Fed Up with Telus service

[MelAhKneeDee]

Your company has really ruined everything that I always found so great about being your customer. Your company used to be about the customers, listening to their concerns, and making them happy. Unfortunately, Telus has decided to abandon these ideals that once made them great and joined in making the quest for the almighty dollar the most important thing to them. I have been loyal to Telus for around 12 years. Mind you I had different accounts several times during that time due to financial strain but once I got back on track I always came back to Telus. In fact the thing I loved most about Telus was their diversity of options to help you keep in contact with those who are important to you even when money was tight like their $2 a day option ( when in doubt, if you could scrape $2 together you could use your phone for the day) or buy a small package of voice and text for $10-$15 to get you through. Now, I can't even use a balance on my account to make a phone call if I want to. No, I have to have a $20-$30 plan or my phone is a paper weight until I can do so. Without paying the money for a monthly plan I can't buy any add-ons, I can't even load a few dollars on my account balance and pay-per-use at a certain rate per minute. Isn't that the whole point of pay as you go? You pay for and use the features you want and can afford at the time- some months you purchase a plan when you have the money to do so, then you might live off of your $3.29 cent balance paying by the minute, then you get $10 so you buy an add on for a small mixed pack of voice and text, etc, etc, etc... What you have done to a great company and their ideals is atrocious and makes me sick to my stomach. You like everyone else have given up on your customers come first policies and jumped on the wagon with the rest of the "let's make as much fuc*## money as we can and who cares about the customers, they need their phones, they'll pay whatever we tell them to". I am sadly disappointed, and will be shopping around for a new service provider for my cellular needs over the next few days/ weeks. I will also be recommending to my many friends and family members who I persuaded to change to your company to find another provider as well. I know you're massive company probably doesn't care about and isn't scared to lose small numbers of clients who only amount to double digits because we you already have more money than you know how to do with but I felt this needed to be said. Everyone I've spoke to about this issue says the same thing as I have said to you- we're not happy and we're not staying around with a cold hearted company who puts it's customers as last priority.

[mbp]

joined in making the quest for the almighty dollar the most important thing to them.
...
and we're not staying around with a cold hearted company who puts it's customers as last priority.

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The entire cell industry, and business in general, is about making money. That hasn't changed from 12 years ago. You'll find that ALL mobility providers out there are in it to make profit. You won't be able to escape that. Out of the big 3, Telus still has the lowest cost pre-paid plan.

Have you called Telus to inquire about pre-paid plans and the problems you are experiencing? The base plan is still $10 for 30 days so you may have been looking at incorrect information somewhere. If you haven't called Telus, you may want to do that first.

customers come first policies

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You'll find that very close to zero companies have a customers come first type policy. The customers are not always right, and they definitely don't come first. It's a very common misconception. Again this is nothing new for any business that wants to stay in business.

[MelAhKneeDee]

Yes I've seen the plans and I talked to telus... The biggest thing that angers me is not being able to use my own money to make phone calls or text- I just used certain examples before. My point is what if I don't have $10 but I have $5 left in the balance on my account? Shouldn't I be allowed to use that money and pay per minute or per text whether I have a plan or not? That's how it used to be and it's my money so if I would rather spend my $10 paying 10, 15, 20 cents per text or minute than to buy a plan I believe I should have that right.

[NFtoBC]

There is a cost to maintaining the network your phone connects to, and the account which manages the credentials allowing you to pay to make the connection. The only pay-as-you-go telephone network is those pay phones which used to be just about everywhere, but are now disapperaing.  As stated earlier, Telus has had a $10  minimum monthly top up for as long as I can remember. It has changed in that unused minutes previously carried over as long as you topped up every 30 days.

The current term for this type of service is prepaid, and it has been discussed elsewhere if the difference between Prepaid and post-paid accounts should simply be the time the payment is made, rather than one being a low caste service compared got the other. I believe this is the direction Telus is moving - making the services more similar. I, too, will miss my inexpensive prepaid plan if I drop it, and can't get it back

[MelAhKneeDee]

You're completely missing my point. I'm talking about being able to use any balance left over after you have paid for your plans and top ups. Once you don't have a plan active, you're not able to use your balance to make pay per use calls or texts. I know they have always had a $10 minimum top up, but you used to be able to choose to either add a plan with that $10 or pay for each text or call you make until the $10 runs out, then you could choose to top up again or not. I'm angry that you are being forced to pay for a plan in order to use prepaid service. This DEFINITELY has not always been the way Telus did things. I'm not complaining about the prices of the plans- I'm complaining about being forced to buy a plan instead of being allowed to choose the option to pay per use when I have a balance.

That's about as clear as I can state it so hope that clarifies things once and for all.

[TwitchyPuppy]

I’d be curious to hear a rep input on that!

[Lola]

Let me try this.

You're not being forced to have a plan to use prepaid / pay-as-you-go service. You can pay-as-you-go as long as you top-up before your last top-up card time runs out.

http://www.telus.com/en/bc/mobility/prepaid/pay-per-use/

I think top-up amounts should be like gift card amounts and never expire, but that's just me.

If your prepaid balance ever reaches 300.00, Telus will put a 10.00 monthly rate plan on your account to use the funds. Too many people have over the years complained about having their prepaid account funds taken by Telus when they neglected to top-up in time. My husband only uses his phone for emergencies when he's on a long ride, and his account funds were building up too high, so I put a rate plan on his phone. He doesn't use the rate plan, and the money gets taken anyway, but I see it as a small monthly fee for having the service. Again though, that's just me.

When you have a rate plan though, once the minutes in the plan are used up for the month, then you revert to pay-as-you-go rates using your available balance until the month is out and your rate plan begins again. I find the rate plans to be superior to pay-as-you-go rates. But again...

[MelAhKneeDee]

Well I can't, you must be special.

[Lola]

*Waiting for Mobility Princess to chime in here... yoo-hoo, Princess....* Lol. Can somebody get in the Telus line to call her?

[MelAhKneeDee]

I'm good, don't need a call or comment... Thanks anyway.

[Lola]

Mobility Princess is a Telus Rep and good at getting to the bottom of things. I'd be interested in hearing from her.

[NFtoBC]

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@Lola wrote:

You're not being forced to have a plan to use prepaid / pay-as-you-go service. You can pay-as-you-go as long as you top-up before your last top-up card time runs out.

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@Lola

   This is one of the recent changes. Whereas, in the past, you could just buy top up cards, and use minutes from them, keeping those minutes if you purchased a fresh top up before the expiry, now it is necessary to purchase a plan each month (or year). This change has the effect of ending the accumulation your husband experiences. If an old plan lapses, then you would switch from pay per minute, to pay for plans, which I believe to be the issue @MelAhKneeDee raises.

[Lola]

@NFtoBC-- Thanks for that. I don't pay attention, really. I top-up my husband's account by credit card every six months or so, and never look at it further. I think Telus should remove that pay-per-use support page up there then if customers actually can't pay-per-use unless they exceed their rate plan. It's misleading. Or is it just me?

[MelAhKneeDee]

It is most definitely misleading.

[Lola]

It really is confusing. Telus should have removed all pay-per-use pages as soon as they stopped offering pay-per-use. Reading around, I found so much recent Telus information about pay-per-use, I thought it was still available. I just read a pay-per-use page from April 2017, and if I'm a prepaid customer reading that, then I'm a confused customer.

A while back I was under the impression the rate plan push was so prepaid customers didn't have to top-up at 60 (or whatever) days or lose their money, but as long as they had a rate plan rolling over, the money in their account would remain. For instance, if I put 50.00 on my husband's phone without a rate plan, I'd have to top-up at 60 days or lose the money, but with a 10.00 rate plan, I don't have to top-up for 5 months. I'm fine with this, but I understand how many people are not fine with it. But I honestly thought pay-per-use was still a thing.

[NFtoBC]

@Lola,

Are you finding those pages through the Telus website, or a Google search?  Often Google will turn up old information which is no longer part of the information maintained by a company, but not yet removed.  The page you linked a few posts back, for instance has an oversized hummingbird image overflowing the text. Very likely an outdated page with a reference to a now changed image.

Kinda like a closet with outdated clothes in it.

[Lola]

@NFtoBC-- That page comes up directly from searching "pay per use" on the Telus site in the Telus search bar, not a google search.

Talking professionally now, as I should clarify: I design websites, I write code, I manage and maintain, etc. Invalid pages are easy to have removed from sites or browser searches. That a company does not do it is lazy site management.  Also, my girlfriend writes user manuals. Telus could do much better wit their explanations than they're doing. If a customer can interpret any information more than one way, or in a way that's incorrect, rewrite. Telus actually has a lot of rewriting to do all over their pages.

[NFtoBC]

@Lola

   Interestingly, the page you linked shows up when typing "pay per use" in the search bar, but not if pay per use (no quotes) is typed instead. When typing the latter, the newer pages show.  Your suggestion for cleanup has been shared.

[Lola]

@NFtoBC-- I didn't use quotes. I don't quote as a first option -- interference sometimes. How the page loads, what the interface does, depends on too many factors to list, but the hummingbird made no impression on me because there are so many possible reasons for it I can't pay any attention to it. I'm only looking at the information returned when I look at a page as a customer, not how it's presented, unless it's presented with a giant flashing error. Lol. But I dislike the Telus website overall, for lots of visual reasons, and because they've dumbed down too far with their information, leaving too much open to interpretation and contradiction. But that's just my fly-by opinion. I go there maybe once a year, and won't go there again now for another year.

[HGolightly]

There is a difference between pay per use and Pay and Talk, which is what the writer is talking about. Pay per use refers to the cost of ovearges when you are on a monthly-post paid plan

[NFtoBC]

@HGolightly

   It also applied to prepaid wherein one could place a dollar amount on their account, and consume that at $0.50 per minute (plus $0.50 per minute long distance), or $0.30 per text or $2.00 per MB. I still use a modified version of this: I top up each month with a $10 amount, and buy a monthly  100MB data add-on with the proceeds. I also check my account and add an additional amount for the few minutes used. If travelling, I may purchase a larger data plan for the month.  As long as I top up the $10 monthly, my unused pot of $$ available for minutes keeps rolling over. It was still a Pay & Talk system, but there was no specific block of minutes / texts / data to consume - just a pot to use as you wish.

These choices are no longer available.