The Future is Un-Friendly: Why TELUS Mobility Sucks So Hard
Recently I’ve had a bit of trouble with a company called TELUS Mobility. For those of you who don’t know, they’re a cellular provider here in British Columbia, and they suck balls.
I’m on a 3-year plan with them. I have always had a contract that includes free evenings and weekends. The problem is that they changed the details of my contract without telling me, and as a result I was being chargedfor my evenings and weekends. My bills were soaring from an average of $45/month to $120/month. It has taken several months and many phonecalls to even begin scratching the surface of the problem. I eventually figured out their mistake, and insisted upon being reimbursed. I have yet to receive their statement of how much financial restitution I will receive. But you know what? The money isn’t even the point.
The point is that cellular providers are committing highway robbery. Companies are supposed to serve the greater good of society by providing a reliable service at a reasonable price. As consumers, we should have control over the market. When did we begin accepting their terms so helplessly? My friend Jason was charged a $70 “Convenience Fee” just because he bought a phone from a friend and switched over. Luckil he had the gall to get it back, but what about the people who are too meek to stand up for themselves? Is that ethical? And where does that $70 go? It doesn’t take much labour (or a great deal of resources) for TELUS to make the switch. That $70 is pure profit, and it goes straight to funding fat bonuses for TELUS’s overpaid executives.
Well the jokes on them. One by one people are gonna just get more and more pissed off, and eventually they will either switch to another mobile service, or abandon their cellphones altogether. At some point we have to ask ourselves whether or not cellular phones are really so necessary, and whether they are actually worth the astonishing amount of money that we tend to pay through bullshit hidden fees. Eventually people will get too frustrated with their careless customer service, and they will just give up and switch to alternative means of communication (VoIP for example).
So I’m going to do my duty to the cellular market. I’m switching providers when my shitty contract is up, and I recommend to all my friends and family to stay away from TELUS Mobility. I have had too many problems with their service, and I’ve spoken to many other customers who have had similar complaints. I find their “voice recognition” customer service hotline creepy and unhelpful. Their dealers are slimy,deceitful and incompetent. Their “future is friendly” ad campaign with the cute animals insults my intelligence. Also, their products and packages downright suck. Don’t buy anything from TELUS!! And if you find that the other cellular providers are the same, then use a payphone. I swear, if they don’t clean up their acts, their business will only suffer in the longrun. Consumer satisfaction is the guiding force of the market, and by ignoring this they are alienating themselves from the market in a significant way.