The story of a mostly unwanted TV package implemented clumsily and reported on thoughtlessly
MY 80-YEAR OLD MOTHER-IN-LAW now pays $24.99 a month for her cable TV. That’s her monthly price. No other fees. No add-ons except HST. It is the skinny basic package. She’s glad to have it.
She is a Rogers customer in Hamilton who only really wants to watch CHCH and The Weather Network. This package is perfect for her.
How did I secure such a price while apparently all Canadians can’t figure out this new package and are outraged by the additional charges that can be applied that how the carriers are supposedly ripping everyone off (if you read the multiple shallow, blustery news reports this week and last, that is)? Simple, I called up Rogers, said I would like to switch her to skinny basic and buy one of their low-end digital boxes (for $55), batted aside some attempted broadband and home phone upselling and voila: $24.99/month cable.
It was easy. Sure, I work in the industry and know more than other Canadian consumers, but I called in no special favours and I don’t consider myself all that bright. I called Rogers customer service, drove about 1.5 kms to the nearest Rogers store to return her old rented DVR upon which she had recorded nothing and self-installed the new, cheap box.
It. Was. Easy.
The CRTC Basic Package
WHILE SKINNY BASIC, OR what I call the CRTC Basic Package, is tailor-made for my mother-in-law, if she was at all a sports fan or more interested in news or wanted to watch a movie once in a while (qualities I dare say would encompass most other Canadians), that package would not have sufficed.
Canadians are figuring this out. Last month I spent almost an hour on the phone with the CBC’s Maritime Noon telling callers that no, the cable and telecom companies aren’t ripping you off by pulling channels like Sportsnet and CTV News Channel out of basic. The carriers want to offer that in a basic package and the Commission forced them to take those out.
The Regulator also set the rules that say set-top box rental and installation fees are not part of the skinny basic price and that the U.S. broadcasters (Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS) do not have to be carried in the CRTC Basic Package. For what it’s worth, to those carriers who chose to yank the Yanks out of their version of the CRTC Basic, well, it’s hard to see that consumer-unfriendly move as anything but pure spite towards the Regulator. The so-called 4+1s have always been part of basic.
Anyhow, the headline that stuck with people most was essentially “$25 cable”. Now, since that’s not really proved to be so for a few, the CRTC is calling Bell, Rogers, Shaw and Vidéotron on the carpet to explain to the Commission why people don’t want to buy this Commission-created package and why they are complaining about it to the Commission.
“This is not a tsunami of complaints. Statistically, it’s barely even a trickle.”
According to the CRTC, approximately 1,800 people have officially complained to them about it since March. Our consumer media has whipped that up into some sort of complaints frenzy when it’s about 0.005% of the Canadian population and about 0.017% of the number of Canadian pay-TV households. This is not a tsunami of complaints. Statistically, it’s barely even a trickle. In their recent license-renewal filings with the Commission, the number of complaints logged by the carriers themselves number only in the dozens.
Despite the few complaints, the Commission has said now close to 100,000 Canadians have chosen to take advantage of the CRTC Basic Package. It’s not exactly blowing anyone’s doors off, but my mum-in-law, who barely watches TV, likes the price.
Besides her and a few like her, though, consumers, no matter where they live, have never, ever wanted less video. We all want to pay less – for everything, not just TV and telecom – but we have always, always wanted more video, delivered to in an easy-to-use, affordable fashion.
Carriers dropped the ball, too
FROM WHAT I CAN SEE, all of the licensed carriers are offering the CRTC Basic Package to the letter of the law. However, you can tell they were dragged kicking and screaming into it by how hard it is to find the new “Standard TV” or “Limited TV” packages when shopping online. Yes, the new regulations do say the carriers have to market the CRTC Basic Package the same way they offered their old basic – but they never pushed their low-end basic cable. That was always hard to find. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have launched this a lot better.
“No retailer comes out of the gate pushing their cheapest product with the fewest options.”
Like any other retailer though, subscription TV carriers market their value bundles of TV channels and broadband and home phone and wireless first. No retailer comes out of the gate pushing their cheapest product with the fewest options. When you go clothes shopping or shoe shopping or for a new car, the salespeople don’t start you off by pulling out the cheapest thing on the shelves or pointing you to the smallest car on the lot.
And, let’s spare a minute for the people performing front-line customer service, the workers whose job it is to deal with the confusion (and yelling) these new regs have spawned. It is an extremely difficult job with high turnover and the best way those folks can boost their personal take-home pay is to upsell customers. No CSR in their right mind would start off pushing the cheap CRTC Basic Package to a new customer. When they tried the upsell when I called for my mother-in-law I got past that by simply saying “no thank you.”
I didn’t need the CRTC or any other agency’s involvement to get what I want.
However, the carriers squandered a real opportunity here to be creative and customer friendly. For example, any one of them could have priced skinny basic at less than $25/month. (Tiny VMedia has done just that with a retail price of $17.95). What about making skinny basic available for free with a broadband subscription? That would make the $18 sports packages on top of basic more affordable for customers and free might better encourage some cord-nevers to sign on for some regular TV.
I recently chatted on Twitter with one Rogers customer who says he was offered the CRTC Basic Package for 80-cents(!) a month on top of his Internet subscription. What a customer service win it would be to turn this schmozzle into something positive.
"Where are the innovative, new, customer-friendly solutions like this for Canadian consumers?"
U.S. carriers are being creative in trying to keep consumers in the system and experimenting with all sorts of new things. Comcast, to take the biggest example, offers college and university students at 35 schools in their cable footprint 80 channels of Xfinity TV, including HBO, VOD and cloud-based DVR – for free. All they need is to verify themselves online with their student IDs and they can watch on any device within their school’s Comcast-supplied Wi-Fi. The company has found out that students are watching tons of linear TV and they hope they are training their next generation of paying Xfinity customers when they graduate.
Comcast is also offering a new service in certain areas called Stream TV, which is a $15 per month skinny TV service (on top of a broadband subscription) tailored for mobile devices.
Where are the innovative, new, customer-friendly solutions like this for Canadian consumers?
Look, the CRTC Basic Package is a limited tier of channels few want to buy as a standalone and that has just confused some consumers who expected more (which is coming in December with pick and pay). The way the carriers chose to offer it was clumsy when there was instead a real opportunity to be imaginative amidst the turmoil. Consumers didn’t really educate themselves (and they lead busy lives, so should they be expected to know TV regulations?) and consumer media reportage was obliviously ham-fisted when some consumers did, predictably, moan.
Change is hard. Our TV regs have been set for a long time and this type of confusion is inevitable as they are re-written, especially as the media worldwide, and its delivery, continues to shift under our feet. While the consumer media reaction to this has been overblown, the implementation of the new regs, with a little co-operation and creativity, could have been done much better.
