Telus (and Bell) has just announced that beginning in August it will charge ¢15 for each incoming text. I will be sending them the following letter and suggest that anyone else who is upset by this should do the same.
To Whom it May Concern:
I was very disappointed to read today that Telus will be implementing a scheme to force its customers to either pay for an event that they have no control over or to sign up for a service they do not wish to have.
I think it is vastly unfair to require customers to pay for incoming text messages when they cannot control receiving a text. I, for instance, receive on average two texts a week. I do not solicit these texts; they arrive without my consent or prior warning. They are frequently sent by friends with unlimited texting plans who will remain unaffected by a change in policy.
If, as AJ Gratton, the Telus spokesman claims, the reason for this new few is the demand texting places on the network, then the just solution is to increase the fees for the people who are responsible for the increased volume, i.e. those with unlimited texting plans. Those without unlimited plans already pay for each text they send and therefore cannot be held responsible for an increase in volume without a corresponding increase in revenue.
If Telus is determined to proceed with this demonstrably unfair practice, will they provide some means by which a customer can refuse to receive a text and thus not be charged? Will they implement a free service by which a customer can refuse to receive all texts? If not, then Telus will essentially be penalizing all customers who do not have a texting plan. The company will be implementing a practice which is designed to force customers without a texting option on their phone to either pay a fee for not having this service or to forcibly encourage them to add such a service in order to avoid unexpected fees.
Unless Telus can somehow demonstrate that the main cause of the increased volume on their network is customers receiving rather than sending texts, there is no justification for increasing the fees for non-text subscribing customers.
~Leythe
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