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Alan Carr *** Playhouse LET’S just get something sorted out here. Just because you’ve seen someone on telly doesn’t automatically mean you can enter into a conversation with them. This rule especially applies when a) that person is onstage trying to do their job and b) when you are so drunk that said person-off-the-telly doesn’t have a clue what you are saying. And so to Alan Carr, who continually made the mistake of trying to ask the audience at the Playhouse to...

Telus ordered to refund some customers over access fee

May 15, 2008 on 11:41 pm | In Finance |

BY PAUL JAY The federal telecommunications regulator has ordered Telus Corp. to refund some customers who were forced to pay a network-access charge.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said Telus “improperly” charged a monthly $2.95 fee to customers who did not use its long-distance network.

But the CRTC said Telus customers who did make long-distance calls through Telus or another provider in the same month would not be eligible for a refund.

“When applied to customers who did not make any long-distance calls, the monthly fee was equivalent to an unauthorized increase to the residential local service rate,” said CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein in a statement.

“We will use our powers whenever necessary to uphold the interests of consumers of telecommunications services, particularly in instances when companies impose unauthorized charges.”

The ruling came in response to an application filed by Yak Communications (Canada) Corp. and two consumer advocacy groups asking that the CRTC ask Telus to drop the fee and reimburse customers.

Telus introduced the charge in November to customers in Alberta and British Columbia who had not signed up for a long-distance plan, and the charge applied whether the customer made no long-distance calls or used a dial-around long-distance service such as Yak.

The CRTC said close to half a million customers in the two provinces were charged the fee.

The only way customers could avoid paying the fee was by subscribing to the company’s Call Guardian service, which does not permit long-distance calls.

As part of the ruling, the CRTC has also directed Telus to waive the $10 cancellation fee for Call Guardian to those subscribers who signed on after October in an effort to avoid the network-access fee.

The CRTC doesn’t regulate long-distance calls, but access to the service is considered part of local service, which the CRTC still regulates. Telus ‘disputes’ findings: spokesman

Telus spokesman Shawn Hall said the company was disappointed in the ruling.

“We dispute the CRTC’s findings,” he said. “We’re studying the decision and will review all of our options, including the possibility of an appeal.”

Hall said the fee was applied for a tangible service and that whether or not a customer accessed the long-distance network, the cost to the company was the same.

Telecommunications consultant Mark Goldberg said the ruling is in keeping withits promise to keep an eye out for consumers in markets where both unregulated and regulated areas existed, after it started deregulating the local-phone market in many major metropolitan areas throughout Canada in the second half of 2007.

But he said it’s not likely to have an impact on how telecommunications carriers administer other system access fees.

“I don’t think this is the start of more CRTC involvement in system access fees,” he told CBC News. “Most of those fees are found in cellular phone charges, or long-distance calls or internet services. And these are areas the CRTC doesn’t regulate. What we have here is an area the CRTC could actually weigh in on.”

Goldberg said the CRTC has chosen not to regulate those areas because it believes there is sufficient competition to let market forces prevail. Post a commentPeople have commented on this story Recommend this story People have recommended this story Story Tools: | | Text Size: | | Story comments (0) Sort: Most recent | First to last | Most recommended

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