My situation is (kind of) resolved, however I wanted to share my cautions. I have some background in business/contract law (although your rep on the phone kindly suggested that I’d never read a contract before lol) but I’m not an expert…however I do believe everyone deserves to be treated fairly by their phone company!!
The Telus team will consistently tell you that the best place to go is the written contract that you signed. Often true, however, verbal contracts CAN also be binding. If you sign in store for $15 , but you are told $10 by the sales rep on the phone AND the sales rep in the store, as well as the reason and cost breakdown for the difference, AND you have a witness to the verbal contribution in the form of another sales rep or customer in the otherwise empty store… that’s a binding agreement.
In my case, I was offered a price by a rep on the phone which was confirmed by the rep in store. This was not written as the price depended on them honoring a credit from a very recently cancelled account. It was reasonable that it would not appear on the contract for that reason: even I can’t pull up the details or credits of the cancelled account. The price matched what was given to me on the phone by the customer service agent. Each time the price appeared in the contract, I questioned the sales rep. $15? Don’t you mean $10? Yes, after the credit was applied. There was a witness in the store in the form of another sales rep. I know verbal agreements are also binding. I signed.
Should I have gotten it in writing? Probably. However, the actual difference in my case was less than $20 so I’m kind of over fighting them on it - plus the escalation team was blaming the sales rep in store, which was the only nice person in this whole ordeal lol. My point is that a contract is binding whether it’s written or verbal. The problem with verbal contracts is that they’re harder to enforce - if you didn’t get the representative’s name, talk to multiple people, have witnesses, etc, I can see how it becomes tricky. So they’re right to say getting it in writing is your best bet. HOWEVER, verbal contracts still count. And if it’s a company’s team member who said a price…they need to honor that price. Air Canada found this out the hard way not that long ago when they refused to honor an offer made by an AI chatbot and lost in court.
Anyway, I just wanted to write this after seeing a post comment suggesting that if you’ve spoken to multiple agents that they’ll just have to go back to the written price. Sorry, but it’s not the customer’s fault that they’ve had to speak to multiple agents, and the price is the price you were quoted and had reasonable justification for when you signed - verbal or written. (Besides, the person on the phone said they had AI generated notes, and it’s not like the calls aren’t recorded…)
Telus can’t hide or intimidate customers by duping them into signing written agreements with verbal add ons, then saying that they can’t do anything because the customer should have asked for it in writing. It’s YOUR RIGHT to pay the price you agreed upon - whether that agreement is in store or in writing.
