Perhaps Up North 'Unlimited' Means Something Different Than It Does Here
from the haven't-we-been-through-this-before dept
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a connectivity provider limiting how people use their connectivity -- as long as it's clearly laid out in how they pitch the service. Unfortunately, too many of these services advertise "unlimited" service, but mean the exact opposite. In the US, Verizon Wireless used to do this. When confronted on it, they tried to doubletalk their way around the issue, claiming that it was "unlimited data for limited types of data" (read that phrase a few times). However, eventually, Verizon Wireless realized how ridiculous this was and started to back off the claims of unlimited data. Unfortunately, that sort of thinking hasn't reached the folks at Bell Canada, who are apparently advertising an unlimited service, while hiding an awful lot of "limits" within the terms of service. Again, there's nothing wrong with them deciding they need to limit the service -- but if they're going to do so, they shouldn't be advertising it as unlimited. It's amazing that no one's been charged with false advertising for these types of misleading ads.
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Filed Under: limited, unlimited
Companies: bell canada
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REALLY
I get tired of FREE 'IF'
FREE 'WHEN'
FREE 'AFTER'
Once these 2 words are USED, nothing more should need to be done. And 90% of this FREE and Unlimited, is CRAP. Some $0.50 pen, or a service you dont want or need.
EVEN my Credit card has a service. I get it free, but am billed for it, after 30 days...DUH...
But its funny on my credit card...as the companies that CALL me Using the "credit card name" are another company, that PAYS to use the name, and are NOT affiliated.
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not really news...
Somebody really should sue these bastards to advertise their limits.
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lucky bell canada and videotron (the other major ISP in quebec)
they give you a limit and once you go over they charge you 8c an extra Mb there is an additional catch here cause they charge you by chunks of 100 Mb's.
you do the math.
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Allready fixed in Australia
The ACCC also has ensured that we have some limited competition by ensuring that Telstra resells wholesale for a reasonable price and allows access for competitors to their exchanges. Telstra of course claims that the wholesale rates are below cost but despite this the are one of the most profitable telcos in the world. It looks like they calculate costs as if they built the infrastructure yesterday rather than with public money when they were publicly owned and so long ago that the payback period is long past - especially as they barely maintain the lines. Someone once had a line hanging over a fence post and a tree branch for 6 months by the time the story got into the local paper.
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We had hooked 4 modems in SLI and had wired the block so everyone was connected with a true failover and we were getting 220000 bps not bad for Dial-up so I guess we sort of had set up our own ISP just not for profit.
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We had hooked 4 modems in SLI and had wired the block so everyone was connected with a true failover and we were getting 220000 bps not bad for Dial-up so I guess we sort of had set up our own ISP just not for profit.
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A petition to the government was set up, and they did actually look into it, but came to the conclusion that it was OK for ISP's to say "unlimited" when it actually wasn't. Figure that one out.
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false advertising
false advertising tends to lead to bad press which tends to keep people in line.
After all if I have a cafe and claim I have the best pie in Canada who is to say that is indeed false advertising? (the law indicates word 'best' not mean better than everyone else it just means that mine would be as good as another person who says there is the best.)
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How about Broadband
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OxyMORONs
Honest Politician
Clean Water
Fresh Air
Customer Service
Free Gift
Unbiased Media
100% Beef
...the list goes on
Ever notice that when you finish a transaction at the grocery store, the credit card slider asks
"Is this price ok?"
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you want advertising to be honest?
advertising is dishonest. if it was honest you couldn't call it advertising.
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Re:
Actually, apparently Verizon *does* charge you the ETF if you go over their bandwidth limit...
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Re: Re:
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Re: false advertising
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doesn't seem THAT bad
* consumes excessive network capacity in Bell's reasonable opinion, or causes our network, or our ability to provide services to others, to be adversely affected;
Okay, this seems reasonable. Seems to be saying that if you're sucking down so much bandwidth you're screwing up their network they'll cut you off. I daresay EVERY ISP has that clause and I can deal with that.
* is for multi-media streaming, voice over Internet protocol or any other application which uses excessive network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell;
This seems like it could be some wiggle room for a lawsuit here. The way it's written it could be interpreted as "any other application which uses excessive (network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell)." I.e. as long as it uses network capacity that they make available to you it's okay. Tsk tsk. I'm disappointed that their lawyers would let something like that slide. Granted I'm sure that's NOT what they mean, but the way it's written is loose enough to be interpreted that way.
* is to operate an email, web, news, chat or other service.
Depends on what they mean by operate but I believe this is just a prohibition against running a server. You're not really operating the service if you're just using it and if you couldn't use web or email services then a data plan wouldn't really be very much use would it? (i.e. I use Techdirt, I don't operate it).
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No Limits
If your lookin to break a contract, pull up a service map and find a nice fat hole in their service. Tell them your moving to the area shortly and you won't have service. Usually they will break it if your nice about it ...g'luck.
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Bell at it again
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Re: not really news...
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Re: Re: not really news...
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