I got a letter from Bell today saying that the price of an text message was increasing to $0.15 due to “increasing costs”. Oh really? First of all we already know that SMS messages are a huge ripoff. So, I’d really like to know what increasing costs have been incurred that are even remotely related to text messaging. It’s times like these that I take a tiny amount of comfort in knowing that I have a fairly reasonable cell phone plan—thanks to a smart girl in a mobility kiosk that found a way to sign me up for a corporate plan even though I was working for a small design studio at the time.
And as I read this letter from Cameron McCuaig, the Vice President of Client Care at Bell, I marvel at the line “thank you for choosing Bell”. As if I selected them from number of worthy opponents. Actually, Cameron, I “chose” Bell 4 years ago because I couldn’t stomach being with Telus anymore after having worked for them for a year and a half, and I didn’t like any of Rogers’ phones at that time. So congratulations on being the slightly less foul smelling pile of garbage back in December of 2004.
Speaking of greedy cell phone carriers acting like you’re getting a deal, have you seen the new iPhone plans from Rogers? Their cheapest plan rings in at $60. For that you get:
- 150 weekday minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends (note: evenings start at 9pm, when those of us who work for a living to keep paying those cellphone bills are starting to think about heading to bed)
- 400MB data (which may sound like a lot but you’d be amazed at how quickly emailing and web browsing will eat through that 400MB—oh, and better stay off Google Maps, that’ll leave a dent)
- Visual voicemail
- 75 sent text messages
Whoopdie friggin’ shit. Oh, do you like having call display? Well then you can pay $15 more for the “Value Pack” of “Wireless Essentials”. The first part assumes you’re a complete moron and need to look up “value” in the dictionary. The second part just points out the fact that these were features that should come standard with your plan anyway, hence “Essentials”. Let’s be honest, right now you wish you were a stakeholder in Rogers. It’s brilliant! After all we really don’t have much of a choice, do we? It’s not as if we can take our iPhone elsewhere and get a better deal. We’re all held at the mercy of our greedy cellphone carriers.
There is a petition you can sign, and while I’m sure it won’t make a difference it might feel better to get some things off your chest, knowing that once they reach 10,000 messages they’re going to print them out and send them to Rogers (sadly a huge waste of paper since Rogers execs will be too busy rolling around in money to notice a few extra white bits of paper in the pile).
