The furor over Public Mobile’s recent attempt at raising the rates on its $40/4GB promotional plans generated over 1600 complaints in the day-and-a-half following the carrier’s announcement, according to Canada’s commission for telecom complaints.
Howard Maker, CEO and commissioner for the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), told iPhoneinCanada‘s Gary Ng: “Last week’s events involving Public Mobile and the customers of its $40/4GB and $120/12 GB plan were very instructive. Consumers felt angry and misled, and used their collective voices to effect change.”
The Telus-owned carrier announced last week that it was upping the price on its $120/12GB promotional plan, which was offered several times in 2017 to match Freedom Mobile’s $40/4GB price plan.
At the time of offering, Public Mobile advertised that the deal would not increase in price for as long as they subscribed to the plan, promising “no surprises.”
The $10-per-month increase, however, was exactly that — a major surprise, and not a pleasant one.
“I can tell you that Public Mobile was well aware that its customers were contacting us en masse,” Maker told iPhoneinCanada.
The carrier relented only a day-and-a-half later, announcing it would not be going forward with the price increase. However, the $40/4GB Koodo offer for Public Mobile customers that came along with the price increase is still available.
In a blog post entitled ‘Lessons from the Public Mobile price increase,’ the CCTS noted: “Consumers do have a voice. Social media can be an effective tool for organizing those voices and effecting change.”
However, it also cautioned consumers that their complaints must be made directly to the offending telecom before arriving at the CCTS, or the service provider will object and the commission will have to notify customers that their complaint has been refused. This causes “needless delays” and, in this case, would have consumed hundreds of hours of CCTS time, diverting that time from consumers who had filed complaints properly, the commission reported.
“First [customers] must give their service provider the chance to fix the problem — it often suffices to resolve the issue,” stated CCTS.
Source: CCTS, iPhoneinCanada
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