cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Class Action Lawsuit against TELUS over forced migration to Gmail

K_McIntosh
Organizer

Hey all ... try as I might, I cannot find any online evidence (I searched on a Win 7 PC in Firefox using Google, then Microsoft Bing, the latter in an effort to change inherent search result & ranking biases) of organized resistance to the pending (Subject) forced e-mail service provider migration.

Let me be clear - I don't want Gmail.

Even if you weren't already convinced that Google has, indeed, become 'evil', if you were to watch a documentary called 'The Creepy Line' (on Amazon Prime Video right now) you likely would give the matter a little more critical thought.

I recognize that this documentary is another not-so-subtle tool of the U.S. conservative right (not sure why Bezos allowed it on his platform - oh right, taking Google & Facebook down a notch or two must've been seen as a higher priority) to sow further doubt over the outcome of the recent U.S. federal election, however, the arguments made in the documentary against the current data collection and active biasing practices of Google & Facebook are solid and have undeniable merit, IMO.

So I'll say it again - I don't want Gmail ... I don't do Facebook or Twitter (at all), and, even though I have a Google / YouTube account (for certain select purposes, and, no, I NEVER sign in to use YouTube ... much as their algorithm tries to get me to do so), I always sign out upon completion of a specific task ... leaving the Google servers to collect my browser search & usage habits against nothing more than my IP address and the 1st half of my postal code ... which I feel is plenty / too much.  I definitely don't need Google sifting through my e-mail, thank you very much.

So, if you feel as I do, perhaps a Class Action Lawsuit against TELUS is in order in this matter ... if for no other reason than to secure a discounted ISP fee for an arbitrarily changed service element ... the TELUS Webmail service in this case, which is part of my PureFibre 150Mbps unlimited data ISP package, wherein I am entitled to 10 e-mail addresses with storage capacities of 5GB, each, said to soon be 'enhanced' upward to 15GB, each.

I will backup each of my 10 TELUS Webmail accounts to a local PC and then completely cease e-mail activity within my overall TELUS ISP account - that's got to be worth a sizable discount ... or ... some form of legally obtained monetary compensation ... or ?

Any lawyers out there with ideas / feedback?

Thanks, Kevin Mc

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

NFtoBC
Community Power User
Community Power User

The service Telus is using as its back end is G-Suite, Google’s corporate email service. It is not the public Gmail you are familiar with. We as customers don’t get to decide the software corporations use to supply the services we consume.

 

NFtoBC
If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Kudo"

View solution in original post

25 REPLIES 25

NFtoBC
Community Power User
Community Power User

The service Telus is using as its back end is G-Suite, Google’s corporate email service. It is not the public Gmail you are familiar with. We as customers don’t get to decide the software corporations use to supply the services we consume.

 

NFtoBC
If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Kudo"

Nighthawk
Community Power User
Community Power User

PureFibre plans never originally included email accounts on them. The PureFibre page still doesn't list any of the fibre packages currently that come with email. If Telus did add them after, they don't appear to be charging anything additional for them. Suing over a free feature seems odd. I have doubts a class action lawsuit would ever get off the ground for something like this. A recommendation would be to look into what constitutes a class action lawsuit, what requirements are required before it can ever be certified. If a lawyer even touches it.

 

The other thing to keep in mind. A lot of large companies will no longer talk to you if there is an active lawsuit involved. You'd only be able to contact the company for any reason through your lawyer only. Whether or not Telus does that I'm not sure. I know of a few other companies, including one major Canadian bank that do have that policy though.

 

I am also a Telus customer.


If you find a post useful, please give the author a "Like" or mark as an accepted solution if it solves your trouble. 🙂

... thanks for weighing in ... I've been a TELUS ISP client since 2001 ... they have always bundled an e-mail service with their ever evolving ISP product offerings, so, I disagree with your notion that it is somehow a 'free' service ... with the complacent (corporate-leaning?) attitudes I've read about here this morning (thus far) to my proposal for a Class Action Lawsuit, I agree, it may be difficult to get one off the ground.

As for TELUS no longer talking to me in the event of a CAL, I propose there would likely be little difference in the level of service provided ... I have noted a TELUS corporate trend away from accessibility via e-mail (i.e. TELUS Mobility) and they don't ship promised h/w or respond to inquiries about same ... they have calculated that if they make clients wait on the phone or participate in a fruitless robotic chat, the number of clients who will follow through over any given service issue will decline ... as will support time (& $ spent on overseas support staff).

K Mc

RobBar
Friendly Neighbour

I can agree with the forced date concern but in reality their new G service via Google is much improved and more secured then the original Telus Web Mail service they provided and it POP mail offerings on mobiles.

Being an Outlook user i on the Office 365  offering all worked fine till this conversion but though I could not access G on Google service I discovered that Windows 10 Mail app on my desktop worked great and being now Gmail in principle it was real time internet on all my devices regardless of where I was in the world which i could not send and receive on POP mail. Webmail10 also has an app to link Icloud so I might have grumbled at first but very happy with their new business direction... Outlook is now deemed not worthy of  connection

... thanks for weighing in ... I read your Reply(ies) to (Subject) relevant threads here wherein you express the opinion that G-Suite is not sifted for marketing purposes ... do you really believe Google would not keep G-Suite e-mails ... even if they do not currently utilize their content in some active fashion?  I firmly believe they keep EVERYTHING.

As for customers not being able to decide the software corporations use, that is your choice ... to lay down to TELUS ... myself, I'd rather fight and / or vote with my feet, so to speak.

K Mc

RonAKA
Rockstar

Wouldn't it be easier to just switch to Shaw? Or buy a few carrier pigeons?

RonAKA ... thanks for weighing in ... excellent suggestions ... well, maybe not the pigeons ... attaching images to flying rats could prove problematic ... unless I come into a **bleep**load of free / cheap USB sticks.

K Mc

Telus is under no obligation to seek your approval for an email server. Up until this transition, they were using Dell services, that led to a massive multi-day outage last year. Running servers is expensive, so if their customers want email, they are going to seek a cost-effective option. Even using G-Suite is expensive but more reliable and cost effective. If you're that concerned about privacy, you'd be foolish to expect that from a Telus provided email service, anymore than Google. You're better off looking for a privacy focused service like Signal. 

 

Regardless, your source of concern seems like a story of conspiracy drivel written to get right wing knuckle draggers up in arms - https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/19/17878332/creepy-line-anti-google-facebook-conservative-censorship...

giantbrownguy ... thanks for weighing in, and, for the link ... Adi Robertson's overly verbose critique of 'The Creepy Line' struck me as a piece that one could draw many contradictory inferences from ... so, on the whole, is it balanced, or, merely obfuscatory?  She's evidently so close to the subject that she's lost the journalistic perspective to meaningfully reach a larger readership, IMO.

And, if you will note, I did label 'The Creepy Line' as a not-so-subtle tool of the conservative right ...

I agree that TELUS is keeping everything 'e' that I do ... up until recently, I entrusted my right to privacy with them, as I had never heard of TELUS sharing my data for marketing / monetary purposes ... that assumption has changed ... err on the side of caution is my cyber security approach now.

Thank you for the Signal suggestion ... I will look into it.

Am I spouting "conspiracy drivel"?  I don't think so ... again, erring on the side of caution looking forward is likely extremely prudent.

Am I a right wing knuckle dragger?  Definitely not, however, as I stated in my opening post, some of the arguments made in 'The Creepy Line' have merit, enough to ring the alarm bells a little louder for those of us who may not be fully up to speed on the current state / practices of big tech ... as Adi Robertson eventually gets around to incrementally conceding in her long-winded article.

BTW, lets' try to keep my thread on topic ... if you don't believe TELUS' move to Gmail should be resisted, or that non-participation in their e-mail service merits discounts or that a CAL is appropriate just say so and done with it.

K Mc

Sorry @K_McIntosh , just to clarify, I wasn't hurling insults your way - just referring to the content of the movie you cited, similarly to my comment regarding "knuckle draggers". Apologies if you interpreted otherwise.

giantbrownguy ... n.p.  K Mc

rc
Rockstar

The only basis, I can see for a class action would be around the work a customer is expected to do to facilitate the migration.

 

As per their terms of service they are still providing email, so no case here.

 

Regarding security concerns, their public statement is as follows 

 

We have partnered with Google as they are one of the best and most recognizable names in the industry. The Google platform that customers are migrating to is the enterprise-grade G Suite (also known as Google Workspaces), trusted by governments, universities and leading businesses around the globe, including TELUS.

Customers are not being migrated to the publicly available Gmail product and data remains under the governance of TELUS's stringent privacy protocols, in alignment with the TELUS Privacy Management Program. For more details on our Privacy Management Program and privacy policy, 

While your data will be stored in Google's network of geographically distributed data centres, TELUS maintains a robust information security governance program to protect your personal information with appropriate security safeguards. We safeguard customer data through administrative, physical and technical security controls.

rc ... thank you for the useful CAL contribution and the TELUS privacy info / policy statement ...

 

I no longer trust TELUS or GOOGLE to safeguard my info, no matter what they say or what policy statements they promulgate ... time and time again we as a society are presented with examples of how our privacy rights have been trampled ... to blindly believe things have changed in favour of the individual, i.e. privacy rights now being respected by big tech and / or government, is naive, IMO.

 

With respect to TELUS still providing e-mail, I submit that the move to Gmail is an unprecedented and fully global divestiture of TELUS' self-imposed obligation to provide clients with an e-mail service, was done totally arbitrarily and therefore should be contestable (my understanding of the previous arrangement with Dell EMC was that they, Dell EMC, were only a data storage cloud service provider [with TELUS' s/w, at bare minimum, for the front-end portion], and, that the contractual arrangement between TELUS and Dell EMC was not common knowledge in the public realm until they, Dell EMC, dropped the ball in August of 2019 and TELUS needed to name a scapegoat ... if I had known prior that Dell EMC was entrusted with safeguarding my info, I would have had a problem with that as well, due to the inherent use of servers based outside of Canada, a known vulnerability vis-a-vis snooping by U.S. government agencies with the complicity of big tech) ...

 

rc, may I ask if your opinion of non-applicability on the latter point is based in case law, i.e. are you trained in legal matters?

K Mc

 

BillTelusCust
Rockstar

There's no doubt that a lot of people have experienced problems migrating to the google product. I expect an ISP to provide an internet connection, nothing more.  ISP offerings have changed over the years and I have adjusted my expectations accordingly.  They used to carry a server with newsgroups and that was dropped.  

Telus has a right to engage google to supply their email. If you feel that strongly about this, I suggest you get your email from a third party supplier, as I have for the past couple of decades.

My email address is too important to tie it to an ISP.

I would need to update over 200 accounts if it needed to be changed and chances of missing some are high. This way I am free to choose whatever ISP I want without having to go through that pain.

xray ... thanks for weighing in ... I totally agree with you on the severe migration pain to change my e-mail addresses ... unfortunately for me, I have used my telus.net e-mail addy's everywhere for two decades ... I will seriously consider your no ties to an ISP philosophy from this point forward, however, for me, the horse is out of the barn (& DFR).

 

K Mc

@K_McIntosh The horse may be out of the barn but more horses are queued up. The situation is never going to get better, it's only going to get worse. I can't see any of us having to manage fewer accounts/contacts as time passes. At least while we are still kicking. 😉

BillTelusCust ... thanks for weighing in ... third party supplier suggestion is a viable option, but I'm not paying extra for that kind of a service - I would require a comparable TELUS discount to cover the added expense ... TELUS has been my e-mail provider since 2001 and I firmly assert, again, that it is a quantifiable component of the monthly ISP fee I pay them.

 

K Mc

@K_McIntosh I used to stand up against things like but, but later on in life, I learned to choose my battles and try to avoid trouble.  I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think you're headed for a lot more frustration.  I tried to get Telus to listen to some simple common sense as it pertained to my service and I not only ran into brick walls, but also utter nonsense replies (including in a Telus store yesterday).

 

So I wish you luck in whatever path you choose to follow but I think it is a wasted frustration.

 

ThePopper
Advocate

I appolgize.....in advance.......BUT, some of us are way too paranoid about everyday life - Just enjoy your life, love your family and be good to others.

Go with the flow, protect yourself whenever and where ever possible, you have more important things in your life, than an email provider...GET OVER IT!

Thank you,  and don't trash me, just for voicing my opinion!