A Telus customer is expressing his frustration after he says the telecom giant wasn’t honouring a new two-year contract he was promised earlier this year.
“Very poor customer service,” Tony Brown told Consumer Matters.
The B.C. resident says back in January, a Telus representative came to his house offering him a new contract for his home phone, internet, and television package which Brown says would lower his Telus bill substantially.
“It would go from $350 to $188 dollars a month and then he was going to give us two months free,” said Brown.
However, when he received his February Telus bill, Brown says instead of getting two months of free service as per the new contract, he was billed even more.
“If you do the math, it works out to over $400 a month,” said Brown.
Brown says he refused to pay the bill and reached out to Telus multiple times, but says he was put on hold for hours without success.
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“I asked to speak to a manager. They say no problem, I’ll have a manager contact you and days and weeks go by and nobody contacts me,” he said.
The final straw Brown says is when he received a disconnection notice from Telus, informing him his account would be suspended if he didn’t pay his bill.
“They have all these guys in the field offering these new contracts and at the end of the day they are not honouring them,” said Brown.
Consumer Matters reached out to Telus on Brown’s behalf. That same day, Brown says he was contacted by a Telus representative.
“You stepped in and boom fixed overnight. It was like wow,” Brown said.
Telus stated in part: “Our investigation determined this was an isolated incident involving an agent at a third-party dealer who mistakenly applied an incorrect promotional offer to Mr. Brown’s account which then did not align to our billing.
“We are working closely with our third-party dealers to provide further coaching to their agents to improve based on this example and prevent a situation like this from happening again. As Mr. Brown is a valued and loyal customer, we are honouring the original promotional offer and have contacted him directly to resolve this matter to his satisfaction.”
The non-profit Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) says issues around billing are a common consumer complaint with telecom service providers and more needs to be done.
“There’s not a lot of support that consumers are getting from these telecom companies,” staff lawyer Tahira Dawood at PIAC said.
“I think more awareness and more regulatory intervention and review possibly of these practices might help put an end to it or bring more attention to these issues.”
The PIAC is also recommending consumers reach out to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television services for help. It says the CCTS can advocate on consumers behalf to help resolve issues.
Meanwhile, Brown says he’s happy his issue is finally resolved and hopes Telus will provide better support to customers in the future.
“I think Telus needs to have somebody that people can reach out to and talk to about the issues they are having,” Brown said.
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