The IT Nerd

Not too long ago, my wife and I switched from TELUS to Freedom Mobile because to be frank, we were paying too much money with TELUS and we could save significant amounts of money with Freedom Mobile. This also highlighted the fact that Canadian telcos aren’t willing to give existing customers good deals to retain them as customers. Instead they try to offer you a “winback” deal after you’ve already switched. So when I saw this posted on CBC News, it got my attention because it shows the current state of play when it comes to the telco industry in Canada:

Even as the minister responsible admitted there aren’t enough competitive options for mobile service in Canada, another federal official said consumers can and should search for other service providers when faced with price increases.

That message — from Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada — came just hours after the Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Canadians “still pay too much and see too little competition” for cellular services.

“Customers could consider switching service providers,” an ISED Canada representative wrote Thursday, when asked for a response to price increases at Rogers Communications and reported hikes at Bell. 

Now in case you’re not aware, Rogers is going to hike prices wireless and Ignite bundles. Shaw is going to do the same thing, and Bell is rumoured to be about to do the same. The thing is that I am old enough to remember when all three telcos used to have retention departments where if you went to them, you could cut yourself a better deal if you signed on for say two years. That wasn’t ideal, but at least you had a means to save a few bucks.

But those days are over.

Like I mentioned earlier, carriers now seem to only want to focus on giving you the best deals when you’re a new customer and when you have already left. Trying to keep you as a customer is not a priority for them. That forces consumers to play this game of musical telcos if they are able to. And I say “if they are able to” because it’s easy enough to switch telcos for say your cell phone as it’s simple to port a number from one telco to another. But dumping Rogers Internet for Bell Internet for example is a bit more of an exercise as you’ve got to get a tech in to install the service, and you might have your email tied to your old carrier, which by the way you shouldn’t ever do. That makes the process a non-trivial exercise. And the cynic in me says that telcos are to some degree or another counting on that to keep you as a customer and paying more as a result.

The fact that telcos these days are effectively saying “go ahead and leave, we don’t care” and then offering you a “winback” offer days after you’ve left says to me that telcos don’t respect you as a customer. I say that because they are more interested in having you show up as a new customer in the quarterly stats if they go the “winback” offer route as you’ve quit and then you’ve come back. And it also doesn’t affect their “churn” rate which is the amount of people who leave a carrier in a given quarter. Because you’ve left and come back which means it evens out at the end of the day. None of that sounds like a business who respects their customers. And the “big 3” telcos are all guilty of doing this.

While I don’t think that this will happen anytime soon, one of the “big 3” needs to change their view of the universe and start to see their customers as fellow Canadians. As in their friends or neighbours who have challenges with the cost of living these days and adjust their business practices to reflect that. For example working with their customers to make their telco bills more affordable if they are approached by their customers to do just that. Because if one of the “big 3” telcos did that, the other two will be forced to follow suit because they all follow each other in lockstep. But like I said earlier, I don’t think that would happen anytime soon because the only thing that Canadian telcos appear to care about is how much money they can extract from you until you tap out and switch telcos. Assuming you’re able to. And then they may care about bringing you back into the fold. It’s a sad state of play and says a lot about how Bell, Rogers, and TELUS view you.