Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 17:12:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: yossman
To: procedure@crtc.gc.ca
Subject: consumer's bill of rights (telephone service).


good afternoon, i'm writing in response to a pamphlet i received which
asks for consumer input on a new bill of rights you guys are trying to
conceive and implement.  point form, these are the biggest issues i see
currently facing consumers as a group in dealing with telcommunications
companies like bell canada:

1. invoices should have complete details of every single charge applied to
an account, and i do mean everything.  this includes any 'miscellaneous'
services that currently get grouped together on the bill, each one of
those sub-services should be listed and the price attached so we have a
much better idea about why our bills just keep going up slowly but surely
year after year.

2. mandatory continuation of mailed invoices.  there is an effort afoot on
the part of many corporations to eliminate paper-based bills in favour of
electronic bills;  from my experience this usually ends up resulting in
more late fees charged to consumers, because people do not yet use their
email like they use their regular mail boxes, and will often miss online
bills.  having a real piece of paper, mailed from a company you are paying
for service, is a good idea and continues to be a good idea.  the
government of canada requires you have paperwork for any bills you are
claiming on your income tax;  having the bill with the bell canada logo
and letterhead, on THEIR paper, is obviously preferable in terms of
'legitimate bills' than some email i printed off and am claiming.

note as well that with the increases in spam and viruses over the last
year, with no promising legislation in sight yet from our governments to
curb this asinine use of the internet email system, it is getting
increasingly easy to miss an online invoice/bill/statement.  i receive up
to 300 emails a day, 80% of which are spam and/or viruses, and i could
easily miss such bills if i was forced to accept them.

mandatory paper-based billing should NOT incur additional charges either!

if anything, electronic-based billing should make our average monthly bill
with bell canada DROP, not increase, since there is less physical paper
and ink that has to be used to send out invoice runs.  my fear (completely
reasonable) is that in order to continue getting paper-based bills that
they will add an additional absurd $1-$3 charge PER INVOICE mailed to you,
or even, per page!

to take bell canada as an example in particular, they already have to
cover the cost of invoice mailouts with their current income levels.
there should be no reason there has to be a fee increase to continue
getting a paper-based bill.  again, to re-iterate, monthly fees should be
LOWER if people opt for electronic billing, and there should be no fee
incrase solely because people request continuation of their paper-based
billing.


3. mandatory number of days between an invoice mailout and the due date
for the invoice.  many months this year i received a bill from bell
canada, with a generation date 3 weeks before i even got the invoice in
the mail, leaving me with 7 days or less to pay it.  this is completely
unreasonable.  if a bill is to be paid not more than 30 days after it is
generated, we should be mandatory it be sent to us in the same 48 hour
period it was generated.  if they are late on their billing runs, they can
not be allowed to charge late fees due to the fact that their own billing
offices are behind, that's just an insult to consumers.


4. a review of the charges for unlisted or private numbers.  again, going
back to concerns over access to personal information from telemarketers
and other potentially unsavoury characters, i find having to pay $5/month
for an unlisted number is unreasonable as well.  they also have more than
one way to make your number private, each with different charges; why?
how can it possibly cost them $5 per month per customer to unlist a
number?  that's highway robbery.


thanks for your invitation to send in concerns, i've been waiting for such
things to start appearing in my mail as consumer groups start to become
more vocal in disputing overbearing corporate charging schemes.


sincerely,


yossman


yossarian holmberg ( yossman at yossman.net )
director
yossman.net
1533044 Ontario Incorporated.