Lack of Transparency caused Unreasonable Charges

[AlexC20]

There is a lack of transparency in Fido’s rules responding to COVID.

The following two rules/policy effective from March 16 to June 30, are mentioned in the emails I received from Fido:

1. "Waiving long distance charges for FIDO mobile and Home Phone customers for calls to anywhere in Canada."
2. "Waiving Fido Roam and all pay-per-use roaming fees in available destinations from postpaid customers travelling outside of Canada."

However, the internal rules responding to COVID that several agents at the Fido customer service recently read over the phone, actually include waiving voice calling fees, long distance charges, and Fido Roam and all pay-per-use roaming fees. The agents consistantly explained that voice calling fees are the extra usage charges for Talk through voice/regular phone call.

So it is clear that waiving voice calling fees, and its effective dates, are not included in and not communicated through any emails I received from Fido. There is a lack of transparency in communicating all rules to its customers, which caused negative impacts to them.

My extra usage for Talk was charged from March 16 to June 30, and without being notified about this rule for Talk and its effective dates, another extra usage charge was applied again. So I am looking for an explanation and a remediation from Fido.

[Cawtau]

Hello AlexC20,

  Welcome to the community!

  There isn't a lack of transparency as you suggest. However, there may have been a change in policy in their response to Covid-19. Waving airtime minute overage usage was not a part of their initial Covid response (see here and here). That's why it wasn't mentioned in those emails.

  If there was a change to include the waiving of airtime minute overage, it might not have been retroactive to the beginning of the pandemic. It's possible the customer service representatives you spoke with weren't actually familiar with the actual Covid response or waiving voice calling fees doesn't mean what you think it does. If they did decide to eventually waive airtime minute overage (and retrospectively adjusted) and the system didn't catch your particular usage, why did those customer service representatives not rectify those charges for you?

  You would need to contact customer service to look into your situation. Alternatively, you might consider sending @FidoSolutions a PM. Once they verify some information, they'll also be able to access your account.

Hope this helps 😀

Cheers

[FidoSaad]

Hey there @AlexC20

You can stay up to date on new and ongoing COVID-19 measures we implement on this page. We make sure to update it regularly to make sure the latest info is communicated to our customers.

In regard to previous goodwill gestures, we previously had:

• We automatically removed Canada wide long-distance charges for postpaid customers who used these services between March 16 and June 30, 2020.  Usage incurred outside of this time frame will be charged. 
• We automatically removed pay-per-use roaming and Fido Roam charges for postpaid customers who use these services between March 16 and April 30, 2020.  Usage incurred outside of this time frame will be charged.
• No suspensions or disconnections for any customers experiencing financial difficulties until June 30
• We automatically waived any calling charges, including airtime overage, for calls made within Canada from March 16 to June 30, 2020. This initiative applies to postpaid and prepaid customers, and usage incurred outside of this time frame will be charged.
• For Fido Home Internet users, we temporary lifted the data usage caps from March 13 until June 30, 2020.

If any of these situations apply to you and you were billed, please get in touch with us at these channels so we can look into it.