Consumer groups decry Bell charging touch tone service fee to rotary phone customer

Consumer groups have filed an application with the CRTC in an effort to find out how many Bell Canada customers still using rotary phones are being charged a monthly $2.80 touch tone service fee. The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), on behalf of the Consumers’ Association of Canada and Canada Without Poverty, filed the application with the CRTC on Dec. 23, 2009. It alleges that Bell is charging a touch-tone service fee on some rotary phones. The application requests that the commission declare the fees unauthorized and order Bell to reimburse or credit all affected customers. But it’s unclear how many longtime rotary phone customers—if any at all—are being charged the fee. According to the application filed with the CRTC, the issue came to light on Nov. 6, 2009, when Toronto resident Marian Trafford, 79, received her Bell phone bill. Trafford, who has used a rotary phone at the same address for more than 17 years, was notified that she would be charged an additional $2.80 per month for touch-tone services, according to her invoice. Documents filed with the CRTC show Marrian Trafford’s monthly phone bill would increase from $19.21 to $22.01, not including taxes. Trafford pointed out the new charge to her son, Allen Trafford, who worked for Bell for 26 years in product management and consumer marketing, and who now works in Ottawa as a member of MTS Allstream’s regulatory group. Her son spent 49 minutes on the phone with Bell until the service charge was dropped, according to the documents. In an interview, Trafford said Bell gave his mother the touch tone service when she never requested it—or needed it. “It’s like a car dealer parked a car in your driveway—they provide you a car—and then they send you a bill to pay for it,” Allen Trafford said in an interview. “It’s the same thing, but with a different price tag.” PIAC now wants to find out how many other rotary phone users may have been charged the fee. “We’re wondering, is anyone else in the same situation?” John Lawford, legal counsel at PIAC, said in an interview. “I just get this weird feeling that if there is one, there may be 20,000.” Anyone with a new line since March 8, 1993—when rotary phone services started getting “grandfathered” out of use—is charged the $2.80 touch tone fee, Lawford said. After that date, service conditions changed so that all new lines had to be touch tone capable. Only people who have had rotary phones at the same address since that deadline can continue to use rotary phones without the charge. Bell spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis would not say how many pre-1993, rotary phone customers are being charged for touch-tone service, but in an e-mail she wrote that Marian Trafford’s bill was corrected and that Bell is reviewing other rotary customer accounts. Michelis wrote that “none of what PIAC is requesting is necessary.” Bell has “no intent” to charge a touch tone fee to customers on the grandfathered rotary dial service unless they have requested an upgrade, she added. “Bell does this sort of revenue assurance exercise on a regular basis: checking to ensure that we are correctly billing for the services that we are providing to our customers,” Michelis wrote. Lawford acknowledged the mistake on Trafford’s bill could be the only one—although the problem itself could be more widespread. As Bell shifted to touch tone technology, phones may have been incorrectly identified as touch tone. The problem could be that Bell’s “right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, and they forgot about the rotary people,” he said. PIAC submitted the application under Part VII of the CRTC Telecommunications Rules of Procedure. The application argues that the touch tone service charges for rotary phone customers violates “the stand alone local service rate cap” established in CRTC telecom decision 2006-15. “What I would really like is someone in the Bell billing department to figure out what’s going on, and this is the best way to poke them,” Lawford said of the Part VII application. “It would be money that’s payable from now until the end of time, and there’s people on fixed incomes.”

Consumer groups decry Bell charging touch tone service fee to rotary phone customer

News | 01/07/2010 3:01 pm EST

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