I'm confused, I used to sell cell phones, even did customer service for AT&T at a call center but that wouldn't be relevant to Canadian rules. I thought they couldn't increase the price on a proper contract? Or was it not a contract and Fido just increased it cause they were douches or have rules changed?

Okay I couldn't wait and looked. Guess plan price is not included so assume it's just a fancy payment plan....i was used to the standard contract but I guess I see why the budget carriers are budget now. They're generally cheaper per month still, been enjoying Koodo since I ditched Rogers cause they lied to me.

Least it's been long enough for when Koodo lies I'll feel semi okay to switch back to Rogers carriers. Cause I know that's the issue when you have standards with 2 real carriers. Unsure if Bell counts as a third since they use Telus towers but whatever.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Price hikes, a never ending story of Canada Telco's. It sucks and I hope your government do something.

[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

They won't, but it's also partly our fault too. Canadian telecom companies are legendary for their scumbag behaviour and monopolistic practices and we, as Canadians, 100% understand and just accept that they are corrupt and nothing will get done about it. Our collective response to getting fleeced is to just shrug and pay the higher prices while bitching about it.

We, as a nation, put up more of a fuss over fucking vaccines than we ever have about our telecom companies robbing us blind.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

The head of the CRTC was unavailable for comment as their mouth was full of telco CEO cock and the laughter made the mumblings unintelligible. The journalist (tm) said it sounded like "more please".

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Our collective response to getting fleeced is to just shrug and pay the higher prices while bitching about it.

What exactly can we even do outside of voting? Even that seems futile with the Liberals convincing* the left to vote for them "strategically". You can't really survive without a phone plan but there's no smaller telcos to use for 90% of people

[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

The most basic thing you can do to start with is to contact your elected representatives and demand action, and I'd be willing to bet most people haven't even done that. Make a stink; contact the media, the government, and get others to do the same. Start building a unified demand for change that becomes impossible to ignore.

Escalate from there as needed. Corruption doesn't go away because you asked it nicely. It has to be forced out like cancer from the body.

[–] rozodru@piefed.world 3 points 1 day ago

been like this for as far as I can remember. Hell I'm old enough to remember when there was ONE phone company (bell) and ONE cable company (rogers) and that was it. I remember when AOL was coming to Canada and how they both raised a massive stink over the fact.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

3 Months is pretty bad. But I've found both Fido and Virgin are terrible for this. Every 6 months or so they sneak in a message about a price increase in your bill and raise your bill by a few dollars.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

I’ll never do business with Virgin again.

Their phone is an AI system that’s worse than a phone tree, and if you need to talk to a human you have to trick it, then you have verbally schedule a callback to a different system that hangs up on you off you don’t say a time it accepts.

They don’t tell you their hours or the closest time. You have to guess. And if you guess wrong, they fucking hang up do you can start the same rigmarole again.

Then when I finally tricked their website AI to transfer me to a human who scheduled a callback I got some call centre in Asia where I connect undertrained a word they fucking said because of the background noise.

All that person could say was to go on the website and no they wouldn’t fix my accidental charges or lower my bill.

I canceled my phone plan with them that day. After 10 years as a customer. I’ve never been so fucking angry.

Don’t do business with Virgin, they’re now the worst company I’ve ever dealt with.

[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

They also mention it I think in when you get new connection. But yea, the hike price was regular every, sad.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I've personally never had a problem with price hikes? If anything my bill has gone down randomly over the years.

I was with Rogers and then they said hey, switch to fido and get the same stuff for $10 less so I did. Was fine for a few years. Then Rogers had a deal and I switched back, got more data for $10 less.

Started at $80/month and now at $60/month with way more data than I'll ever need.

[–] stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

$60 for phone service is highway robbery. Unless you have specific needs that the big 3's main brands plans give you, you should be on a discount carrier. For years now you have been able to regularly get a plan in the $28-32 range for 20GB data from Virgin/Fido/Koodo. The only downside has been they were LTE only for a long time, but 5G isn't really a noticeable upgrade, and it looks like they have all upgraded to 5G for their plans since I last looked.

I'm currently on a plan from Koodo that is only $24/mo for 10GB data which is plenty.

These are the plans that seem to creep up in price over time until you switch providers when another good deal comes up.

[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago

Ya I'm sure I could find cheaper, but I currently get 150gb data. I'm on the road a lot for work and also have a cabin with no internet access other than through data so I can go through a fair bit.

My main point is that my plans were typically never being increased, only ever offered a decrease.

[–] TheBloodFarts@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

That's still a crazy high bill. I'm at like $26 after tax with fizz, effectively unlimited data