Great Alternatives to Telus Mobility

[nolcor]

Well i absolutely loved your site and your forum, everything is so true, altho i havent had anything to that extreme, i can recommend some great altenatives to telus,

As for cell phone services, Ive found that Virgin Mobile is the best way to go, you dont have to go on a contract and you can pay month by month for plans, that only take off your balance like a regular pay and talk phone.There client services are extremely helpful, and ive never had a problem with there network range or any of their services.(which by the way alot of their services, like voicemail are free, unlike there telus counterparts)

One catch with Virgin mobile though is that you can only access Virgin Mobiles internet site on the cell phone, But its i beleive 10 cents a day for unlimited access to the site, and only charged when you go on it

Kyle McGhee

Their site is at www.virginmobile.ca

[Joey Lindstrom]

While I don't have a Virgin phone yet, they are indeed the company I have personally identified as the replacement service for Telus that I will use once Wireless Number Portability comes into effect. I'm rather married to my wireless phone number and do NOT want to lose it, and that's the only reason I'm still stuck with Telus (and note, I didn't choose Telus, Telus chose me: I was a Clearnet customer and got sucked into the Telus whirlpool when they bought out Clearnet). Once I can switch providers and still keep my number, I am a VAPOUR TRAIL outta Telus and onto the Virgin Mobility network.

Their rate plans are a little hard to fathom at first because they take a very non-standard approach. But once you get your head around it, you'll find that it is a better bet for most people, whether you're using a few minutes or tons of minutes per month. And like you say, you pay for ONLY what you ACTUALLY use - no buying buckets of minutes and then watching unused minutes evaporate at the end of the month.

[stickmansteve]

From what i heard, as of Feb 01/07, you can port your number to/from anywhere for us canadians?? May be wrong on this one.... and telus will sure as hell drag thier ass's on releasing your phone number, as they did with my land-line!!

i looked at the virgin thing when my telus contract expired, but i use ALOT of minutes. virgin was going to be too expensive for what i use each month. i ended up with rogers... GREAT! i use MORE minutes that i used with my telus plan. my telus plan was $250+/month. my rogers plan is almost never over $76, unless i have to make any l/d calls.

switched to shaw for my home phone & internet. much better. and this "we're not a shared connection" shit that telus is advertising... WTF is that?? every bloody internet connection is shared tis the nature of the beast!!!! but lets not go into the details of how that all works now .... the three weeks that i had an overlap and had both shaw & telus internet in my house (both on business accounts with two static IP's), shaw beat telus HANDS DOWN every day, every time with up & down speeds...
so yeah, suck my ass telus cuz you just suck!!

[Joey Lindstrom]

I'd be interested in hearing the details of your rate plan, because I found Virgin's rates to be super competitive.

As you might have expected, I went down to my local Future Shop the very day Wireless Number Portability came into effect and plunked down $250 on a new Razr phone. Luckily, Virgin had a one-day special: they were calling this day Phone Freedom Day (or somesuch) and to back it up, anyone who bought a phone and ported a number on that day (for which they'd brought in extra staff to cope with demand) got their phone for free. Well, sorta: you got a credit for the purchase price of your phone added to your account, 31 days later (so I'm still waiting for mine).

The upshot: I'm on a plan that costs me $10/month with no hidden charges other than taxes (ie: no "network access fee", no "E-911" fee, no fees of any sort), then ten cents per minute for usage. Not 20 cents or 25 cents or 40 cents - just 10 cents. I don't have to buy a huge bucket of minutes to get that rate - I can use 5 minutes a month or 5000, it doesn't matter.

I realize there are lots of plans out there that can get that rate lower if you use a lot of evening/weekend minutes, but my minute usage is primarily during weekdays, and when I had my Telus phone with 200 minutes included, I *NEVER* exceeded that. I couldn't find any rateplans with any of the other providers that came close to beating Virgin's pricing, at least for my usage pattern. But if you know of one, I'd certainly like to hear about it - I should use up my Virgin credits in.... oh, about 10 months or so, after which, I may want to switch.

As to contracts, my advice is: sign no contract with any provider. Ever. Consider: most of them will offer you something like $150 off a phone if you sign up for three years - but will ding you as much as $360 if you cancel early. How is that fair? (And the phone is locked to their network, so your only choice is to sell it to some other sucker at a deeply discounted price.)

Final anecdote: during my signup with Virgin, which was done over the telephone, the CSR asked me for my email address. When I told her it was "[e-mail]", she laughed... and laughed and laughed! Then, after she typed it in, she said "I've just typed it into the order screen. Do you mind if I show it to some of my coworkers before we continue?" I said go ahead, and over the next few minutes I could hear, in the background, several of them coming over to see what the fuss was and then laughing their fool heads off. Ah, the $12 investment in this domain name *REALLY* pays dividends sometimes... LOL!

[rogerssucks]

Thanks Joey. I'll look into Virgin just as soon as my contract with Robbers is done. I'll never sign a contract with a cell phone provider again as long as I live.

[pukeextract]

Well, I am currently using "SOLO MOBILE".
I'm paying around 40 - 45 dollars per month with a month-to-month plan. (no contract)

This is what I get per month:

150 daytime minutes
150 Canadian long distance minutes
Unlimited Evenings and Weekends from 5:00 PM to 8:00 AM
Unlimited incoming calls
Caller ID and Voicemail
4,500 outgoing text & picture messages (incoming always free)

If I wanted to I could add unlimited data for like 6 bucks but I have no need for it. I have absolutely no complaints with Solo Mobile, they are the best company I have ever went with for mobile phone service so far. Funny thing -- It's actually Bell under a different name. I didn't know this at first or I wouldn't have went with them EVER. In fact, when I talked to the sales lady at the mall I was bitching about Bell and she aggreed with me claiming that Bell likes to rip people off. Come to find out Bell owns Solo Mobile. Hahaha, oh well. I took a look at what Bell was charging people right before I went with Solo and it was ridiculous.

[bellpower]

want to leavce telus without cancelation fee??
want more detail email me at [e-mail]

[stratus]

Just my experience with virgin -

I'm living in the UK - where you could easily ascribe all the negative Telus characteristics to BT - When I moved to this new flat - I decided to get virgin broadband... which unfortunately is the city's only cable broadband provider - any ADSL service that you want is inevitably only available if you have a BT land line. - or a line that some other company has rented from BT

virgin is a HUGE company.. Richard Branson owns 1/2 the world I think.. and like any HUGE company.. they have their problems - but so far, one of them doesn't seem to be - for me - one of customer service.

When I signed up, I set up a direct debit payment scheme. I'm often out of town, and I didn't want to have to send my £20/month every month by cheque - and have to remember to do it.

2 months after I signed up, I went out of town for 2 weeks and left my flat to my brother to use. during the 2 weeks I was gone I received about 14 letters each one of increasing severity describing all the horrible things that Virgin was going to do to me if I didn't pay my bill.

I got back. and promptly called them.. and they admitted "hey.. yeah.. we see that you set up direct debit, but it was never activated" - I asked "oh.. why did you choose not to activate it?" - they said "we don't know.. but we will activate it now" .. and.. get this - they promptly refunded all the money they'd been charging me for NOT being on direct debit, and they refunded me for the 2 weeks I was without service because of their error, and they said sorry! I've never had that experience with either BT or Telus. I mean.. these guys are the ONLY show in town for cable broadband - they could be dicks.. but they chose not to be.

The ONLY problem I've had with virgin is with paperless billing - and this was mostly because my spam filter (joey's spam filter) was not letting my bills or my passwords get to me.. so I couldn't log in.

I've also had a virgin pay-as-you-go sim card which I use for visitors who come here - and the rates have been reasonable.. and it's been trouble free in the 5 years I've had it.

However, other people in the UK have had less fun with Virgin - specifically virgin media -

Recently on a consumer show Complaints about virgin were flying thick and fast - The problem was they kept billing people, after their relatives had said "my dad is dead, please disconnect his service" - but they wouldn't, apparently because the customer themselves must confirm any changes to the account.. which is difficult when you're dead

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBRRUyTnWA4

so.. Virgin is good.. but like any other company, they sometimes get a bit bogged down with their own bureaucracy - leading to outright stupidity.

:-)
S.