Re: Telus' Official Stance on Downloading Ringtones

Well write them a letter about it then but I doubt they'll change it. They're running a business that provides a service. They also sell things. They see them as two businesses where one relies on the on the other and they make it so they have to. Its good business sense really.

I know where u can download telus ringtones

FREE TELUS RINGTONES

"Its good business sense really."

I'm not sure that I agree with this statement. While it does create a sort of captive revenue stream, it also creates a never-ending adversarial relationship with your customer base and that is NOT a good plan. It situates things such that they are always looking for a viable way out.

It makes more sense to allow the customer to make use of fetaures inherent to the base design of the phone and then offer "Value Added" services and products at a price point that makes it profitable, but also affordable. Many people (most actually) are willing to pay for something rather than do it themselves if it saves time and effort and the upcharge isn't too extravagant.

Just some thoughts.

I think Telus' policy on blocking ringtones would be fair if they were upfront and open about it. Telus' reps that sold me LG-8100 cellphone lied to me about the ringtones. I asked them if I can download custom-made ringtones on my cellphone from my PC and they told me that I would be able to do that. To convince me they also retreived and showed me the manual for the LG-8100 phone. The manual read in no ambiguous terms that, yes, one can upload an mp3 onto the phone and set it up as a ringtone. The reps, however, failed to mention that Telus completely blocked this feature.

It is this lying, I believe, is the display of poor business practice and disrespect toward the customer.

Does anybody know if Telus blocks the ringtone downloads on hardware level or on software level. I am trying to figure out whether it is worth the time to look into hacking the phone.

well i had pleasent surprise when i got my blackberry Pearl, Telus said you can not use any ringtones on it, even the ones they sell, however i put a mp3 file on it and i found out how to put it as a ringtone free of charge. So i guess newer blackberrys can use custom ringtones. I believe only newer ones have the feature so telus has not realized it yet, so for now i can download free ringtones and use them on my phone and probably RIM will not block their phones like the other companies will for telus and the other companies.