GATINEAU – Back in August, when the CRTC and researcher Ipsos launched a survey on what Canadians think of the sales practices of Canadian telecom companies, much private (and some public) hue and cry arose from the carriers across the country.
The tight timeline for Ipsos to finish the survey and the weak overall structure and wording of the questions could only lead to negative answers, they said. They were right. The results came back substantially negative, but does that mean they have a point? Does the survey’s supposedly skewed queries mean the results should be tossed out?
Consumers and consumer groups who appeared earlier this week during the CRTC’s hearing into telecom sales practices said the survey’s headline figure, which said about 40% of Canadians had been subjected to “aggressive or misleading” sales practices by telecom companies, seemed awful low to them. They have the horror stories to prove it and insist far more negative experiences are going unreported, which we told you about on Monday and Tuesday.
The carriers – large and small – were and are shocked by the 40% number (and CRTC chair Ian Scott, pictured, or other commissioners are asking every single intervenor what they think of it) because it doesn’t jibe with their official internal tallies, the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services count and even all those who complained on the public record of this hearing. Added together, they don’t add up to even one tenth of one percent of all the customer contacts they have, or even of the number of customers they have.
And besides, said Videotron executives this morning during its appearance in front of the Commissioners, it’s mostly on Bell anyway. “We seriously question this study and feel serious breaches were made,” said Peggy Tabet, vice-president of regulatory for Vidéotron’s parent, Quebecor Media, in French.
The survey says, for example, “Vidéotron customers are more likely to report experiencing salespeople selling products or services they do not want and are among the most likely to report their experience was within the past year.” Here’s the thing, said Tabet, Vidéotron customers aren’t being approached with aggressive sales techniques by Videotron itself, but by its competition, which is primarily Bell in the TV and broadband market.
“There is only one delinquent supplier,” said Tabet. When prompted by commissioner Yves Dupras if that’s Bell, she said yes. (Readers may also remember Vidéotron recently brought a lawsuit against Bell for its door-to-door sales practices in Quebec.)
“You don’t need a code. The problem is with one player.” – Peggy Tabet, Quebecor
When asked later by commissioners if a new code of conduct is needed to govern telecom sales practices, Tabet was adamant. “You don’t need a code. The problem is with one player.”
Both SaskTel and Cogeco also told Commissioners they thought the survey was flawed and they didn’t appreciate being painted with the same anti-consumer brush as those they thing are really at fault.
SaskTel’s executive vice-president of consumer sales and solutions Katrine White pronounced the company surprised by the 40% figure. “We were shocked by that number and we don’t note that trend in Saskatchewan,” she said, adding the company only logged 104 official complaints, out of three million overall customer interactions.
“Cogeco has read the Ipsos public opinion research and, while the results do not indicate that the telecommunications sector is flawless, we noted with interest that when asked on an unaided basis what they heard about the telecommunications sector in the past year, only 2% of respondents listed ‘aggressive sales tactics’, while most common responses being related to expensive fees and technology improvement. This is not, in our view, indicative of a systemic problem,” said Cogeco’s VP regulatory affairs and copyright Nathalie Dorval.
Cogeco was not the only company to seize upon the lone unaided question in the survey where respondents were asked: “What, if anything, have you heard about the telecommunications sector in the past year?” Fifty-six percent said either “nothing” or “don’t know”. Two percent said they liked the industry, 2% said fibre optics and 4% noted its innovation. The rest was a mix of competitive and pricing concerns. There was not much concern for sales practices in the unaided question.
In its appearance Thursday afternoon, Telus took the most direct aim at the survey saying the report does not provide clear evidence of a systemic sales problem in the industry (even though the company has proposed a new code, as long as it supersedes all others).
“The first reason is that the question design itself is flawed. Questions are modeled in a way to elicit negative answers. There is only one open-ended question,” said Daniel Stern, the company’s director of regulatory law and policy (pictured in a CPAC.ca screen cap). The rest prime the survey respondents for negative answers.
“What we don’t see on the survey are questions asking ‘are you satisfied? What is your view on sales practices?’ The questions are designed for negative answers and so you can not trust a survey based on these questions,” he continued.
Besides, he added (as did representatives from SaskTel, Cogeco, Vidéotron and Northwestel yesterday and so will those from Rogers and Bell tomorrow), the results themselves tell an unreliable story. “The survey does not actually report the results of Telus’ biggest competitor, Shaw, which is the incumbent internet cable television provider in Western Canada. Shaw is grouped… as ‘other.’ So, you can not particularize the practices by provider when absent from the survey is the biggest provider of internet and television in the western half of the country,” said Stern.
“To the extent the Commission intends to rely on this survey on the record to ground its findings, the Commission really needs to address these flaws and criticisms and explain why it is a valid source of information.”
The hearing will wrap up tomorrow with Shaw, Rogers and Bell facing the commissioners.
