A Calgary couple is calling out Bell after being hit with hundreds of dollars in long-distance cellphone charges despite having a roaming plan.
Tod Murray and his wife Elizabeth Torres recently went on a road trip to Texas to see family and friends.
They had previously incurred a large cellphone bill while going stateside, so this time they decided to get Bell’s international roaming plan “Roam Better.”
“I spoke to Bell, and said this happened once before, so I want to know exactly what to do and how to do it,” Murray said.
“They said it was $13/day and if we weren’t using it, to put our phone on airplane mode.”
Murray said that is what he and his wife did, only using their phones he said for fewer than ten calls and texts, and the rest of the time using Wi-Fi. The senior said that’s why they were so surprised when the bill arrived.
“My wife looked at the bill on her phone and says, ‘Honey, this can’t be right,'” he told Global News. “I said, ‘Well how much is it?’ and she says, ‘$756 bucks,’ and I said, ‘What?!’”
About $450 of that was long-distance charges, which he questioned Bell about, but said he didn’t get very far.
“’Was that phone calls, was that texting?'” he said he asked. “They stuck to their story, ‘Our computers are never wrong.'”
Murray said he tried to get a breakdown of the cellphone charges but wasn’t able to. Global News also reached out to Bell, which provided us with additional details.
Those details showed charges for two separate phones, on one account. They did not show who the calls or texts were made to, only that one phone was charged $13 for 13 days and the other $13 for 20 days.
After we asked it to investigate, Bell did find a mistake was made. The plan had not been activated during the first few days of the trip, and officials said the couple would see a credit of about $80 for that.
The company also told Global News it had previously refunded roaming charges for the couple in 2022 as a “goodwill gesture” and advised them how the plan worked.
It would, however, go over the plan with them again following this latest incident.
“I want to pay for what we owe,” an adamant Murray said to that. “Not for what they say we owe.”
Advocacy group OpenMedia has long been calling for fair prices for mobile services in Canada. It says telecom companies are using roaming plans to “gouge” customers out of “even more money.”
“They know that we’re backed into a corner when we’re travelling,” Rosa Addario told Global News. “They know that we need service and we’re probably just going to stick with who our regular provider is because it’s the easiest option.”
Addario pointed out it may be easier, but it’s definitely not cheaper.
“A month of service from Mint Mobile in the U.S. is the equivalent of two days of roaming from Canada.”
Addario added it’s really easy for Canadians to get “caught in these kinds of traps”, especially with what she called a “lack of transparency.”
“The deals that our telecom companies enter into with international partners – whether it’s in the U.S. or Europe, or wherever it may be — are secret. We don’t know what terms they’ve entered into.”
OpenMedia suggests Canadians look to other countries for deals once they arrive.
Murray told Global News he will likely hang up on Bell, adding not only can he not afford to stay, he doesn’t like the service he was afforded.
“They acted like we can just pull $750 bucks out of thin air.”
Comments