Follow up: TELUS relents, resolves small business dispute by crediting $75,000

By on Feb 2, 2009 at 12:39 PM
Exclusive February 2, 2009

Remember the story of Brofort’s struggles with TELUS that we told the world about on Friday? Well we have some pretty great news to report in this follow up. On Friday night we got an email from the Vice President of Brofort who had just finished talking to some higher ups at TELUS and this is what he had to say:

A happy ending, I just got off the phone with the “Office of the President”.

They will be crediting back all of overages to $0.10 since activation and also honouring the $0.10 for the remainder of the contract.

Technically they have to switch our plan due to the way their system is set up, but the new plan will have $0.10 overage and otherwise in their words “will be as good or better” than our current plan.

They will be calculating the amount of the credit and will have it for me next week.

We would be lying if we said we expected TELUS to react so quickly to our report but the company did the right thing and good on them for that. While this should not have been an issue to begin with of course, it is always refreshing to see a conflict resolved. What is that expected credit amount? It looks to be in the area of $75,000. Awesome!

So there you have it folks – in the end TELUS keeps a pretty substantial small business contract and Brofort can go on doing business without further fear of getting mauled by its wireless carrier. Help Me Howard has nothing on your pals here at BGR.

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  • Jeremiah

    I’m glad it all worked out, but tell me again why Brofort doesn’t just get a plan with larger minute allotments to begin with??

    It’s like being on a PAYG messaging plan and using 5000 a month!

  • http://www.petfoodz.info/ Yatti

    I don’t believe this wouldn’t be an issue for Telus in a court room.. They obviously made an agreement for 0.10 overcharge. If they failed to meet that agreement I would of taken Telus to court. To my knowledge it shouldn’t matter whether you have a verbal or written agreement..

  • RON

    “Follow up: TELUS relents, resolves small business despute by crediting $75,000″

    They also solved the “dispute”.

  • http://sqij.com Sqij

    Hmm, I noticed the ‘dispute’ also.

  • luke

    squeaky wheel got some grease… if i was telus i would have admitted some fault but not the complete fault. is no one looking at the books over there at brofort? maybe they should call grand and toy and say their pencils are running low on lead and they need some compensation…lol

  • Crunch

    That’s balony. The customer should pay his $75,000 that he owes Telus. :D

  • Hainesy

    I love it. Good on Telus for coming around. And great job BGR! (once again)

  • http://www.brofort.com Rick Whitley

    As VP of the company involved, I would agree shame on us for not reviewing our bills more closely. As the same VP who literally had 2.5ft worth of cell phone bills on my desk this week, let me tell you none of the billing is easy to understand, or clear cut. No bill states the overage rate, you have to calculate it.

    A good example is the $25 pool plan most of our phones are on. Instead of seeing a $25 line item charge, and a deduction of 250 minutes from the chargeable minutes, Telus charges $0.12 on the first 200 minutes. Now if you do the math does this make any sense? 200 x $0.12 = $24. Their answer….the system shows $0.12 but it is actually $0.125, the system just can’t show the extra digit, even when it calculates on the individual bill for a handset it still calculates at $0.12 but when it moves to the overall company summary, it adjusts it $0.125…..honestly that is their answer. Also you might notice they are using 200 minutes but our plan includes 250, I’m still trying to get them to show me where our other 50 minutes are.

    I negotiated the original agreement and I know what was agreed to, and that was all I was ever fighting for. In our business we live to our word, and I take it personally when others don’t.

    The whole saga is much more involved than one story on BGR, and I learned a long time ago the squeaky wheel does get the grease, I can squeak better than most.

    As much as this feels like a victory, it really isn’t. All Telus has done is actually live up to what they originally agreed to.

    I think it says a lot about our expectations of service when it is the customers “fault” for being over billed and when the large corporation gets a “good on ya” for actually living to what they agreed to 18 months later and after a public flogging.

  • Spitz

    Mr. Whitney,

    Not sure who sold you the phones but if you want to eliminate and simplify your life with the “2.5ft” of paper bills, do yourself a favor and register your company on http://www.mytelusmobility.com. its a god sent for simplifing all your bills, create reports, etc. its basically an online billing manager.

    Hope this helps!

  • Rich

    As an employee of TELUS, I can assure you that if a billing issue was brought to our attention in the proper way, we would correct the issue. TELUS does not maliciously overbill customers; I’m sure this was due to a simple error in setting up the bill plan.

    I think its a little much that BGR would try to take the credit for this issue being resolved. TELUS did not “react so quickly to your report.” I’m sure they had a professional conversation with the VP of Brofort, acknowledged the issue, and resolved it.

    I myself have had billing issues with every single service provider that has had my business. It happens. And every time, the company was happy to fix the error once it was brought to their attention. I hear too often people complaining about Company X screwing them over by billing them correctly, but we never hear the part where the company has resolved this issue to the satisfaction of both parties, do we?

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