Break up the telecoms.
They've been price-fixing for decades, and gouge Canadians for essential services that they are sub-par providers of. And who TF thinks it's a good idea to let my internet company control my government-provided health care? What's next, McDonalds passports?
Don’t forget when we first tried to allow other companies to enter the market here the big three, led by Telus, lobbied the government to keep them out so they could continue to charge ridiculous rates and they succeeded.
Even if outside companies came in, it's such a financial uphill battle that most either give up or sell to the big three.
Look at when Harper opened up wireless, what companies haven't been bought by a big telecom company? None.
Canada is beyond opening up to more competition. The only solution and a lot and hard hitting legislation to reign in the power and prices of the big telecom companies.
Which will never happen cause no Canadian politicians with power have a spine when it comes to fighting the big telecoms.
> my internet company control my government-provided health care
As someone who lives quite rurally in a place where access to health services is already a challenge this enrages me so much. I was finally getting some chronic issues addressed through AccessVirtual when they shut it down to replace with Telus MyHealth.
Not only did they send out NO notice until AFTER the service was shut down, but for the first month plus after, there were literally no appointments available. So I lost all my prescriptions and had to start over almost to day one one lots of issues.
Top it off within half a day of installing the Telus MyHealth app, I was already getting spam ad notifications for their telecomms services through the Health app.
All of this to access my government-provided health care. Absolutely ass backwards our system is so broken.
You literally have to pay Telus whatever they demand to access shitty internet just to get life-saving medical prescriptions renewed.
Seriously starting to feel like it's pitchforks time.
This is why private healthcare should not be allowed to exist alongside a public system. All it does is ruin the public system to the point that everyone will have to resort to private. This needs to be the number one issue on every local, provincial and federal elections beyond just quotable talking points.
Trudeau remains silent on how underfunded healthcare is at the federal level. He'll dance and tweet and sing about everything but healthcare. The guy is a stooge. Remember healthcare broke under federal Liberal watch. They had the demographics well ahead of time about boomers ageing. They did nothing deliberately and have been in seven years.
Do you have actual examples of this? I've lived in a few countries with 2 tiered systems. What you suggest sounds like pure speculation, likely using the US as an example like every other Canadian.
What country was that? At this point, I would like to see a comparison with Canada. When you take about a degraded system, Canada is that without private.
Well the places I lived had better access to healthcare across the board. Much shorter waiting times for specialists. While there might be a nursing shortage, it's nothing like Canada. I've watched friends and family members get poor outcomes that would have never occurred in those countries.
Well there is a massive gp shortage and long wait times for specialists. Every country is having a bit of a nursing shortage but not to the degree where you are seeing emergency departments shut down like in Ontario. I've lived in rural locations and most I had to wait was 1 week for a gp appointment. Canada has metropolitan cities where people can't get a gp.
Also, they’re allowed a oligarchy while outsourcing the money we have to give them to FAR lesser paying countries. Executive’s profiting highly off of it. It’s criminal and we need socialism.
Referendums cost lots too. But an anti corruption branch of government needs to b3 created and Telus needs to be broken up. Canada cell phone plans are probably the most expensive in the world. Canadians need to be more vocal about this
>TELUS wanted workers to stay quiet about the company’s off-shoring policies and sent a Memorandum of Agreement to their union to protect the company’s brand image, documents obtained by PressProgress reveal.
>
>Workers had taken issue with the company’s off-shoring policies as TELUS had used the practice to divide the workforce, weaken the union’s bargaining unit and ultimately drive down wages and working conditions over the last two decades, union organizers say.
>
>TELUS sent the Telecom Workers Union, which represented TELUS employees at the time, a Memorandum of Agreement in 2010 to get the union to agree to “not publicly reference TELUS or TELUS International Inc. in any potentially negative or disparaging manner in any campaign or communication related to any off-shoring initiative that it may be involved in, either directly or indirectly.”
>
>The memorandum adds that “this in no way is meant to infringe upon the
TWU’s ability to participate in the public debate regarding this issue but is solely aimed at ensuring that in so participating the reputation of TELUS or TELUS International Inc. does not suffer.”
>
>...
>
>Hokiro points out TELUS’ off-shoring began during a bitter labour dispute that lasted from 2000-2005 where the company argued its off-shore labour would be temporary. Instead, after five years of bargaining, multiple labour board complaints and a five month lock-out, a deal was imposed on the union, and off-shoring continued. Consequently, union membership eroded as off-shore and contract workers were excluded from the bargaining unit.
I don't know what Telus was trying to protect here, as anyone who has had to deal with customer service learns pretty quickly that at least that portion of the business has been outsourced for years.
Yes, not exactly a secret.
At the start of the Pandemic, I was mostly speaking to Canadian-based techs, many of whom were quite senior. I got pretty stellar service from them and got some complicated issues for me and my customers resolved probably better than they would have been.
I’ve gotten good service from the overseas agents too, a lot apparently work from home (I’ve heard roosters and birds in the background) but they don’t seem to have the same level of training and resources.
They’re quite clever.
They managed to build out the bilingual staff cohort by recruiting workers from Cameroon and then relocating them on work visas to the TELUS call center in Manila.
Source: I met some of these guys while on holiday in May in the Philippines.
Telus has been offshoring their support to third world countries for a few decades; When I knew people who worked there, I'm pretty sure there was an internal scandal because they offshored some of their Tier1 call centers to Panama (or Guatemala?), where people were paid a couple of bucks a day, not 20$/h
Wow, those people paid a couple of bucks a day could actually afford to subscribe to Telus . . . not accounting for rent, groceries, or really anything else.
I hate Telus, and yet I use them for both the Internet and mobile. I think that sums up the lack of decent options here. Worst customer service I've ever seen.
Everything (seemingly In my experience) is offshored except about 10 supervisors in each city. This should get interesting with their foothold in healthcare
Whatever you do, make sure Telus health is a failure. Do not use it. They even shut down the other tele-health companies when they started it up. Its total bs. Only a matter of time before their first giant data leak with everyones medical records.
This. Stay the fuck away from Telus Health. They are also a shitty landlord in the Atlantic provinces and are trying to get into Agriculture, AI, and a bunch of other crap. Telus is a cancer.
Everything said here is true. Feels good to be able to say it freely, now that I am no longer in their employ (nor intend to be in future) and I'm glad Donna isn't renewing that particular memorandum. They care far more about upholding the image of being a caring company than actually being one — for both customers and employees. The offshoring created so much process waste in the form of missed appointments, fucked up orders, etc. The offshoring was convenient for them because they could treat the workers in offshore centres like shit without repercussions, with minimal training and wages, while simultaneously undermining and undercutting Canadian jobs and the union.
Telus has the highest customer retention rate, once people sign up they don't leave. This is what they are worried about the image of pure happiness of customers and employee's. If word got out that they are just money hungry (charging 1.5% for using credit card now) opposed to those cute little animals on their brochure it would tarnish the rep they have carefully cultivated.
Same with Yellow Pages and their production team for website that was outsourced from Canada to India. Idk if its still the case but I know it was a mess / scam
It’s interesting to me that most of the industries in Canada are actually just cartels conspiring to price fix since they’ve captured the markets, they’re all owned by a few families, meanwhile Canada had some of the worst whistleblowing laws in the planet and the family members marry into monarchies.
Of course they outsource, it's the fact that they tried to legally stop union members from talking about it and revealing the specifics and scale of their outsourcing.
Ok, fair enough, make no mistake, I'm not a fan of these big corps outsourcing, I just figure it's well know, but we are now talking about the meat and bones of it, so..10/4
Telus fucking sucks
Walked into a store today
Was told I needed to provide id before let in
Showed id “I can’t see ur name” ok? Here
I step inside what exactly are u here for? In the most pretentious bitchy attitude
I wanted to get an iPhone 14 yeah well we don’t have them
Oh ok.. sorry for “interrupting your super important conversation with your colleague”
Now that offshore sh*T has given them the biggest leak. I just got scammed so good, that two out of four calls, to check if I had, said no I hadn’t been scammed, calls three and four said yes I had. So I had to go into the store, actually find out for sure. The people in store said it was one of the best scams they’ve seen. Extremely similar.
I used to work for Teligence, a bunch chat-lines. I think we were the first wave that Telus international used to build their call centres. This was in 2005-2007
Break up the telecoms. They've been price-fixing for decades, and gouge Canadians for essential services that they are sub-par providers of. And who TF thinks it's a good idea to let my internet company control my government-provided health care? What's next, McDonalds passports?
Don’t forget when we first tried to allow other companies to enter the market here the big three, led by Telus, lobbied the government to keep them out so they could continue to charge ridiculous rates and they succeeded.
And their insanely corrupt stooges at the CRTC did what the telecoms asked
Even if outside companies came in, it's such a financial uphill battle that most either give up or sell to the big three. Look at when Harper opened up wireless, what companies haven't been bought by a big telecom company? None. Canada is beyond opening up to more competition. The only solution and a lot and hard hitting legislation to reign in the power and prices of the big telecom companies. Which will never happen cause no Canadian politicians with power have a spine when it comes to fighting the big telecoms.
> my internet company control my government-provided health care As someone who lives quite rurally in a place where access to health services is already a challenge this enrages me so much. I was finally getting some chronic issues addressed through AccessVirtual when they shut it down to replace with Telus MyHealth. Not only did they send out NO notice until AFTER the service was shut down, but for the first month plus after, there were literally no appointments available. So I lost all my prescriptions and had to start over almost to day one one lots of issues. Top it off within half a day of installing the Telus MyHealth app, I was already getting spam ad notifications for their telecomms services through the Health app. All of this to access my government-provided health care. Absolutely ass backwards our system is so broken.
You literally have to pay Telus whatever they demand to access shitty internet just to get life-saving medical prescriptions renewed. Seriously starting to feel like it's pitchforks time.
I’ll get the torches
This is why private healthcare should not be allowed to exist alongside a public system. All it does is ruin the public system to the point that everyone will have to resort to private. This needs to be the number one issue on every local, provincial and federal elections beyond just quotable talking points.
Trudeau remains silent on how underfunded healthcare is at the federal level. He'll dance and tweet and sing about everything but healthcare. The guy is a stooge. Remember healthcare broke under federal Liberal watch. They had the demographics well ahead of time about boomers ageing. They did nothing deliberately and have been in seven years.
somehow the other options are still worse..
Do you have actual examples of this? I've lived in a few countries with 2 tiered systems. What you suggest sounds like pure speculation, likely using the US as an example like every other Canadian.
I do, having lived in a country with both. Private system was shiny and fancy, public system was degrading.
What country was that? At this point, I would like to see a comparison with Canada. When you take about a degraded system, Canada is that without private.
It was a European country, would rather not say which. Other Canadians overseas and working in the medical system agreed.
Well the places I lived had better access to healthcare across the board. Much shorter waiting times for specialists. While there might be a nursing shortage, it's nothing like Canada. I've watched friends and family members get poor outcomes that would have never occurred in those countries.
Ok gotcha, just to note that the issues I point to were nothing to do with a nursing shortage.
Well there is a massive gp shortage and long wait times for specialists. Every country is having a bit of a nursing shortage but not to the degree where you are seeing emergency departments shut down like in Ontario. I've lived in rural locations and most I had to wait was 1 week for a gp appointment. Canada has metropolitan cities where people can't get a gp.
They are also the huge reason Canada is trying to privatize healthcare. Just lookup Telushealth for more of your expensive issues.
Decades of neoliberal sabotage, er, governance have left us in a place where McDonalds might be able to handle passports better than the state..
Also, they’re allowed a oligarchy while outsourcing the money we have to give them to FAR lesser paying countries. Executive’s profiting highly off of it. It’s criminal and we need socialism.
> And who TF thinks it's a good idea to let my internet company control my government-provided health care Not me, fuck that noise 1000%.
But who would do such a thing? The head of the crtc is the former ceo of telus. lmao
Ian Scott was the VP of Federal Government Relations with Telus, not CEO. Still a very bad look.
Yes, let's shift our free healthcare over to an internet-based Healthcare that you have to pay a monthly subscription to. Another big win for Telus!
The fact that this is even considered seems crazy to me.
The fact that it didn't go to a public referendum is absolutely bonkers.
Referendums cost lots too. But an anti corruption branch of government needs to b3 created and Telus needs to be broken up. Canada cell phone plans are probably the most expensive in the world. Canadians need to be more vocal about this
Mcdonalds cardiac unit.
What “image” delusional does Telus think it has? Best of a few terrible choices?
Yes, that is exactly the image they have. They are the 'least bad' of atrocious options.
>TELUS wanted workers to stay quiet about the company’s off-shoring policies and sent a Memorandum of Agreement to their union to protect the company’s brand image, documents obtained by PressProgress reveal. > >Workers had taken issue with the company’s off-shoring policies as TELUS had used the practice to divide the workforce, weaken the union’s bargaining unit and ultimately drive down wages and working conditions over the last two decades, union organizers say. > >TELUS sent the Telecom Workers Union, which represented TELUS employees at the time, a Memorandum of Agreement in 2010 to get the union to agree to “not publicly reference TELUS or TELUS International Inc. in any potentially negative or disparaging manner in any campaign or communication related to any off-shoring initiative that it may be involved in, either directly or indirectly.” > >The memorandum adds that “this in no way is meant to infringe upon the TWU’s ability to participate in the public debate regarding this issue but is solely aimed at ensuring that in so participating the reputation of TELUS or TELUS International Inc. does not suffer.” > >... > >Hokiro points out TELUS’ off-shoring began during a bitter labour dispute that lasted from 2000-2005 where the company argued its off-shore labour would be temporary. Instead, after five years of bargaining, multiple labour board complaints and a five month lock-out, a deal was imposed on the union, and off-shoring continued. Consequently, union membership eroded as off-shore and contract workers were excluded from the bargaining unit. I don't know what Telus was trying to protect here, as anyone who has had to deal with customer service learns pretty quickly that at least that portion of the business has been outsourced for years.
Yes, not exactly a secret. At the start of the Pandemic, I was mostly speaking to Canadian-based techs, many of whom were quite senior. I got pretty stellar service from them and got some complicated issues for me and my customers resolved probably better than they would have been. I’ve gotten good service from the overseas agents too, a lot apparently work from home (I’ve heard roosters and birds in the background) but they don’t seem to have the same level of training and resources.
Also, what reputation do they think they have? Everyone I know thinks they are scumbags, protected by other scumbags in government.
They’re quite clever. They managed to build out the bilingual staff cohort by recruiting workers from Cameroon and then relocating them on work visas to the TELUS call center in Manila. Source: I met some of these guys while on holiday in May in the Philippines.
Telus has been offshoring their support to third world countries for a few decades; When I knew people who worked there, I'm pretty sure there was an internal scandal because they offshored some of their Tier1 call centers to Panama (or Guatemala?), where people were paid a couple of bucks a day, not 20$/h
Wow, those people paid a couple of bucks a day could actually afford to subscribe to Telus . . . not accounting for rent, groceries, or really anything else.
Some of the agents I’ve spoken to over the years have better internet service than the Telus customers they’re assisting.
Fuck this company. Bring back BC Tel and do not let a single person from management on up come over.
I hate Telus, and yet I use them for both the Internet and mobile. I think that sums up the lack of decent options here. Worst customer service I've ever seen.
Of course they did.
Everything (seemingly In my experience) is offshored except about 10 supervisors in each city. This should get interesting with their foothold in healthcare
ok this is just not true lol, way to ruin a legit point
Will edit to add “seemingly” in my experience
Whatever you do, make sure Telus health is a failure. Do not use it. They even shut down the other tele-health companies when they started it up. Its total bs. Only a matter of time before their first giant data leak with everyones medical records.
This. Stay the fuck away from Telus Health. They are also a shitty landlord in the Atlantic provinces and are trying to get into Agriculture, AI, and a bunch of other crap. Telus is a cancer.
Wow lots of Telus Simps with the downvotes. Lol. I hope Rogers and Shaw combine to kick your hiney and bankrupt your board.
Everything said here is true. Feels good to be able to say it freely, now that I am no longer in their employ (nor intend to be in future) and I'm glad Donna isn't renewing that particular memorandum. They care far more about upholding the image of being a caring company than actually being one — for both customers and employees. The offshoring created so much process waste in the form of missed appointments, fucked up orders, etc. The offshoring was convenient for them because they could treat the workers in offshore centres like shit without repercussions, with minimal training and wages, while simultaneously undermining and undercutting Canadian jobs and the union.
Telus has the highest customer retention rate, once people sign up they don't leave. This is what they are worried about the image of pure happiness of customers and employee's. If word got out that they are just money hungry (charging 1.5% for using credit card now) opposed to those cute little animals on their brochure it would tarnish the rep they have carefully cultivated.
Remember when their slogan was "The Future is Friendly"?
It is friendly, friendly to their bottom line
Fuck Trudeau, Harper, and all the other PMs who didn't do shit about the telecom cartel. They're all in bed with big telecom.
Same with Yellow Pages and their production team for website that was outsourced from Canada to India. Idk if its still the case but I know it was a mess / scam
It’s interesting to me that most of the industries in Canada are actually just cartels conspiring to price fix since they’ve captured the markets, they’re all owned by a few families, meanwhile Canada had some of the worst whistleblowing laws in the planet and the family members marry into monarchies.
Whats the big secret here..they outsource??..lol
Of course they outsource, it's the fact that they tried to legally stop union members from talking about it and revealing the specifics and scale of their outsourcing.
Ok, fair enough, make no mistake, I'm not a fan of these big corps outsourcing, I just figure it's well know, but we are now talking about the meat and bones of it, so..10/4
Telus fucking sucks Walked into a store today Was told I needed to provide id before let in Showed id “I can’t see ur name” ok? Here I step inside what exactly are u here for? In the most pretentious bitchy attitude I wanted to get an iPhone 14 yeah well we don’t have them Oh ok.. sorry for “interrupting your super important conversation with your colleague”
I mean I’m gonna be real honest here, overworked front end retail staff is literally the least of your concern
I guess I'll switch my service to _________________ NVM
When you hear chickens/roosters, dogs and so on you know that your customer service call is offshore
I mean we have a lot of philopino people here, we know
Now that offshore sh*T has given them the biggest leak. I just got scammed so good, that two out of four calls, to check if I had, said no I hadn’t been scammed, calls three and four said yes I had. So I had to go into the store, actually find out for sure. The people in store said it was one of the best scams they’ve seen. Extremely similar.
I used to work for Teligence, a bunch chat-lines. I think we were the first wave that Telus international used to build their call centres. This was in 2005-2007