How Telus robbed me for more than $700 (In my Opinion)

When Amp’d mobile, powered by Telus, was introduced I was thrilled. I signed a 3-year contract for the sexy MotoQ with an End the Boredom 125 (ETB 125) plan, including unlimited Data, and Amp’d premium multimedia services like streaming Much Music. I even received a free slingbox to get unlimited streaming cable TV on my MotoQ. This sounds amazing right? It was, until Amp’d went bankrupt only 2-months later, and I realized Telus is (in my opinion) the most evil company you can possibly imagine.

Here’s what happened:

Telus announced the AMP’d plans would no longer be available. I thought, “that sucks, but it’s not Telus’ fault. They can’t provide services they don’t have access to”. Telus Mobility called and offered me several nice incentives to sign another contract and choose another plan. They even offered to give me another free phone and pay for the accessories I purchased previously.

I listened politely and reviewed my options. Unfortunately for me, there weren’t any new plans that suited me. I purchased the phone and ETB 125 plan because of the AMP’d multimedia enhancements and data plan. Telus wasn’t offering anything similar. I declined their offer for a new service. The kind lady on the phone mentioned that I should choose a new plan because if I didn’t, my phone would eventually be disconnected from Telus, but in the meantime Telus would simply charge me for the minutes I was using.

"I said I'd be happy to pay for the minutes I use"

That doesn’t sound so bad right? Wrong, begin Evil Part 1:

Evil Part 1 – We will continue to charge you for services we’re no longer offering which were the ones you signed up for

Telus charged me the entire monthly fee for the ETB 125 plan which they were no longer offering over multiple billing periods. So, I was charged for Premium multimedia services which were now disabled on my phone. To give you an idea, the ETB 125 was ~$137.50 per month, while the bill for the minutes that I used on a comparable Telus Mobility plan was ~$40.00 per month.

When I called Telus customer service repeatedly to talk about this, the woman on the phone contemptuously told me, “you should have chosen another plan, and you wouldn’t have this problem”.

To make it worse, Telus wouldn’t credit my account for the 3-months of free ETB 125 service they were supposed to provide, which was clearly written on my contract.

The woman on the phone said “There was never such a promotion”. Pulling out my hair, I politely offered to fax her my contract, since she was unwilling to go and find it. Honestly, I don’t even think they kept their Amp’d contracts.

I couldn’t get anywhere with this woman, nor any one of her belligerent “same response” clones during any of the other calls I made. So, I decided I’d try again later.

Later, I was in full dispute mode because now Telus was asking for upwards of $500. After being forwarded to a new special Amp’d support team (which in my opinion was a special task force assembled to minimize Telus’ losses on the bankruptcy, and to squeeze out former Amp’d customers who wouldn’t drink the Telus “Kool-Aid) I asked for a detailed copy of my bill.

Why were these people so mean? I actually found out later, from an inside source, that Telus actually has an A and B designation for customers. He said Telus trains their service representatives to treat B customers differently, and differently for me meant with great contempt.

“We don’t mail out AMP’d bills. They are only available on the ampd.ca website,” said Liz with a voice so Icy it felt like getting a freezing needle in my eye.

Well, I responded “The Amp’d website has been shutdown because the company is bankrupt, so how would you suggest I get my bill so that I can feel comfortable that the $500 you're asking for is the right amount?” She said she could send it to me, but nobody at Telus would discuss the amount with me.

“She said I could either pay for the alleged amount, or be taken to their credit agency where my credit would be ruined.”

She wouldn’t give me an employee ID number or her last name. Surprise Surprise. She also wouldn’t transfer me to up, sideways, down, or diagonally to talk to anyone else about my bill. She also didn’t care that I was still being charged for AMP’d services they could no longer provide because “I had a chance to sign-up for another plan”.

So basically the Telus message was “Sign up for a new plan because we can't provide your old one. If you don't cooperate with us we’ll overcharge you for your phone. And, if you don't do exactly as we say, we'll ruin your credit”.

Knowing a fair bit about basic contract law, I figured eventually I’d find a way to talk to a rational person at Telus, or win out in the end because no party in Canada can materially alter their consideration in a contract and force the other party to comply. It’s called a breach which terminates the contract –even if you’re Telus. What I didn’t know, is how truly evil Telus can be.

Evil Part 2 – We demand payment for the incorrect bill we’re not willing to review AND a $700 dollar termination fee for the 3-year contract we (Telus) can't fullfil.

At this point, I’m at Met Credit, their credit agency. At first they said the same thing as Telus “pay or we’ll ruin your credit”. After explaining the entire story, I actually found my contact there willing to help me out. It’s scary that the credit agency team was nicer to me than the Telus team – even when I was still a customer.

I still didn’t have a bill so Met Credit asked me to try and get it again. Interestingly, I could talk on the phone with Telus representatives and they would rattle off everything on their screen to the smallest detail, regarding my account, but none of them would send it to me, so that I could consider making a payment. I must have spoken to 8 people over the course of a week. Every time I asked for the bill, i was put on hold. Afterwards, the person i was talking to came and said in a small uncertain voice "Sorry sir, I cannot send this bill to you". Ludicrous.

Later I understood it was partly because nasty Liz wrote on her computer that I’d declined her offer to send the bill to me. Of course, the rest of the context of that call wasn’t “noted”. It’s funny because the Telus contract says you don’t owe Telus any money until you receive an invoice. I shared this clause with Metcredit and my guy agreed.

Since I had never received an invoice because the amp’d.ca website wasn't live, they eventually sent me an invoice, after we (the metcredit contact) and I pushed.

The “not so funniest” part was that the detailed invoice, after a month of trying to get it, wasn’t a detailed invoice at all. It contained two lines. ~$500 (plus interest) for the plan I wasn’t using, and now an additional ~$700 (plus interest) for a termination fee!


Quickly I was talking to the general manager of Met Credit. He offered to help me talk to Telus about what went on. After he forwarded my story to some unknown person at Telus, their official response went something like this:

“Since you had a chance to pay for your bill and declined to have it sent to you, and because you didn’t want a new plan, we’re charging you the $500 amount, and a $700 early termination fee.”

Remember, the $500 was a bill charged based on a premium plan they weren’t even providing me over the billing period, and the $700 dollars was a termination fee for a 3-year contract they could no longer fulfill.

Near the end of this whole nightmare, I wrote an email to Telus and MetCredit letting them know that if they made any alteration to my credit while knowing about what really went on that I would take action. They read the email and responded.

MetCredit promised that my credit would not be altered while we were researching my account. Unfortunately, my first contact moved to another division during a crucial 7-day time where Metcredit automatically affected my credit. My account slipped through the cracks and was damaged.

With no other option, shamefully I paid the full amount, including the (in my opinion) illegal ~$700 charge. I thought any damage to my credit, however small, was not worth the $1,200 I should have witheld from Telus until they agreed to ratinonally determine what I should pay them.

So Telus, here we are. I thought about taking you to court and representing myself. But, then I realized you have lawyers, probably an army of them, on retainer just in case one of the customers you victimize actually has some fight left in them.

I don't think winning my money back in court would affect any change in your policies. Further, the amount of time it would take to get it done wouldn't be worth the effort. I think this is what you usually count on.

Canadians will learn how you treat your customers. Maybe someday you will learn to treat them with some respect.

Good story, I think their evil too. Eventually they will have pissed off enough people that they will throw themselves out of business. my blog about them is at meltedchocolate-d.blogspot.com/ if you want to read it. I know that here is another person and my entire family who will never do business with them again!

I just decided to Google to see if Telus is doing to others what it is doing to me, and I guess it is.

Telus never sent statements for my phone bill for the last year. I'd get $88 and then $82 etc charges each month for a $35 plan. Phone used by my family so I didn't really know what the charges should be and too busy to track them down.

I wanted to cancel as plan coming up so I got a statement finally and looked and saw lots of bogus charges. I called up Telus, and the rep apologized, and said he would remove the charges, but he could only do so for 3 months back. Tough luck about earlier charges. (Telus was charging some months for text messages even though supposed to be included in plan, and other months not charging.)

I just called up to cancel, and asked rep for cancellation number but she just hung up on me.

They are a huge company. Hard to believe they carry on business this way. Buyer beware!!

My story is not as bad but it shows a pattern
I subscribed with Telus about 1 week ago, and so far, it has been the worst in customer care.
I first called Telus to inquire about their plans and they gave me pricing, after comparing with other carriers I decided to subscribe with them.
When I went to their store the plans were 10.00 more per month, and call id (which is something) I wanted in all phones was extra and not included as they had told me before.

Well I asked the store attendant what could he do to remove that charge, because I had one other
Carrier that had that included. He told me that if I subscribed I could call their customer retainer department and they would do something for sure(stupid me believed it).
When I got home I called and reluctantly they gave me a 3.00 discount so instead of 8.00 per month they would charge me 5.00.
They day after I decided to change my sons plan from student to regular without the data plan, because the phone had wi-fi, so I went to the store to change that. They told me right away they could not do that, and that I had to call their call center, and I could use they store phones, well, I decided to use their phone.
I was on the phone with one the attendants for about 30 minutes and basically the changes were done he just told me to wait to confirm the call id rate because I told him I had called the day before and I got a discount, all of a sudden I get disconnected, when I call back I get a different attendant, and this attendant tells me that I have to pay for the unlimited messaging, even though they advertise it.
I asked to talk with a supervisor to which she gave me a hard time. Finally I got the supervisor on the phone and she confirmed that we had unlimited messaging but she had no record of my call the day before when they gave me the call id for 5.00, all she could do would be 6.00 and it was hinted that I was lying. I was on the phone for more than an hour
Since then i had to call a couple of times with billing information, because they charge me one month in advanced so this is something I can see is going to be fun resolving at the end of the contract, and now when I call I always ask for the name and extension number of the attendant, also I bought a device to record my phone conversations and I tell them right away that I am recording the conversation.
DO NOT USE TELUS
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES

Signing on to a 3 year $45 per month "student" plan that turned out to be $80+++ --- with Network outages beyond belief and a crappy quality blackberry that has now been repaired 3 times. Try getting out of a contract with them and they will destroy your credit rating. I am not really surprised to learn there are others with such negative comments about Telus. I thought government watchdog agencies like the CRTC were supposed to have some control over this stuff ??? If I were rich I would get a lawyer involved and file a class action lawsuit because they are breaching their contracts all over the place. And the little guys like us suffer in silence.
The first Customer Service guy I talked to last August actually told me he uses Rogers. Surprise surprise.
He did make a promise to reduce the bill by $18 a month, but that did not happen. Called back in December finally and
the second guy was just a kid named David and when I got mad at him and almost made him cry, I ended up feeling bad.
I have waited through interminable "we are experiencing a larger than usual volume of calls and emails" Well gee, I wonder why @!&#
What to do?