Rogers/Fido to Almost ‘Eliminate’ Early Cancellation Fees in January 2012

[lefty]

Rogers/Fido to Almost ‘Eliminate’ Early Cancellation Fees in January 2012

By Gary Ng on December 28th, 2011 16
Manitoba and Quebec are two provinces that have legislation to protect their consumers when it comes to cellphones. Bill 60 was an amendment to the Consumer Protection Act in Quebec in 2010 to allow consumers to cancel cellphone contracts without paying cancellation fees and other penalties, along with a clear stipulation of terms and policies. Manitoba recently passed similar legislation, and joins Quebec as only two provinces in the country to have such protections.
Telus was the first Canadian carrier to eliminate cancellation fees altogether back in June of this year (yet, there’s still a $50 ‘admin fee’), and now a leaked do ent hints Rogers will revise their early cancellation fee (ECF) policy in January 2012 to almost do the same:

The government is is planning to extend these changes to Manitoba in 2012. To lead the change, Rogers is proactively making updates to how our customers in all remaining non-regulated provinces are serviced when cancelling or making changes to their existing wireless services.

The new cancellation policy will result in customers paying back Rogers the subsidized amount from handsets plus $12.50. This cost of cancellation policy is known internally at Rogers as ‘Economic Inducement‘.
Here’s an example of how the policy would apply if you signed a three year term and paid $159 for a 16GB iPhone 4S (worth $649), but decided to cancel after one year.
You take the total hardware savings ($490) and divide it by the number of months in the signed term (36) times the number of months remaining (24), then add $12.50. Total cancellation fee paid? $339.17.

So if you plan on cancelling your Rogers contract, the amount you pay will come down to the subsidy you received–choose your devices carefully!
Thoughts on this upcoming new policy?

[Drachen]

Sad Sad day, I hope someone corrected the extremely PROMINENT error of this guy's post in the comments section or something.

Also, do they have exorbitant cancellation fees in Canada? I know the ones here are not really a big deal.

[Useruser666]

Shhhh...... I'll take that steal!

$490 / 864 (24 * 36) = $0.56713 + $12.50 = $13.06713 (STEAL!)

or

$490 / 36 = $13.61111 (per month) * 24 months = $326.6667 + $12.50 =

$339.1667

[resistanze]

Sad Sad day, I hope someone corrected the extremely PROMINENT error of this guy's post in the comments section or something.

Also, do they have exorbitant cancellation fees in Canada? I know the ones here are not really a big deal.

Here is a quote from Roger's cancellation fees policy.

The ECF is the greater of (i) $100 or (ii) $20 per month remaining in the Service Agreement Term, to a maximum of $400 (plus applicable taxes), and applies to each line in the plan that is terminated. If you have subscribed to your Price Plan before February 1, 2007 and you continue or renew on the same Price Plan on 1-, 2- or 3-year term, the ECF will be equal to $20 times the number of months remaining in the term, to a maximum of $200 (plus applicable taxes). A DECF also applies if, for any reason, your wireless data service is terminated prior to the end of your Data Term. The DECF is the greater of (i) $25 or (ii) $5 per month remaining in the Data Term, to a maximum of $100 (plus applicable taxes), and applies in addition to the ECF for termination of your Service Agreement. If you subscribe to a plan combining both voice and data services, both the ECF and DECF apply.

This essentially means if you have a contract with 20 months or more (typical contracts here are 36 months, not 24 like the U.S.), you'll pay $500 bucks cancellation fee for voice + data. The internet and wireless industry is ed up and poorly regulated. It wasn't until a year and a half ago that most providers eliminated the $9 "System Access fee" added to your cell phone bill each month.

Don't get me started on the caps for internet.

[lefty]

In other news, Bell is gonna stop throttling teh internet in March