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Canadian Cellphone Users May Get Justice Over Phantom Charges
An anonymous reader writes "For years, Bell Mobility customers in northern Canada were charged 75 cents a month for 911 emergency service. The problem is that cellphone users outside Whitehorse, Yukon, don't have access to 911 service. The Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories ruled against Bell this week, following a class action lawsuit which challenged the phantom cellphone 911 billings. Subject to a possible final appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Bell will likely owe 30,000 northern cellphone subscribers some bucks."
Pay to the order of Mrs. Wilbur Stark, one dollar and nine cents!
Bell is horrible for the extra fees.
On my Landline, I have a 911 fee, I have a network access fee and I have a touch tone fee.
Yes a Touch Tone fee. Bell Canada has not moved the extra fee for touch tone service into their service packages. I cannot get a new pulse line, nor can I have touch tone removed from my line. There are customers who still had only pulse and so they did not get charged this fee, but you had to actively refuse touch tone service when it was being rolled out. This was ~25 years ago.
911 fee is from when 911 was being rolled out and was mandated by law. Bell put the fee there to show that it was required by law and that's why your bill was higher than before. This was 15-20 years ago.
The network access fee is the fee for Bell Canada to connect to it's own network. This was from when their monopoly was dismantled and 3rd parties were given access to their lines. Bell Canada's end user arm had to pay for access to their network. So they put in the fee to explain why the bill was higher. This also was 15-20 years ago.
You give Bell a reason to put in an extra fee, they'll take it and never give it back, no matter how unnecessary it has become.
class-action settlements usually don't amount to much to the individuals involved in the suit...
Karma: Bad
Bell will likely owe some law firm some bucks.
Assuming it works like it does in the USA.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
thats crazy even a phone without a sim in the uk can still dial 999
because we are those who made this possible and it is we who shall WHO MUST reap the reward
what is left the rest can divide
god save the queen
Where I live, emergency services are totally free and can always be dialed from a cellphone, even if you don't have a valid subscription and usually even without the SIM card. It boggles my mind that it could be different anywhere.
While they're slowly losing to cell phone companies and such, the Bell company in question DOES have a legal monopoly on the land line system in the area. Given that things like the 'touch tone' fee are known to piss people off, it's probably because they're regulated on what they can charge as part of the 'basic fee', having to go before a board or whatever to get that increased. Meanwhile, with sufficient justification they can add a fee, but no regulatory structure to REMOVE said fees, thus the continuation of them long past when it made sense.
Sort of like how we had a tax here in the USA meant to pay for the last spanish-american war* that was finally ended less than a decade ago. Or how tolls will go up to 'pay for the construction' of some road or bridge, but never get taken down, even after all the construction costs have been recouped several times over.
*Which a lot of US history student don't even know about.
I don't read AC A human right
E911 costs?
Like all class action lawsuits, end users will see next to nothing, and more likely than not will actually see a coupon.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I do hope that when Bell is required to pay back the money they stole for non-existent services that they're required to pay interest and adjust for inflation... :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
They also force the 911 fee on DSL internet and data only SIM's.
only 30 thousand? lol.. SUCH A BIG DEAL
Because only 100,000 people live up there, an area 3/5 the size of the USA....
(I live in Toronto, and I've been north. It's pretty much devoid of people up there...)
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
If companies have trouble advertising because they don't want to sell stuff for a different price in each town, they should uniform the end price and deal with the taxes themselves. They have to pay a different rent on the building they have in each town, they have different wages for their staff, heating costs differ, lots of things differ. I don't see them putting those in the price of each item in every single store individually. Why make an exemption for local taxes for that? This way, people are being lead to believe something is cheap and they will spend more than they can afford. It's human nature to do so, however predictable and preventable. This is a sales trick and it will be in the consumers benefit if they have to stop doing that. Since everyone in the USA is a consumer and only a few percent are a company, there's a clear majority here that will profit from such a law. Companies can't vote, consumers can. The fact that companies still get to do this, shows how much democracy is effective in the USA.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
If they have been charging for the service,
instead fo sueing for a refund, which the lawyers get,
sue for the service which is useful.
They took the money, now should they have to provide the service.