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Competition Bureau fines Bell $10 million for misleading advertising
The Competition Bureau have reached an agreement with Bell today that will see them fork over $10 million for misleading advertising. The Bureau said that Bell has been advertising prices for various services since 2007 that “were not in fact available” and hiding details within the fine print. Bell stated that they fundamentally disagree with the outcome but “has decided to immediately resolve the issue and move forward by paying”.
The Bureau notes that the impacted services include the Bell home phone, Internet, satellite TV and wireless. As a result Bell must “modify all of its non-compliant advertisements within 60 days” and pay the $10 million penalty.
Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of Competition, said “I am pleased that Bell cooperated with the Bureau’s investigation and is taking steps to correct the misleading advertisements. When a price is offered to consumers, it must be accurate. Including a fine-print disclaimer is no licence to advertise prices that are not available.”
Source: Competition Bureau
Via: CNW
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43 comments for “Competition Bureau fines Bell $10 million for misleading advertising”
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Pay a fine to the govt, but the users who actually paid the inflated fees get nothing…
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Justice is at least partially served!
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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This is welcome news, long overdue. Now let’s see some work on advertised airfares.
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GOOD!
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Bell will continue using these kind of shady tactics moving forward, because 10 million dollars is a drop in the bucket for them.
Besides, Bell doesn’t know how to operate differently anyways, deceiving people is in it’s blood.
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Down with Robellus’ pricing.
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Who knew it doesn’t actually cost $6.95 to “turn on” touch-tone or “turn on” digital tv that uses a digital satellite signal? Wow, earth shattering news!
Canadians are just so used to extra fees that most are just waking up to these made-up mandatory fees. Hidden fees seem to be as much of a Canadian tradition as maple syrup, hockey and Timmy’s. Look at your bill the next time you buy a case of pop.
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They’ll keep doing it because the CRTC allows fine print to be the main source of details on pricing as opposed to the actual advertising in ads.
Until they force that to change (LOL as if) Bell, Rogers and Telus will continue to use the term unlimited and certain prices that are in fact not true.
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Good. I’m sick of Bell and their hidden fees.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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i say good to they say in there advertising internet 49.95 real price 58.95 they make them give back the money we overpaid
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Bleh, they’ll just pass the bill on to their customers like they always do. $10M is barely a slap on the wrist.
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Honestly, who ever was able to get the announced price with any carrier in Canada…. You hear $35 on the radio once you get to the store or worst after a month or two you find out that $35 = $53… The sad thing is once the customer is in the store they are able to make him swallow the BS story they have an activate them. Reminds me the car industry, did anyone buy a car in the last decade that was equal to the price seen in the papers ?
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no. usually i have paid less for the advertised price after negotiating.
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@Smiths: Come to Fido, the price I was quoted is the price I pay. No system access fees, no 911 fee, just tax. Only time my bill changes is if I do something to change it, like go over my minutes, or call long distance. That’s not Fido’s fault, that’s mine.
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It’s not just Bell, it’s every bloody company. All the telcom companies have hidden fees, and every single business has fine print for all their deals. Fast food joint have coupons or advertising that says 2 for 1 Burgers and in fine print it says “when you buy a drink and fries”.
It’s like the expression “Fool me once, shame on you – Fool me twice, shame on me.” The 1st time ever someone got caught by this, I understand being upset, but now that it’s a known thing. they’ve no one to blame but themselves.
People just need to learn to read the fine print. I understand why we all want to eliminate this type of advertising, but a 10M fine for something everyone is doing, and for something where the rules regarding this are not clearly defined is stupid.
It doesn’t make sense to punish someone for something you allowed before b.c. the rules were not clear. If the rule is you must inform the customer of additional fees, and you use fine print and are not told it’s violating the rule, then how do you know you are breaking the rule. The fees are mentioned, just not in size 36 Bold+Underlined. Heck even if they put the extra fees in HUGE letters, people would still claim it’s not their fault they didn’t read it.
Lastly, this fine is doing nothing but hurting the consumers more. Who do you think in the end is paying the 10M fine? I’m sorry to say, the answer is not the company. The consumers end up paying for it, with increased fees or decreased service. Every big business just passes the extra costs onto their customers.
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I have been working in this industry for 4 years now. Yes, you are 1/3 right. Bell Mobility and TELUS Mobility don’t have hidden fees for cell phones anymore. They took the System Access Fees out and increased the plans by $5, which is still a $2.75 savings every month. The only company that charges extra on cell phone bills is Rogers. That company increased the plans by $5 as well as introduce a Government Regulatory Recovery Fee (GRRF) of $1.46-$2.46, depending on the phone. As for the $35 activation fee that these companies charge, that is a charge to the company from Equifax. When the company charges $35 for the activation fee, that fee is charged to the company for performing a credit check on the customer. The company charges that fee on the customer’s cell phone bill to get reimbursed from the customers. Every time the company runs a credit check on a customer, the company gets charged for it whether the customer passes or fails. If a customer fails the credit check, the company still owes Equifax $35. Since it is a business and there are a lot of people who fail the credit checks, I ALMOST agree with the charge. That means that the company is out $35 PER CHECK. Imagine how many credit checks these companies do and how many people fail these checks on a daily basis. Cell phone plans would be MUCH higher is these companies didn’t charge the activation fee.
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I might agree with the $35 “activation fee” if they only did it the first time you signed up with them… I’ve paid that fee EVERY time I’ve bought a new phone with Rogers.
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False Advertising should be treated as public fraud and should be subject to criminal codes. In addition to fines, directors, company officers should be penalized with jail terms as well.
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what were they fined for ?
what can be more misleading than rogers unlimited plans ad ?
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i was talking about these
http://redboard.rogers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Student-plan.jpg
http://redboard.rogers.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Family-plan.jpg
or telus’s free data sharing ad
http://www.uberphones.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/telus.jpg
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@Ra: Taken in that context (with just the images) it is false advertising. But you’re taking the add out of context, because wherever those images are placed there is also alot of writing detailing every little thing. It’s people’s -laziness- that leads them to ignore the fine print and -assume- what they’re getting. That’s why the advertisments work… Bell was slapped for blaintently stating things that were wrong.
With regards to the student plan, I don’t see any prices or details about what’s unlimited, do you? It’s your assumption about what is unlimited.
Same with the family plan, that picture has no details about anything. It’s a title, that’s all. Once again your assumptions are what’s incorrect.
The Telus one has a little more detail, but it’s not false advertising by any means. You’ll go through more data, which might lead to overages, but that’s all. BTW, it’s something you can do with any company anyway. Example, nothing prevents me from turning on the Wi-Fi hotspot on my Acer and allowing up to 5 devices to share my data, and I’m not with Telus and don’t have a data sharing plan.
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What he is referring to is the fact that they state Unlimited, when really it is not. For text for examples, when they used to say unlimited they really meant 2500 texts.
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Sometimes you watch a commercial on TV, a huge billboard or a printout, and the fine print is either way too small, fuzzy, or both.
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on vehicle ads, I can see the fine print clearly on my full HD tv, but the ads are so short, you can’t possibly read the entire fine print before it ends. most ads may just show ‘some conditions apply, see dealer for details’ at the bottom.
having said that, when people sign contracts, it’s all there, but most folks wanting to play with their shiny new cell phone probably don’t read it anyways or just ignore the conditions, regardless of print size.
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This will only be Justice if Bell goes to pay the penalty and is told that, now they have ageed to pay, they actualy have to pay $15 Million.
It was in the fine print, Honest.
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Furthermore, what about the “no monthly fees” long distance package that actually has a $6.95 “Network Access Fee”? How is that fair?
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@Dan TOTALLY funny and true.
NICE!
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I think all of the big 3 are guilty of this sort of thing, Telus has some hidden fees too.
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Instant Karma’s gonna get you,
Gonna knock you right on the head
What in the world you thinking of
Instant Karma- John Lennon
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Advertising for services they dont have….i hope they look into my file and see that they did infact do that since I fought with them for a month to get an addOn for $ 10 that was advertised on the self serve app for bb…..the app came out in 2010, the addons were grandfathered out in 2009 yet it is my fault that I cant get them….normally retailers just honour it and change it after…but no, bell is giant douche and could not even do that….i hope they are asked to pay more because this is not even close to the stupidity they create
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Bell go to hell!
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Bell is the worst company in canada. They swindle their customers with insane and completely unrealistic pricing on just about everything, no customer service to speak of and their CTV network is a big farcical joke. The tv station in toronto especially. You can make a drinking game to how often they mess up on air, or advertise other bell products as “news stories”, not to mention its very obvious they are very pro liberal party and negative to anyone else.
I hope Bell goes bankrupt one day!
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Read this comment too.
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Alain, did you read this comment too?
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Bell kinda deserves this one, but the 10Million shouldnt be going to the gov’t it should be going to all the customers who were over charged its a shame!
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What they’ll do next is really easy to predict.
They’ll add ‘by mistake’ (like they did before) a small fee of 99c on every Bell customer on one of their next bill.
How many (like me) will call and argue for the unexplained 99c charge?
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Hey Bell: Eat it.
Competition Bureau: That that $10B back to the consumers who were ripped off, then go after Rogers.
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There are most definitely no ‘hidden fees’ with bell from any aspect. The only reason people say there is hidden fees is because they are too ignorant to actually read their contracts which have CLEAR words all over it.
Stop complaining and ask questions and read your stuff. If there are any mistakes, get it fixed. I’ve done it a bunch with multiple companies. Then again, I don’t epect too much from a bunch of complainers…..
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Bell and even Videotron tend to advertise their super cheap plans and then you find out at the store that price is only “with a subscription of 3 services”. Bell TV used to post prices on flyers that were for new customers only, but would not state it anywhere on the flyer, not even on the fine prints at the bottom of the page.
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Telus’s unlimited texting is most definitely not capped at 2500. Its unlimited with Canada!
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i just spent 5days to get bell to fix my phone service first call i made the guy was in india i wanted to speak to someone in canada. put he did not no how to do this they promise someone will come monday between5 to 9pm then the same on tuseday wensday they said 8am to 12pm no show then they promise from 5pm to 9pm the guy finaly showed up at 4pm fixed it in about 15 minutes. mean while i lost 5 days of bussness be cause of them i figured i lost 1000.oo but do you think they care.
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