I gave up my cell phone plan close to a year ago, and rarely regret it. The companies that provide cell service in Canada, and most of the US, are despicable money grubbing monstrosities. Despite the chronically awful customer service, Canadians have become accustomed to paying outrageous prices for cellular service; some of the highest in the world. We are gradually moving back to a mediaeval systems where workers pay a substantial fraction of their salary as a tithe and are never able to get out of debt.
Worse yet, the cell companies (and some ISPs) often impose ridiculous and essentially untenable terms of service. I happen to have looked at some of the terms from Rogers.com today and was disheartened to see how crazy their terms had become.
The Acceptable Use Policy at https://www.rogers.com/cms/pdf/en/Unified_AUP_Eng.pdf sets out some very arbitrary restrictions of what you can do with a cell phone if you get service fro them. For example
- You may not "attempt to use the Services in such a manner so as to avoid incurring charges for usage." hah! no waiting until evening to make a call because it's cheaper, no looking at your watch to see how long you have been on the phone, no making a call on a land line to be economical, I guess!
- You may not "use, reproduce, distribute, sell, resell or otherwise exploit the Services or content we provide or which you obtain through the Services for any commercial purposes." No making arrangements to go to work, sell a book on craigslist, or arrange to do babysitting -- that would all be a commercial purpose. Where to they get off proscribing this stuff?
- They reserve the right to remove any content they like at their sole discretion.
It goes on and on. They have set themselves up to do what they bloody-well like.
At least in Quebec (which has a great consumer protection act) there are some restrictions on how their terms of service cannot change at any time, but elsewhere they can redefine the terms at their discretion irrespective of what they were when you agreed to your contract (see https://www.rogers.com/cms/pdf/en/TOS_Eng.pdf ).
There is hardly any need for a legal system, and this is very serious since the services provided by a few such companies determine our ability to function in today's society. Where are the regulatory agencies? This is madness. This awful evil company and its ilk need to be brought under control.
