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Update: Bell officially drops SAF & 911 Fees
For those who are Bell, or want to be on Bell the good news is that they have dropped the monthly $6.95 System Access Fees and the $0.75 Carrier 911 Fees. There will be no formal announcement but you’ll notice on the Bell site that the fees are removed from the plans.
The dropped fees are only good for new, upgrading or migrating clients. For those who are current customers and want their fees dropped you’ll have to switch over to a new plan in which Bell has also changed to be more competitive (they’ve also now included call forwarding) and from what we can tell have been increased by $5.
UPDATE: We finally got more info on the dropped fees:
According to the internal doc (Thanks Informer!) here are the details:
“Effective November 20, 2009, Bell is simplifying billing and saving money for our clients by eliminating SAF and carrier 911 fees from the following price plan groups:
• Consumer Share price plans
• Small Business Share price plan
• Consumer U760 Turbo Stick Flex Plan
• Turbo Stick Card price plans
• Corporate price plans
• Smartphone Combo price plans
• Smartphone Combo Share price plans
• Modem price plans
o Tracking
o Vertical data
• Combo price plans for iPhone – shared and single user
• Uber price plans and Atlantic Uber price plans
• Value $25 price plan
• North America price plan
• Fab 10 Student Plans Exclusive to Dalhousie University
• BlackBerry BIS data only PPs
• PDA data only PPs
• PDA data only shareable PPs
• BlackBerry BIS data only shareable PPs
• BlackBerry BES PPs
• BlackBerry BES Shareable PPs
As a result, clients activating on these plans will now only see one monthly charge on their bill – the cost of their price plan – instead of 3 individual charges.
Changes to plans include:
• SAF and carrier 911 fees being removed (a savings of $7.70).
• Call Forwarding being included on Consumer and Small Business plans (a $3 value)
• The monthly fee increasing by $5 to $10 depending on the price plan
• Provincial government imposed 911 fees will still apply
In addition, there is a $5 price increase on 2 BlackBerry BIS and PDA smartphone SOCs.
Impacts to existing clients:
• SAF and carrier 911 fees are not being waived for existing clients on their current price plan. However, existing clients can migrate to an in-market “no SAF or 911” price plan with no restrictions (i.e. no contract renewal required; no migration fee). Advise migrating clients that they will forfeit the benefits and features of their existing price plan.
• As always, if a client calls in and requests a rate plan review, continue to apply your better value migration tactics.
• Clients migrating to the new plans will be charged the $2 paper bill fee unless they register for ebill and suppress their paper bill.
• Existing clients will continue to be able to renew on their current plan as it exists.
Discussion
14 comments for “Update: Bell officially drops SAF & 911 Fees”
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Good to hear, though call forwarding not quite as useful as TELUS adding voice mail to all their plans.
Still, makes Rogers’ GRRF look all the more ridiculous now.
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$5 for call forwarding? Drop the call forwarding and 3 way conferencing and give call display. I can’t understand why Bell and Rogers charge $15-$20 just so a person can get call display. And if you want call display, you have to get message centre too.
What ever happened to “pick my 3 call features” for your package?
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Khav Reply:
November 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
The reason they charge so much for call display is because they know you’ll still buy it, since it is an all but essential feature.
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Rogers is officially the douche-bag of the Canadian wireless industry. They are the only major carrier to invent a new fee while all the other eliminated the old SAF. Although everybody raised their plans by $5, on Bell and Telus, your net month payments are actually less than before, whereas on Rogers, you are actually paying more than before.
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RogersKeith Reply:
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Hey Joe. I’m with Rogers. Just want to clarify that the Government Regulatory Recovery Fee is not a new cost – it’s just new way of breaking out some of the fees, costs and other amounts related to government mandates, programs and requirements.
The price customers pay on our new plans is about the same as what they paid on previous plans.
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Hopefully this will put pressure on Rogers since they are the only big carrier charging an additional fee. I wish one of them would include basic caller ID in all plans though, that’s probably the next glass ceiling that needs to be broken.
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Call forwarding is more useful to me than voice mail (how many voice mail boxes do I need?!) but does it include NAT (No Answer Transfer) or are they going to charge for that?
Anyways, it’s not like forwarding the call actually costs them anything! I wish they threw in something useful for the extra $5!
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Just a marketing tactic, my friends. Theres no actual benefit or bonus to (informed) customers. At very best, they’re being a VERY TINY BIT less deceiving.
Return to your homes, nothing to see here.
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“Better value migration tactics?” Anyone has an idea what this means?
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You have to grudgingly admire the cartel. Worried about increased competition and negative marketing campaigns from the new entrants they eliminate the hated ‘made up’ fees……and then raise their plans by the same amount. Bravo.
When is WIND starting up?
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How is this fair competition? IT’S PRICE FIXING!!
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Just sad! i can
rise tha cost of my plan by $12 “for changing to a current one” to save $9.70.. hmmm no benifit to me anyway!!
wen they remove a fee they should Remove it!
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The pricing is marginally better (It’s 2.70 off, but $2.70 over 3 years is close to $100). Free call forwarding works better for some people, but I think everyone would be better off with free caller ID (but as someone pointed out, it’s a really good revenue driver).
Rather than just give an industry wide discount, I think Bell would be better off reducing plans after a given period of time, for example: after 1 year of service, 5% off bill, after 2 years 7% off, after 3 years 10% and so on to a maximum cap. It boggle my mind. Keeping customers is so much less expensive than winning new ones.
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J-M Reply:
November 21st, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I have NEVER understood, why they try sooo hard to NEW customers, when it is MUCH easier to keep the ones they have(and are losing fast). Boggles the mind…
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