GATINEAU – "I'm doing this for everyone."
So said Tony Wacheski to Cartt.ca as he headed into the hearing room for his individual presentation to the CRTC on day one of its hearing into telecom sales practices. He was one of several individual Canadians to face the Commission either in person, on the phone or Skype on Monday, including Ryan Adams, pictured at right.
(You, too, can be part of the public record, at least via Twitter, if you hashtag your tweets #CRTCforum)
We happened to sit down with him at lunch as he tapped on his tablet to fine-tune his presentation to the commissioners. He’s the Ottawa-based CEO of Anytune, a music practice app for musicians, but that has little to do with the story as he’s just an everyday Canadian feeling screwed over by Canadian telecom companies (for the sake of brevity, we’re calling every company a telecom operator in this proceeding but rest assured we know and appreciate the differences…)
CRTC chairman Ian Scott distilled how Canadians feel about telecom companies when he opened the hearing Monday morning with a parallel (regulatory people do love parallels!). “If you pulled into your local gas station, filled your tank and then when you went in to pay, you were told the price per litre is now higher than indicated on the pump and if you wanted the pump price you would have had to pay at the pump and now it is too late, that would be unacceptable to consumers,” he said.
“If at the end of this proceeding, the record were to show that the misleading and aggressive practices are common, it would be a serious concern for us.”
Wacheski outlined a two-plus-year(!) ordeal of trying to get Bell stick to a verbal contract where he was offered a three year price guarantee but the follow up email sent to him confirming the sale did not reflect that promise. He kept track of names and even employee numbers and collectively spent hours on the phone pursuing his claim, dealing with rate increases and having credits applied to his account and other adjustments but he said Bell held firm against him saying he had no written proof of the original three-year price guarantee, before he finally brought it to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services (CCTS) in May of this year.
While he did get a two-month credit on his bill, Wacheski told the CRTC the CCTS told him there was nothing they could do and closed his complaint.
“Which brings me here today… Should one line of fine print in an email I didn’t read, or sign, override a promise from a real person? In the end I have wasted hours of time and Bell has wasted resources making their customers very unhappy,” he said.
“Bell and Rogers are iconic Canadian companies with caring people selling essential services. They do not need to compete on most devious sales practices.”
(Ed note: Ouch.)
The Deaf Wireless Canada Committee, a multi-stakeholder group of deaf, deaf-blind and hard of hearing advocates and consultants weren’t worried so much about devious sales practices, but how they believe their members are discriminated against every day, causing overpayments, stress, and rendering them unable to take advantage of deals offered nationwide.
For example, it was near impossible for DDBHH (deaf, deaf-blind or hard of hearing) Canadians to take advantage of last Christmas season’s limited time offer made by the big three wireless companies of 10 GB for $60/month. That, said executive director of the Deafness Advocacy Association of Nova Scotia Elliott Richman through a sign language interpreter, was “a debacle” because the majority of the DDBHH community who tried to take advantage of the sale were told they couldn’t access that deal as well as each company’s discounted plans for DDBHH Canadians. Plus, the phones, stores and websites were jammed for everyone, making it even harder to find a sign language interpreter or get a rep on a video relay (VRS) call.
"The record keeping in a store is often a challenge for us." – Howard Maker, CCTS
These Canadians typically consume far more data because they need to communicate via video and each company does offer at least one discounted plan for them so the data hits aren’t as costly as they could be. They also mentioned they don’t use voice and shouldn’t be made to pay for that.
However, carriers’ staff sometimes seem altogether unaware of such plans when DDBHH Canadians go
phone or plan shopping and often, when buying a new phone “are denied an accessibility plan,” said Lisa Anderson-Kellet (right, in a CPAC.ca screen cap), chair of the Deaf-Wireless Canada consultative committee, also through a sign language interpreter. She often advises her membership to make the purchase and go back to the company later to have the accessibility plan applied. This is a waste of the customer’s and the company’s time and causes headaches all around.
However, when DDBHH Canadians run into problems, it’s often due to severe communication snafus, which could be helped, for example, by requiring the companies and the CCTS to produce and post on their websites, explanatory videos in ASL (American Sign Language) and Langue des signes du Québec (LSQ).
The companies should also establish and designate certain stores as “accessible centres of excellence” where DDBHH Canadians know they could turn to for help, maybe even from fellow deaf sales agents or ones who know ASL or LSQ. At the very least, existing staff need better training so that they know the accessibility plans and have access to tablets with ASL and LSQ playback.
The CCTS led off the opening day citing statistics pointing to the common problem faced by every other Canadian who appeared on Monday after them – the mismatch between what customers think they are getting or are going to get – and then the service or price they end up with.
Using a sampling of 441 complaints said Josée Thibault, assistant commissioner of the CCTS in French, “in 53% of complaints, the customer complained about a mismatch between what they were expecting or informed when they subscribed to service and their subsequent experience with the service. This mismatch between expectations and outcomes often manifests itself in complaints about billing charges, service delivery or usage, and changes by the service provider to any of these that take the customer by surprise.”
In 41% of the complaints, she added, customers said they were not aware their provider’s terms of service generally say they can unilaterally change prices whenever they want to.
During questioning, the CCTS noted it does not have data on the number of complaints made from in-store sales or door-to-door sales as compared to phone or text or other channels.
While it does receive complaints about in-person sales, “the record keeping in a store is often a challenge for us,” said CCTS commissioner Howard Maker (right), since some stores are franchise and not corporate-owned and 
records of face to face contacts are based on conversations where no notes were taken.
“It’s challenging to find evidence in most of those cases,” he added.
The hearing continues Tuesday morning with additional consumer groups such as Union des consommateurs and PIAC.
