distance calls, $9 for call display (which the wife insists on having) and $35 for crappy dial-up. They have package deals if you get high speed but they sure as hell aren't ever going to upgrade the old copper lines around here. They might put in a cell tower if they're paid enough by BC Hydro (government run power company) so they can actually use that expensive smart meter that they installed on the pretext of saving me money and fixing
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Try buying a new phone and see how many other fees they have.
There are a ton, and even when they offer promotions to waive some, there are always others.
As part of the promotion to sign another 3 year contract as an existing customer, they waived the "administration fee".
However when you go to get your actual phone, you have to now go to a brink and mortar Bell Store, who will charge you an "upgrade fee", which apparently is something totally different than an administration fee.
If I didn't absolutely need
Unfortunately (Score:1)
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Instead, being rather lenient, the court doesn't discourage that kind of behavior in companies.
FTFY (Score:2)
Bell will likely owe some law firm some bucks.
Assuming it works like it does in the USA.
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Maybe the law firm will by some people some beers eh.
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No, no, it's "by", as in, paid "by some people".
A law firm buying someone something - you crack me up!
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Wait, I thought it was 0118 999 881 999 119 7253?
E911 costs? (Score:2)
E911 costs?
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In Canada, we have low taxes and high fees. Every time you get an extra $10 on your pay check from a tax cut, your employer has an excuse to not raise your pay to match inflation and you pay an extra $20 in fees. But we have low taxes so it must be great.
Of course since the right wingers got into power and cut spending like crazy in the things they hate like making sure our meat isn't poisonous, the budget surplus is gone to be replaced with promises about how with even more cuts the budget will be balanced
Class Action (Score:2)
Like all class action lawsuits, end users will see next to nothing, and more likely than not will actually see a coupon.
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But what is the alternative? If the company had been willing to give the money to their users from the beginning, then no lawsuit would have been necessary.
They obviously weren't, so lawyers were involved. They took a disproportionate cut of the winnings, but at least the users got something out of it. Without a class action lawsuit, they could only have gotten their 10$ if they'd been willing to pay thousands in lawyer fees for it.
With interest and inflation adjustments, I hope (Score:2)
I do hope that when Bell is required to pay back the money they stole for non-existent services that they're required to pay interest and adjust for inflation... :P
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Going for the funny mod.
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Yes, feeding a troll.
Keep in mind that the Northwest territories only has a population of about 40,000. If the Yukon outside Whitehorse is included as implied, that adds about 20,000. So that means half of two territories are involved in the lawsuit.
Geography (Score:2)
Because only 100,000 people live up there, an area 3/5 the size of the USA....
(I live in Toronto, and I've been north. It's pretty much devoid of people up there...)