Cellphone data shock (CBC Marketplace)

we're hanging out with teens today I got a strike Claire Naomi and Caitlin are helping us roll out a test involving their favorite accessories cell phone text away snapchat away tweet your little fingers off their parents are going to hate us we're letting their kids use up all the pricy data on their family share plans while ladies start screaming let's get this going we want to know will the cellphone providers let them rack off extra data charges without their parents permission gutter ball again okay this mom says Bell sure will we're in the Maritimes to hear a cell phone saga I have a shocking story about my bail bail rosemarie pick peas for the family cell phones to keep an eye on the bill she sold on a family share plan she shares voice text and data with her husband and two kids when her son goes over the monthly data limit check out how much extra it costs over $1700 yeah you heard that right over $1700 that's called a data overage charge I was shocked that they hadn't asked you know how could that happen how could it happen rosemary thought government rules protected her from bill shock how once you go $50 over your data is blocked to turn it back on you have to approve agree to pay the higher fees who approved it it was me her son approved it Bao let him sent to those higher fees she can't believe it and disputes the $1700 charge they shouldn't have allowed it to go over the dead over just without coming to me first rosemary pays the bills so Bell says pay up I was mad I was pretty near in tears I mean you have other bills that are coming in and how I'll end up paying for it don't know Bell credits back half the bill but not good enough rosemary doesn't want to pay a dime hi rosemary hi Mohammed so we hook her up with cell phone bill buster Mohammed Halla be so at no point were you notified by any kind of message or any kind of warning not until I got the telephone call and I was like why did you wait till it was 1700 to call me yeah this is so frustrating your son did he advised you that he accepted the charges you know he's not even quite sure himself or so I blamed him too at the time I said what are you doing but I still stand by that shouldn't be able to be done what was their response to you so they just said well the other phone must have accepted the charges I said well how is it that they're allowed to accept the charges on the account holder how can that be that's what Mohammed wants to know he can't believe Bao lets kids rock off big Bill's just it's absurd it shouldn't be allowed anyone with the family plan you better like gather up your kids phones and keep them tight to you not even this Pro can help rosemary he says this is a case for the CCTs they help customers settle disputes and oversee the government rules we asked the CCTs to make a house call Howard maker is the Commissioner for complaints for telecommunication services he makes sure companies and customers know the rules the wireless code of duck says only individuals subscribing to the service can consent when it comes to family share plans who can consent to those data overages so in my view and in the view of CCTs that's essentially the person who pays the freight the person whose name is on the account pays the bill the person who's paying the bill needs to be able to control and manage what's going on on that account - dad - data we're going over back with our teen testers who's paying the bills here the parents of course yeah will the cellphone companies ask the parents or the teens for permission to rash off extra charges it's tempting like everything I knew on my phone like pretty much involves data so like I kind of melt without it it's a precious commodity they must share with the family and conserve like with my my dad will always get bad when I reach 90% of my data yeah no I just it's always the same discussion I'm getting my phone away now controlling how much data I use but no worries tonight girls they are dining out and all-you-can-eat data thanks to us thank you for doing this who's the first to go over the limit I got a text let me say it's from bells so it says help you manage your mobile costs we have temporarily blocked your data to unblock and continue to use data open your mobile browser and select accept so what's you gonna do I'm going to accept to continue to go over my data it was just one click of a button and a teen confession it's not the first time she's done this I've done this before and I would go on the internet and usually accept yeah the worst that I've racked up was three hundred dollars over my data I did get in quite a bit of trouble with my dad that was a very big argument and friend Kyla also with Belle says she has to literally every time we go over Dana Kyle you're gonna lose your phone all your privileges moments later Claire hits her limit - I just got a text from Telus I'm locked out at except further data charges reply yes to this message it's cool yeah like that you can like keep going if you want to salsa like kind of not right in the sense I was like my mom's on pain it I can just say yeah let's keep going let's keep charging it up and no one else has to say anything Valon tell us let the teens keep charging it up what about Rogers I got a text message from Rogers yep no problem roger sends her mom the same text but what is the point her daughter gets to accept the extra charges anyway as for the Bell and Telus parents not even notified so we are notifying the commissioner minors we're able to consent to these overages consent to turning the data back on it's a problem I think awkward it doesn't accord with our view of what the code requires uh in letter or in spirit it does not does not is that troubling to see that teens can do this well I certainly wouldn't want my teens doing it costing folks money that they shouldn't have to spend what's the penalty for these cell phone companies that are still doing this what we can do is we can talk to the provider and try and get them to change their practices you work with them but we don't have authority to tell them how to do business what's the point of the code if they can just do what they want then well I don't think they can do what they want because anybody who has a problem with this should contact us should file a complaint with us oh my mom's calling me this parent might soon be complaining about Telus hey monkey what's happening Claire confesses to going over mom had no idea I'm very up shocks not cool at all like why would they be texting the primary account holder to be like are you okay with this the one who pays the bills I wouldn't give you that choice your teenager of course you're gonna say yes mom has a message for Telus I would say you need some changeable you need to be notifying me let it be make a decision as the primary account holder so they need to change their policy or their process oh absolutely absolutely guess what parents the big three won't come on camera they think their policies are just fine believe it or not even though the CCTs disagrees nothing it can do about it they are interpreting the code in a way that's different from the way we're interpreting code there's nothing that prevents them from doing that so what would it take to change the policy well the only the only body that has the authority to tell service providers what to do is the regulator that would be the CRTC we're tracking them down next get the real deal it's your marketplace to death the data I'm over $10 now the big three cellphone providers have let these teenagers rack off extra dated charges without their parents permission it is let you choose to go that shouldn't be allowed says the CCTs it oversees the government rules it's a problem I certainly wouldn't want my teens doing it but Bell let's Rosemarie son go way over the data limit and it costs a lot extra seventeen hundred dollars I mean that's crazy who proved it it wasn't me the CCTs says only the account holder the parent can agree to extra data charges well the cell phone providers disagrees so what does the CRTC say we've been trying repeatedly to get the telecom cops to come on camera but they refuse hey Siri hey Charles II can you call the CRTC in Ottawa please we're trying one more time to get some answers please down the line to leave a voice message some companies do seem to be violating the wireless code of conduct we'd like to know what you're gonna do about it and what action you're gonna take to make sure they're following the rules the CRTC won't come on camera but it agrees cellphone companies shouldn't let kids on family share plans approve extra charges so far though hasn't done a thing about it hello hello tell you meanwhile rosemary can't afford to wait for the CRTC she's warning her friends I just be careful with your family shared plans cuz you don't have any control over the other phones okay so you don't want it happening to you you're stuck with it and even though I didn't approve it so I think it's gage in any way myself take charge that amount so why does it cost so much more the amount for overage is really ridiculous to find out we go to the University of Waterloo hello professor tisha professor shrinivas's Anki Shaw is an expert in wireless technology we shoham rosemarys bill there are 17 hundred dollars in data overage charges there it's quite a bit they've consumed a lot of data about a teen movies worse yep watching 18 movies on your cell phone can cause $1700 works out to about a hundred bucks a movie that's the premium price Rosemarie pays when her son goes over the data limit a huge markup how big of a price hike is that well it's about at six hundred fifty percent right six hundred and fifty percent that's right one might call this punitive that's a lot that's a lot does it cost that much more for the companies to deliver the data when you do go over your plans no it doesn't so the cost is the same the cost is the same to the provider it's just what they choose to charge for it and get this in the last few years those overage prices have been jacked way up from about $30 a movie to $100 a movie and the question is why prices are going down for almost everything in the technology world it's not clear why these prices should be going up why is that the consumers aren't seeing that reduction in their bills over time that's what everyone wants to know I wish I could answer that but I'm not an economist cell phone companies and any other company out there they're not there for your benefit they're there to make a profit let's get that straight we got it professor here's a fun fact total revenue for the big three in 2015 more than 20 billion dollars another fun fact we pay some of the highest prices in the world for data there should be much more reasonable cell phone charges in Canada maybe a little bit more competition this is always better pricing when there's competition rosemarys found a way to end her bill shock she left bail for a cheaper provider who blocks data to her kids phones for free Claire's mom has another solution to end her daughter's dated damage you know this time next year you'll be paying your own bills so maybe I'll think about it okay well I mean you know next year I'll still be in your house well want your money back find out how to complain to the CCTs at cbc.ca slash marketplace

Channel: CBC News

Views: 457,239

Rating: 4.7515626 out of 5

Keywords: CBC News, CBCNews, CBC broadcasting media, public broadcasting, news, Canadian News, Canadian Broadcasting Corportation (TV network), CBC News Network, publishing, cellphones, teens, cell phones, cbc marketplace, marketplace cbc, marketplace

Id: zbSYv-rnXZE

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 18 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/suprduprr]

"The CRTC wont come on camera"

lol

the regulator is scared of the body its regulating. welcome to canada

[u/df27hswj95bdt3vr8gw2]

I love that people in here are all saying how much that the kid is a twat while totally missing that we shouldn't be getting charged this much in the first place. Our data caps are extremely low. Transmitting data does not cost $0.05/MB. That's $50/GB. We pay some of the highest rates in the developed world for cell phone and internet plans, and they get away with doing it because people here blaming the kid when the real criminals are Bell, Rogers and Telus. He's a dumbass, but you aren't helping.

[u/insecteye]

They are ripping people off, cause they can and we let them.

[u/moeburn]

I never understood why you need to "keep an eye on the data". Why don't they just cut your data off when you go over the limit? Or at least offer you an option to set it up that way? How about serving you with a DNS redirect that says "We're sorry, you've used up your maximum data allotment this month, please enter your credit card to purchase more".

The only reason you're automatically charged for extra data is to screw people over thanks to their carelessness. It's pure exploitation of the careless, nothing more.

[u/Reed_Solomon]

I did about 16gb last month. Luckily I'm on unlimited with MTS in Manitoba. And I never turn on wifi.

I wonder what percentage of that is stupid ad videos playing.

[u/762x39mm]

Anyone else get annoyed by how the CBC films stuff? The random zooming in and twisting is so stupid.

[u/bort4all]

My company needed a video feed in a remote place. It was 2010 and data was expensive so we set the camera for each deployment to ftp 640x480 photos once every minute using a cell modem (like a cell phone but only a data plan - no voice plan)

All was running well except one guy forgot to set the size and speed of the camera. Instead they set 1920x1080 pictures ever second. The bill for the first month was $28,000.

There was nothing to argue. They insisted we owed, we had used the data, it was our mistake. My company paid. Buddy didn't quite lose his job.

[u/steamwhistler]

I appreciate that they covered this issue, but they shouldn't have obfuscated the problem with all that stuff about the kids being reckless with their data usage. That isn't the problem, and CBC knows it. This, IMO, is a misguided attempt to put a human spin on a "boring" story about dollars and cellphone data. But the things the Waterloo prof was talking about at the end are totally scandalous. That should be the headline of this story, and it should be a headline in the news every day until enough people are pissed off enough that the CRTC is forced to grow some teeth and actually advocate for us. They should do a big investigative data story on the telecoms and everyone would be talking about it--look at all the hype about the panama papers leak today. People are interested in real stories, CBC -- you don't have to make it a reality tv show.

[u/hillside]

When did Marketplace sell out to this unwatchable ever-moving-and-zooming camera style accompanied with the contant and over the top dramatic music track?