PIAC challenges cell phone cancellation requirement

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) is asking the CRTC to prevent wireless carriers from forcing subscribers to provide 30 days notice when cancelling their service or switching to another provider. In a formal application posted on the commission’s website last Friday, PIAC says the 30-day cancellation requirement imposed by many of Canada’s largest wireless providers is unfairly burdensome on consumers, and is inconsistent with several aspects of the Telecommunications Act. In particular, PIAC pointed to cases in which wireless subscribers who tried to switch service providers were required to continue paying their old carrier for a full month, even after they had stopped using those services. “n situations in which a customer chooses to migrate his/her service from one WSP to another … the customer is charged by two for the same service and for the same service period,” the PIAC application noted. “The imposition of 30 days of additional billing once the customer has left his/her former WSP effectively forces the customer to pay twice for a single line and for service the consumer is not receiving.” PIAC drew from the two most recent annual reports from the CRTC Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS), which also highlighted the issue of the 30-day cancellation requirement. The PIAC application, dated Dec. 22, 2011, quotes from the 2009-2010 CCTS report, recounting the difficulties consumers encounter in the face of such requirements when trying to transfer their previous mobile phone number from one service provider to another. “The easy answer appears to be for the customer to give 30 days’ notice to the old provider and then port the number to the new provider,” the report said. “However, in order to port a number to another provider, the number must remain active. So the customer cannot cancel service with the old provider until after the porting order is completed. If (s)he does, the old provider will cancel the number and the customer will be unable to port it.” PIAC added that these charges are often imposed on customers who seek to switch carriers or cancel services at the end of a previous service contract. The group said charging a customer who is not under contract to pay for terminating a service without 30 days notice is inconsistent with numerous objectives of the Telecommunications Act. Specifically, it said such charges “harms competition,” “does not support the objectives of affordability or accessibility,” and “undermines the efficiency and competitiveness of Canadian telecommunications” by making it both costly and difficult to migrate between service providers. This, PIAC charged, discourages innovation and distorts market forces by making it harder for consumers to dump a service provider in favour of one of its competitors. PIAC added that service providers who impose the 30-day cancellation requirement create an undue preference for themselves that unreasonably affects their competitors and their own customers. “It is nothing better than a form of punishment imposed by resentful service providers on departing consumers,” PIAC said. The CRTC is accepting interventions pertaining to PIAC’s application until February 6, the commission said on its website. news@thewirereport.ca

PIAC challenges cell phone cancellation requirement

News | January 9, 2012

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