Anger fuels rumours that Apple is reducing the number of phones it plans to send to Canada
Gillian Shaw
Sun
The imminent arrival of the iPhone in Canada has unleashed a storm of controversy over the country’s high wireless data rates and left consumers bewildered by an array of offerings which, if mishandled, could leave them with a monthly phone bill higher than the price of a house in Saskatchewan.
iPhone fever has given way to iPhone fury with almost 50,000 people signing a petition slated to go to Rogers this Friday, the day Apple’s new iPhone is released.
As well, a new list was launched Monday of people planning to cancel their Rogers service. Within hours of its launch at www.ruinediphone.com, the list had 100 Rogers customers and growing saying they would quit Rogers.
“Rogers is not only ripping you off with the iPhone plans, but also with their regular ‘mega value’ plans,” wrote one participant, Justin Giles. “I would have liked to get an iPhone, but that dream is now ruined. Too bad, because I’ve been a Rogers customer for over eight years, and now I will never go back unless something drastic changes!”
The situation is fuelling online rumours, such as that Apple is reducing the number of iPhones it plans to ship to Canada. Apple didn’t return calls.
Alberta oilfield worker Piotr Staniaszek, a pre-iPhone victim of wireless data limits, probably could have picked up a couple of real estate properties in some parts of the country for a bill that reached almost $60,000 one month, climbing to $85,000 by the next.
That was last December and Staniaszek and his wireless carrier, Bell Mobility, later negotiated the killer bill down to $3,000-plus. But critics say the current hodgepodge of data pricing, plagued by small print and unexpected charges, can only lead to more such digital disasters.
“We’re getting piles of complaints,” said Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers’ Association of Canada. “We’re classifying this as another rip-off of Canadian consumers.
“Why we are getting this totally inferior deal to what they are getting in the United States doesn’t make sense.”
Both Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility appear ready to capitalize on the proposed boycott of the iPhone and Rogers with rival offerings that come with flat-rate, unlimited Web browsing and
e-mail. The only company apparently unmoved by the consumer revolt is Rogers, with company spokeswoman Liz Hamilton saying Monday there are no plans to include an unlimited data service for the iPhone.
“We don’t believe an unlimited plan is the best value for our customers,” Hamilton said. “Other carriers have made other choices and you have to talk to them about what those choices are.”
Bell announced the Aug. 8 introduction of the Samsung Instinct smartphone. Instinct users can get a $10 unlimited mobile browser plan from Bell for Internet surfing and e-mail. With the Instinct selling for as low as $149.99 and customers able to get a voice package with unlimited data for as low as $40, Bell is aggressively undercutting Rogers’ iPhone offerings, which start at $75 for voice plan with 750 megabytes of data, and top out at the heftiest two-gigabyte-plus voice plan for $115.
Telus has weighed in with the promise of the HTC Diamond, to be released later this summer, also $149.99 with a three-year contract and the ability to use Telus‘ $15 data plan for unlimited e-mail and instant messaging or a $30 plan that adds Web browsing to that. Telus also plans to introduce Samsung’s Instinct.
But even Bell and Telus‘ unlimited plans come with conditions and fine print that could leave customers confused over whether they’ll pay extra for such services as streaming video, text messages and other features.
“They [wireless carriers] deliberately make it very difficult to make comparisons,” said Cran. “To be safe you really need to have an unlimited plan.”
In the U.S., where AT&T is the network that carries the iPhone, customers can get unlimited data at a flat rate with prices that vary depending on the number of voice minutes, starting at $70 with the top plan $110.
In Canada, iPhone users will have to know how many megabytes the websites they are cruising add up to, how much watching a one-minute YouTube video will cut into their data allotment or if those holiday snapshots from well-meaning relatives are going to put them over the edge.
Rogers will send users a message warning when they reach 80 per cent of their plans’ capacity and when they have used it up, but if iPhone buyers discover after a month that the cost is way too high to justify running their new phone, they’ll face hefty penalties if they want to get out of the three-year contracts.
Head out of the country and the surprises could be even more painful to the pocketbook.
“Substantial charges may be incurred if your iPhone is taken out of Canada, even if no services are intentionally used,” reads Rogers‘ fine print on the iPhone.
“People are going to have to be very cautious here,” Cran said.
At ruinediphone.com, which is gathering signatures for the petition being presented Friday, site founder James Hallen has been replaced by web designers and marketers Jamie Lynch and Robert Sheinbein, who said they stepped in when the site was overwhelmed by traffic.
The pair have put their money where their mouths are when it comes to their wireless accounts, using Verizon from the U.S. for their company BlackBerries in a move they said cut their monthly wireless bill from the average of $2,000-$2,500 a month they were paying Rogers to $700-$800 a month.
They said while individual consumers must be able to present a U.S. address to get the service, they were able to get it since they have business operations in the U.S. Unlimited long distance and unlimited roaming included in their service means they can use their BlackBerries in Canada without incurring extra costs.
With Canadian plans, however, “it just takes one bill to wipe your budget out,” Sheinbein said.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
