Canadian Cell Costs - Part I

I've been ranting enough on Twitter about this, so I figure it deserves its own blog posts. First, the background:

For around 13 years I was with Bell Canada for my cell service. From a monochrome-screened bar phone, to a slider, to a shiny LG flip phone, to my iPhone 4, and briefly, a 5s.

I've never really had much of a complaint with regards to the service (other than my folks' place being between towers in a bit of a dead zone), but man have their prices ever sucked. My first phone was under my mother's work plan because it was a huge improvement over what was publicly available and my company didn't yet have an individual cell plan deal in place. I moved to my own work's corporate plan when I upgraded phones.

The problems started with the next move, to the LG. I wanted a new phone. This meant a new plan. I said I wanted something close to what I currently had. They gave me a plan that I shouldn't have been able to get (I had no idea at the time). The next bill, Bell changed my plan without telling me. I didn't notice until a few bills later, and Bell refused to make any changes or refund the difference.

Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve in a friend who worked high enough in the Bell hierarchy to complain on my behalf and get actually helpful people to call me. The problem was resolved beyond my satisfaction and I was happy. The next upgrade to an iPhone meant the inclusion of data - that whole move was actually painless, just add $25/month for 500MB of data. Not a great price, but the best option at the time based on how cheap my voice plan was.

Then came the end of that contract.

My Bell friend and I have long since drifted apart, so calling him up out of the blue would just be rude. Instead I opted to go through the regular channels. It consistently went something like this:

"My contract is up soon. I want to upgrade my phone, which I know means I need a new plan. Here's what your competition is offering. Can you match it?"

"Nope."

"So for 13 years I've been a loyal customer, paying my bills on time, using extra services like roaming plans, and you can't even make an offer?"

"Nope"

"I guess I'll be leaving then."

"Okay, have a nice day."

Wow. Considering I have my Internet connection and landline with them too, this was... surprising.

So I hemmed and hawed and finally, after months of wanting to toss my phone against a wall every day, walked into the Apple store and paid full price for an unlocked, non-subsidized phone. It was worth it to not be tied to any of the carriers in this country.

Then I did the math and discovered something - there are no real phone subsidies.

If you bring your own phone to the big 3 providers (Bell, Rogers, Telus) - you get $20/month off your bill on a two-year contract. That's $480 you're paying towards your phone.

iPhone 5s 32GB - $819. On contract? $329. Difference? $490. $10 in subsidies from the phone companies, if you don't include time value of money calculations. The rest is you paying $20 more a month to get a "cheap" phone up front.

Whoopdeefuckingdoo. That's not a subsidy, that's a phone mortgage.

I'll continue this in another post with some rough comparisons between my options, and how I think these guys will hurt themselves in the name of protectionism and short-term greed.