Fido Partially Un-Borked

So Fido are now offering new plans and those plans do not add the fucked up money grabbing dishonest “network access” and “911 support” charges that I’ve been bitching about for years. Being a Fido subscriber, I called to change to one of the new plans, the guy on the line didn’t seem to like the idea —and I was loosing my “unlimited incoming calls” by changing—so he offered a monthly credit equivalent to the two fake charges. If you hate those charges, make the call and have them credited or change your plan.

6 Comments

edemay November 12, 2008

bon à savoir. j’allais jsutement les contacter.
faque en bout de ligne tu sauves 7.45$ (6.95 + 0.50¢)? C’est pas pire, parce qu’en plus, il te le taxait.

leur nouveau look est fait fuckin’ cheap. C’est du Bos en plus.

Patrick November 12, 2008

Assez ordinaire en effet.

renku November 26, 2008

It works the other way as well, I had a plan that was a legacy of a Fido/Sprint home phone plan. It was good, simple and cheap. They called us and offered a new plan we turned it down. They switched us to it anyways. There is a 6.95 access fee and a three year contract attached. Beware switching plans.

annz567 January 25, 2009

Be careful about Fido charges. I got the iphone from Fido about 2 months ago in Ottawa. I subsequently went to my cottage in Quebec, near Nont-Tremblant, and used my iphone to call my kids who were visiting their friends in the vicinity and to my surprise, Fido charged me “roaming” fee. This was not explained to me when I signed the Fido contract; with Bell cellular (that I had before) I never get charged roaming fees for using my phone in Quebec at my cottage. this is another rip-off and false advertisement by a cell company and in this case Fido.
Over the holidays, my sister called me from Washington, DC(US) at the cottage in Que. and I got charged handsomely by Fido for roaming and long distance fees in spite of the fact that I did not initiate the call. With Bell cellular (that I had before for 8 years), I never got that kind of charge, another rip-off and hidden fees by Fido to make the deal looks good prior to sign-off for a 3 year comtract.
The bottom line is that the advertisements from the Canadian cell phone providers continue to be confusing and deceptive to the consumers at best.
The message for the consumers is to be careful what these cell phone companies are advertising. When the cell phone deal looks too good to be true, take it home and talk to someone who had previous dealings with these companies and find the real story.
In retrospect, I thought (for the six years I was with Bell) that I was being ripped off by Bell and went to Fido. I am with Fido now to find that they are not any better than Bell in the way that they deal with the hidden fees.
In summary, no matter how diligent you are as a consumer, you will be ripped off by one of these cell phone companies. The worst is that the Canadian Government is doing nothing to fix this problem: you are on your own as a consumer.

angie May 5, 2009

so i just got a call saying that fido will begin to charge an additional 2$ to my account and every fido account starting jan. when i asked why they said it is because fido is going to donate money and that the 2$ will be an “environmental fee” where fido will plant a tree or something.

what is up with that? if i wanted to donate money i would donate it under my own name!!

is there a way of not agreeing to this? this can’t be part of the contract right?

anyways, beware of this additional hidden charge and check ur bills!

Judith June 17, 2009

After a year of having a monthly billing, I found I just wasn’t using the minutes, so I arranged with Fido to switch to a pay as you go plan. The service rep assured me that the switch would not affect my voicemail and ability to what numbers were calling me. Well, lo and behold, both were affected, so when I called back to get it sorted out, the next service rep neglected to give me the access code to be able to purchase additional minutes over the phone. That required a third call, to explain everything to another rep. None of these operators advised me of the $35 admin fee which is apparently the charge for switching from one plan to the other. $35!!! When the invoice showed up with the charge, I called yet again to find out what the heck was going on and just about lost it when the service rep said I would have been advised of this six weeks ago when I actually made the switch. Well, I wasn’t, and after a half an hour arguing with this guy, I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. He offered me a 25% ‘discount’ on the service fee to account for me not being told about it at the time of the switch. Does anyone else think this sounds a bit fishy? The two phone calls I’m going to make are the Better Business Bureau and the second to another phone company who can hopefully transfer my current phone number and I’ll never have to deal with Fido again. Beware their terrible service charges and lack of proper council. They are just waiting to rip you off.

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