Says 78 – Bell Canada “Prepaid plan” a rip off.

2012 Aug 09 Well it took a month to find out that was what told and sold by the Bell Canada rep, was a lie and a scam. That like my post – Says 64 – Rogers “Pay-as-you-go” a rip off and an outrage! Bell Canada is just as bad, if not worse than Rogers, just in a different way. It turns out that the ($10.75/month) prepaid plan that I was on, which stated that local calls were billed at $.10/min was a truth, but only a part truth. I started my Bell cell phone plan on July 07 and on Aug 02, I topped up my account with a $25.00/2 month prepaid amount as it was getting down to the $3.00 make . A couple of days ago I was curious as to how much I had left and it was $24.80. Today, after receiving a long distance plan which lasted maybe three minutes, I again checked my account. I was shocked to learn that I now had $13.40 in my account.

I went back to the Source (A Bell owned electronic store) where I originally got the phone activated and they told me to call #321 and I could find out what the charges were. I tried that but I got was all automated services that were of no help. I then went to the Bell store and talked to the rep and she now told me the real story of my charges.

She said that the $10.75 monthly plan I had signed up for was a MONTHLY fee for the Bell service, but that it did NOT include any airtime. So now from the $25.00/2 month I recently spent to top up my account, $10.75 goes to this month’s service fee and I’ll also be billed another $10.75 next month. That leaves me with a total of $3.50 that is available for airtime during the next 2 months and at $.10/min, that gives me 35 minutes, or a STAGGERING ….. $.714 cents/minute when I take in account the $25.00 I already paid for privilege of using Bell and divide it by the 35 minutes airtime. The next upgrade on the prepaid plan is to pay $50.00/2 months. That would give me $28.50 of airtime and at $.10/min, works out to 280 minutes. Taking the $50.00 and dividing it by 280 minutes, works out that I’ll be paying almost $.18/minute and not the $10 as advertized…

Bell Canada is just another greedy, money hungry business putting it to the consumer because they have our so-called POLITICIANS in their pocket. Canada has the highest cell phone rates in the WORLD. and our F**king politicians see nothing wrong, or they are going to spend more taxpayers money to STUDY the problem, and of course, like they do with the price of gas, they will find nothing wrong… WTF!

UPDATE: 2012 Aug 10 Bell to buy Astral Media Canada would suffer from the highest level of cross-media ownership – meaning that our communications would be controlled by a select few media conglomerates.

Says 64 – Rogers “Pay-as-you-go” a rip off and an outrage!

2012 July 08 I had a cell phone with a pre-paid “pay-as-you-go” plan with Rogers for the past year. I had only used it for emergency calls, and if someone called me, I’d call them back using Skype on the internet where only costs me $3.00/month and I can call any phone in North America, and talk for as long as I want. With the move back to Ontario, I’ve been using it quite a bit and my $100.00 pre-paid card is almost empty. It’s little wonder when I get billed $.40/minute, or part therof, for any local call and $1.20/min or part therof for any long distance call. Rogers’ cell rates are outrageous and a rip off.

I checked around and found that Bell now had the lowest pay-as-you-go rates, that being $.10/min. for local calls and $.30/min. for long distance.
My ex-wife gave me her old phone a Samsung B3410 as she now has as iPhone. It was activated on the Rogers network, so I went online and got cellunlocker to send me the unlock key. I tried it and while it unlocked the phone, when I went to Bell to try to get it activated on their system, but it didn’t work.

I decided to try to buy a used Bell phone on Kijiji. I quickly found a Samsung m320 for $15.00 that had been on the Bell system. It was a flip phone with a camera and voice recorder. I then got it activated with Bell and got a one month card and now I’m good to go and no longer paranoid about using the cell phone longer than a minute.

2012 July 29 Update: This just out…. Rogers profits up again
2012 Aug 09 Update: Rogers battles for right to lie to consumers