The man appointed by the province to push the Feds on how we’re billed for our cell phones would like to see billing not only more transparent, but less complicated.
While on the NL Morning News, Bob D’Eith, the MLA for Maple Ridge – Mission says what he’s hearing is people are fed up of paying for things that are buried in their bills, things they didn’t know they were getting charged for in the first place. “It’s not just the basic bill because if they knew what they were going to get, and that’s what they got, there’d be so fewer complaints.”
“In fact that’s what the complaints are often about is those extra charges. I mean some telecom companies charge for a paper bill if you want it and for seniors that can be a really big deal.”
D’Eith thinks a good place to start would be letting consumers see what they’re committing to before they sign on the dotted line. “You don’t actually get your contract until after you’ve signed it. My background, I’m a lawyer and it just seems counter intuitive to me to sign a contract until you’ve actually seen it.”
He added the cost of the phone itself and how we’re charged for it is fooling a lot of people. “It’s the cell phone itself that’s expensive, you know, fifteen-hundred bucks for a cell phone but that kind of gets buried in the bill and people don’t necessarily know when it’s all bundled together what they’re paying for and sometimes they’ve paid the phone off and it’s still part of the bundle and they’re still paying for the phone even though they’ve paid it off.”