
Bell cuts phone service to family struggling to pay surprise $1,800 bill - nrmitchi
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bell-phone-service-wireless-code-family-bill-1.5035728
======
crazygringo
I've often wondered why there aren't laws against predatory pricing.

Things like unknowingly racking up $2,000 in cell phone charges, or $3,000 in
overdraft charges of $50 each for 60 different tiny transactions when you had
no idea you were over the limit.

I get that it would be hard to craft a law that worked effectively in all
cases, but something as simple as for any recurring billing relationship with
a consumer, any time a period's accrued billing reaches double their previous
period, the consumer cannot be on the hook for additional charges unless the
account holder (not user) authorizes them up to a new amount? (And for the
first period, whenever it goes over, say, an average national user's
spending.)

It would be up to the utility to suspend service temporarily in the meantime
or not... but you could never be stuck with a surprise horrible bill because
you didn't understand your iPhone was sucking up data in another country
without you realizing.

I've actually used a monthly automatic pre-paid SIM card on my iPhone for
years (in NYC), because it's cheaper and I know it's impossible to accrue
surprise charges.

~~~
jlarocco
> Things like unknowingly racking up $2,000 in cell phone charges, or $3,000
> in overdraft charges of $50 each for 60 different tiny transactions when you
> had no idea you were over the limit.

Was this predatory, though? Every phone contract I've signed for is pretty
explicit about things like text message cost, data costs, etc.

From my perspective it seems more likely the parent's either didn't
communicate that info to their daughter, or the daughter just did it anyway -
both of which are parenting problems and not phone company problems.

Not to say the phone company handled it well, but the parent's signed the
contract, too, so they should've had some idea.

EDIT: Now that I think about it more, I wonder if having the family on a
business plan isn't part of the reason the phone company's being so stubborn
about it?

~~~
scott_s
When the price charged for a thing is completely unrelated to the cost of that
thing, it's going to be hard for people to intuit what they will pay for their
usage of that thing - both adults and kids.

~~~
jlarocco
But there's no need to use intuition because the prices are spelled out in the
contract.

You probably don't try to intuit the price of other products, so why would you
in this case?

~~~
scott_s
People don't refer to contracts often, and we intuit costs all the time. We
have many services and utilities which are pay-for-what-you-use, such as gas,
electric and internet. I don't know how much it's going to cost me to turn on
my tv, but I have an intuition it's not enough to prevent me from doing so. I
don't look at the price of most of my groceries. I just do a mental "looks
about right" at the final total before paying it.

And none of this applies to a 14-year-old, who no one should expect to read a
contract to figure out that normal use of a device will cost thousands of
dollars a month.

------
detritus
Assuming ≤10,000 text messages, that's around $1,350 per MB.

Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the actions of the family in
question, that seems somewhat perverse.

~~~
droithomme
I found their rate card.

[https://support.bell.ca/Mobility/Rate_plans_features/What-
ar...](https://support.bell.ca/Mobility/Rate_plans_features/What-are-Bell-
Mobilitys-current-pay-per-use-rates)

Canada to US is $.40 per message sent. US to Canada is $.30 per message
received.

So $.70 per two way exchange with her American friends and an $1800 bill means
she had around 2600 text exchanges. Over a month that's 86 a day.

~~~
tom_
That's a domestic tariff. The article say they were on a small business
contract, which is a different section of the website.

~~~
droithomme
Yeah I found that later but it's .35 to send and .35 to receive so the result
ended up exactly the same.

There is an error though - the bill was $2000 to begin with and $1800 after
Bell gave a discount. So it was actually around 95 messages sent and 95
messages received per day.

It's interesting some people say that's a normal amount of texting for a
business. Maybe for some businesses. I doubt his bricklaying business used
that many, which is probably why he went for the cheapest plan he could get.
They also have things like 500 texts for $5 or $7, in addition to the $12
extra for unlimited. If one doesn't make texts very often, saving the $5 or
$12 can make sense. My own mobile plan charges around 11 cents per text since
I don't pay for unlimited and that works for me since I do at most a dozen
texts a year. I don't think these rates of .35 and such are unreasonable at
all for someone who basically never texts and wants to save $12 a month. But
it is a rip off that they don't just have a ceiling. Doesn't have to be at
$12. Could be $100. Like the "max rate" at parking garages, so you can still
get your car back. Bell obviously intentionally doesn't have a max rate
coupled with intransigence regarding the contract because they regularly catch
people with this scheme. Unfortunately there's no law preventing Bell's scheme
at present and the guy signed a contract so he's stuck.

------
ryanmcbride
Charging for texts is such a scam, but this is exactly why when I was a
teenager I was on a pre-paid plan. My parents knew I wasn't responsible enough
yet to understand how charges work, and that the phone company wouldn't care.

~~~
Roboprog
That’s what I did to my kids for exactly that reason.

No way I’m giving teenagers a blank check, no matter how reassuring or
enticing the vendors make the deals look.

Disclosure: I worked at a place tha did format, print and mail for other
companies, including wireless, back in the day. Maybe not everyone is aware
how these bills spin up.

------
the_unknown
Bell does this because they know they can get away with it. With barely any
competition - and the other 2 companies act the exact same way - they know
that people will be pissed but nobody will change carriers.

There was a large bit of media last year about cost caps and limitations. But,
hey, that only covers part of your bill since Texting is a different
"service". This is how Bell gets away with it. They may finally back off now
that this has hit the national/international news but it shouldn't need to
reach that point.

How is the teenager supposed to know her text is going to the US or is being
sent from the US? Maybe she knows where her friends are and maybe she doesn't.
In any case this can happen to absolutely anybody at any time. I don't know
where my friends may be located at every moment of the day (I guess they take
vacations sometimes). And with the constant barrage of spam I doubt I would
even believe a random message telling me to pay up.

------
vxxzy
What causes a company to charge these obscene rates? Is it some loophole in
“transit” costs? I am thinking something similar to the “inbound revenue”
received by “free phone conference” services - these “last mile” providers
have special agreements higher costs, etc..

~~~
tom_
It's a business contract. Companies seem to be a lot more hardnosed with these
things about openly segmenting their offerings, and being somewhat cruel about
it. I bet there's one where you can send literally 1m international texts a
month for free, for example, and it costs, like, $2.50/mo more.

But these people didn't pay for that one. And so here they are.

As a business owner you are expected to be a bit more on top of this stuff.

------
philipov
I had something like this happen with my data plan during a power outage, and
Verizon called me, switched me over to a flat rate plan that covered the
charge, and backdated it to eliminate the ridiculous fees.

~~~
throwaway2016a
A lot of people complain about Verizon but it is pretty good about that stuff.
If you go over they will typically give you an opportunity to upgrade instead
of paying the (often higher) overage fees. They even SMS you about it when you
near your limit so it's not like some secret phone number you need to know to
call.

------
georgebarnett
Bell have every right to stick to their guns, but it seems like a really dumb
decision.

Is $1800 really worth the negative press and focussing legislators on a part
of the business that was not included in prior legislations?

------
stevewillows
This seems like something that Bell's Loyalty and Retention could have taken
care of. I know with Telus they'll often prorate for overages --- though, I've
never had anything close to this level.

So while this is on the parents, it seems silly to potentially lose a long-
term client that will be paying well over that over the course of their
contracts.

------
nraynaud
I have been living in the US for one and a half year now, I'm still using my
French phone contract in roaming because it's cheaper than using a local one
(20€/mo, data limited to 25GB in roaming).

~~~
wnscooke
With which company?

------
dollar
So very tired of this victim narrative. Simply refuse to pay the bill and sign
up for another cell service.

~~~
rcfox
And then the company sends it to collections, ruins your credit rating and you
get harassed by collectors.

------
jlarocco
Honestly it's hard for me to feel very sympathetic to either side here.

If the unlimited CA->USA texting is $12, the phone company should ask them to
sign up for it, and charge them $100 penalty and be done with it.

But on the other hand why aren't the parents keeping an eye on what their
daughter's doing with her phone?

~~~
tdb7893
Monitoring who I was texting would've been a huge breach of trust when I was a
kid.

~~~
jlarocco
I didn't have a cell phone until I was able to pay for my own, but I know
exactly how my dad would have responded to that: "If you don't like it, pay
for it yourself." And then maybe would have added something about being
responsible for me until I move out.

~~~
javagram
Almost all children are given a cell phone well before the age when they can
pay for it themselves nowadays. Most American children are given a cell phone
by age 7.

Whether that’s a good idea or not, it’s hardly something unusual or worth
comment on its own.

~~~
jlarocco
I'm well aware, and it doesn't change my opinion.

Until the kid gets their own, its the parent's responsibility to pay the bill
and make sure it's being used appropriately.

------
tomatotomato37
Is this the same Bell that got split in the US for anti-trust reasons?

------
sixothree
Thankfully iMessage and soon RCS will be replacing these wasteful services.

~~~
Nextgrid
RCS is carrier-controlled, so the scum will find a way to charge outrageous
prices for it.

iMessage, Signal, Telegram, hell even WhatsApp are good because they give
carriers what they deserve, aka a middle finger.

~~~
sixothree
I guess I wasn't paying attention because I have no plan to ever use RCS.
iMessage and Telegram for me.

------
driverdan
Bell could have done a better job notifying them of the overages and helping
them with a plan to pay but besides that I don't see the problem. They agreed
to the plan terms when they signed the contract. They need to pay their bills.

~~~
loktarogar
$12 for unlimited texting if they did it in advance. It's perverse.

------
ngngngng
I don't believe people's unwillingness or inability to read and understand the
contracts they sign constitutes predatory business practices. Unless they were
misled when signing the contract, I don't see why this is a problem. Not only
are there other phone services you can use if you didn't like this pricing
structure, you can also just use a non-sms based messenger, like signal or
whatsapp.

~~~
cazum
Telco contracts are not (ever?) written in language parseable by non-technical
people. In addition, the people selling these contracts are incentivized to
mislead customers in order to make sales.

While you can make the argument that what Bell is doing is legal, the point of
this discussion is to engage with the possibility that maybe it shouldn't be.

------
droithomme
The company made multiple attempts to inform them of the problem, and they
ignored it all. But they have a lot of excuses for ignoring each and every one
of them. Business plan and the teen is on it. Not a good idea. Don't know the
texting charges? Don't know the teen is sending thousands of texts or to who?
Parents were totally negligent and should pay the full bill, and get the teen
to reimburse them. Sounds like the parents realized they messed up since they
were trying hard to pay this bill. But knowing there was a huge current
problem and it involved the line they depend on for their business, they
should have been on top of it. By the time they said they weren't checking
their spam folder they already knew that they weren't getting updates on the
texts about overages from their teen. When you're in trouble on something like
this you need to be on top of it and not just ignore emails and texts. If you
have your spam filter set up so it's deleting critical emails necessary for
the existence of your business, that's your own fault as well.

All this said their texting charges must be absolutely exorbitant and this
company is certainly ripping people off. But I bet their fees are disclosed in
the contract, and for a business service that contract should have been read.

Undoubtedly they have internet service also and most of the texts could have
been sent for free. There's dozens of services that will send texts for free.
Hopefully the teen will learn to use them, or get her friends to use Facetime
etc. Expensive lesson but getting off of fee based SMS text asap is going to
save them money in the long run.

~~~
mrzool
> Parents were totally negligent and should pay the full bill, and get the
> teen to reimburse them.

That’s just awful. You‘re a terrible person.

~~~
wkearney99
That's a bit much. He's not wrong, and you disagree with his posting. That
doesn't make him a terrible person, and certainly doesn't make you a better
person for opposing it.

So, please, leave insulting people out of the thread.

