Quebecor blames bigger providers for sales practices hearings

GATINEAU — Telecom providers who appeared before the CRTC Thursday said the whole industry shouldn't face more regulation — which could cost them millions — because of a few bad actors, with some pointing fingers at Canada's biggest telecom companies. Representatives from Quebecor Inc. blamed their main competitors for triggering the complaints and CRTC hearings, namely BCE Inc., and said new industry-wide regulatory action isn't needed to address a problem their customers don't have. "Videotron should not pay for the actions and errors of others," Peggy Tabet, vice-president of broadcasting regulatory affairs at Quebecor Media, told the commission in French Thursday. She said the Liberal government ordered the CRTC hearings as a result of CBC's Go Public reports, which did not "target" Videotron. Tabet said many CRTC intervenors "expressed their frustrations related to practices" from certain suppliers, most of them mentioning "Bell, Rogers and to a lesser extent Telus," while less than two per cent of interventions mentioned Videotron. She said about 60 per cent of the interventions had been about Bell sales. There's no love lost there. Videotron launched a lawsuit against its main competitor, Bell, in Quebec court last month over its door-to-door sales practices, claiming it breached provincial consumer protection laws by not providing contracts at the door, according to a report by the Canadian Press. Quebecor representatives also slammed the CRTC's commissioned Ipsos polling research on misleading and aggressive sales practices that concluded 40 per cent of Canadians have experienced unsavoury telecom sales practices. She said the survey portrayed Videotron customers as "preoccupied" about aggressive sales, but the results don't say if they experienced those practices, they were "necessarily made by Videotron." The polling breakdown suggests Videotron customers were "more likely to express concern ... with the issue of aggressive sales practices" than other providers, at 54 per cent, while 37 per cent said they had experienced aggressive or misleading sales tactics. Videotron’s comments echoed arguments made by smaller telecoms on Wednesday and earlier in the proceeding, expressing worries that they would face additional regulation and costs as a result of allegations against the largest telecoms. Telus Corp. officials said there is "not a systemic problem" across the industry, and the CRTC’s Ipsos poll doesn't show evidence of one. "There are certain circumstances in certain markets with certain providers," said Tony Geheran, executive vice-president and chief customer officer, although he did not name them specifically. "There are a lot of responsible players in the market...we certainly believe we're one of those." Telus director of regulatory law and policy Daniel Stern criticized the Ipsos question design as "flawed" and "designed to elicit open-ended answers." "The results themselves don't tell a reliable story," he said. Katrine White, Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. (SaskTel) executive vice-president of consumer sales and solutions, said the Ipsos survey results were "surprising" but not reflective. She said in the past year, SaskTel had only 104 sales complaints out of 3 million customer interactions. "Our statistics certainly don't match" the Ipsos survey, she said. Cogeco Inc.’s vice-president of regulatory affairs and copyright, Nathalie Dorval, said the 40 per cent figure is "very surprising," but it is also "surprising" that only two per cent of respondents mentioned, unaided, they had heard about issues with aggressive sales practices in the sector. Those two companies meanwhile raised concerns introducing a new industry-wide code of conduct that they said could cost them millions of dollars, depending on what's contained in such a code. John Meldrum, SaskTel's executive vice-president of corporate counsel and regulatory affairs, appeared by Skype and told the commission the corporation spent more than $3 million when the wireless code came into effect, a "big expense" which meant other systems projects were put on hold. Thursday marked the second-last day of CRTC hearings on misleading and aggressive sales practices, ordered by the Liberal government. On Friday, Shaw Communications Inc., BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. appear before the commission. Those companies have each defended their sales practices as fair and said they only receive a small number of complaints annually about sales. Bell's intervention said 24,041 calls — less than 0.05 per cent of its customer calls over a year-long period — were related to sales practices, while Rogers said it had 2,200 complaints about sales practices — meaning only 0.004 per cent of customer interactions last year were about sales practices. Telus, however, did not make its internal figures public in its submission. A Telus official told reporters Thursday after the hearings those numbers are kept confidential because each case hasn’t yet been reviewed individually to determine whether the complaints were all legitimate. “We wanted to make sure we could do our root-cause analysis in going through all of those complaints,” said Zainul Mawji, president of home and small business solutions. “I can’t speak to Bell and Rogers, I can only speak to our process and what we thought was important to keep confidential for ourselves.” She pointed instead to Telus having the lowest number of Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) complaints of the national providers, at 6.9 per cent of complaints. — With reporting by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Quebecor blames bigger providers for sales practices hearings

News | October 25, 2018

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Quebecor blames bigger providers for sales practices hearings

News | October 25, 2018

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