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Trust and your mobile phone service provider

Do you trust your service provider? What does that even mean?

For an individual with a relationship with a corporation, trust is not the same as trust with a person.

Particularly with a complex service model, you have to have some trust in your service provider, even if you are reluctant about that, because you don't have a choice.

For example, you don't have a much of a choice about what kind of service plan you get for your mobile phone in Canada, and those plans are constantly being changed by the providers, so trying to keep up with what the best plan for you is, is difficult.

But aside from the aspect of "buyer beware" that covers all consumer relationships in Canada, mobile phone service is complicated by the fact that those mobile phone providers are using public resources that they make use of within a regulated system. In other words, they're selling us a package that includes resources that are only leased to them (i.e. the radio spectrum) from us, under a variety of laws, and the supervision of the CRTC (at least, in theory).

Recently, my spouse was charged $600+ in overage minutes on her 500 minute phone plan.

It turns out, by choosing a different plan that costs less, we now have her on a plan that includes unlimited minutes.

She's been on the same plan for many years, and the reason she went over was a change in her work, due to the pandemic, that had her suddenly required to use her mobile phone.

So she's being charged $600 that she wouldn't be, if she'd noticed and changed her plan.

That's well within their rights in terms of their published plan, but feels like a gross cash grab in times like these, in my view. It certainly is a violation of my trust with a business that I have had a service with for many years.

Thoughts?

I'm waiting for a callback to see if they agree (they haven't called back, in spite of promising one).

FWIW, here's another post in case you want to make a "free market" type argument: https://www.blogto.com/tech/2020/11/canadas-big-3-telecoms-top-list-most-expensive-wireless-providers/

And in case you were wondering which carrier I'm referring to, let's link to this:

https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/carriers/telus/koodo-backtracks-as-canada-wide-calling-returns-without-5-month-charge/

Postscript:

Since I didn't get a callback from a support team leader as promised, here are my followups:

  1. Will anyone at Koodo take responsibility for their services?
  2. How not to run a mobile phone service during a pandemic, part 1


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