After being a loyal Fido customer for over 10 years, my partner and I were surprised by how difficult it was to change my name and apply her tax exemption to our account.
Name Change
In June 2021, I spent 6 hours with Fido trying to get my name changed processed. I had to explain very personal information to convince the customer service representatives that my name change was
genuine. This process needs to be rectified as your "Pride" initiative is a pure example of "woke capitalism" since you do not provide services that are diverse and inclusive to LGBTQ+ individuals. Instead, your policies support heteronormativity, which runs counter to your advertisements that relate to the LGBTQ+ community.
Tax Exemption
Applying my partner's status to our account was another eye-opening experience about Fido's outdated, colonial process. We had to, again, provide personal information about her family's experience with disenfranchisement to explain why our account is not in her name and why we need her tax exemption applied to our family's account. What this demonstrates to us is Fido needs to decolonize its policies and train staff to support, rather than hinder on-reserve and off-reserve Indigenous People and their families. Apparently, Fido has a policy where only the Indigenous Person with the Status gets tax exemption, which does not include their family members. However, this does not make any sense for the family unit, and Fido's policy unnecessarily penalizes Indigenous People and their families.
We do not understand why this was such a big issue as we easily applied the account holder name change and documentation via email to Bell within two minutes, whereas it took us nearly an hour to get a response outlining the process with Fido, which was not fully described. With Bell, the issue is on the way to being resolved; however, with Fido, we have been left in limbo as we need to send documentation via fax or mail, which will cost us money and time, as well as further communications with other staff about our personal information and life story. With our Bell account, we did not even have to create a new account or explain our situation since all we had to do was "edit" the primary account holder name, fill out a form, and provide copies of my partner's ID via email—no cost to us in terms of time, money, or personal information. This, in turn, demonstrates Fido's need to review its system to make the process affordable to the individuals applying for these types of requests—we should not have to pay to mail or fax our information, and Fido's staff should be fully trained to handle requests for tax exemption. Therefore, Fido needs to change.
Conclusion
Needless to say, we are not impressed with the service we have been provided with, and we are concerned about how many other women, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous People are negatively impacted by Fido's barriers to the name change and tax exemption processes. Therefore, we strongly encourage Fido to review its policies and procedures around handling name change and tax exemption requests to support marginalized communities instead of using these communities as a false façade for Fido's business objectives.
