Fido is set to introduced a new $15 “transaction fee” on October 5th. The new fee will apply to all new activations and existing customers that want to upgrade their device.
Currently, Fido did not charge the fee for new activations and charged a fee of $25 for customers who wanted to upgrade their device. According to a document acquired by MobileSyrup:
“The fee will automatically be charged to all new activations with or without agreement. This includes Fido Home Phones, tablets and data-only phones. It’ll also replace the current administrative fee for hardware upgrades.”
If the customer performs the activation (new or upgrade) through the carrier’s online store, the fee will be waived. In a statement, Fido provides an explanation as to why the fees exist:
“The one-time transaction fee applies for the processing of your request. For the most part it helps us cover the costs of managing and restocking the inventory of phones and SIM cards as well as processing shipping and handling.”
What do you think of Fido’s new transaction fee? Let us know in the comments below.
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It’s just another cash grab. They do it because they can and there’s not enough competition.
Agreed! GOC needs to ACT to get competition into this business!
It promotes self serve which can cut costs. Hopefully some of that saving will be passed onto the consumer. Fido currently has the best rate plans though so I don’t foresee plan prices dropping.
Everything online, where will be the jobs. Than fido can sell their phones to machines.
This is hardly the only area this is happening in. Technology has been destroying jobs (and replacing them with far fewer jobs) since at least the 90’s. It sucks, but serious changes are needed. I don’t think you can blame Fido.
What’s even worse is that Bell charges a fee of $25 with no way to get around it.
That’s been happening since the industrial revolution.
How does it cut costs if those same customers have to call tech support because the servers crash every time a phone launches?
Fido you’re doing wrong ????
Just buy at the store and it’s waived. This is more of a bad thing for Best Buy, Wireless Wave etc.
After once working for the Bell in the call centre. I understand the purpose of the fee. But again being the guy taking the call, it made no sense. Management thinks that they can hire less people to take calls if more people are using self serve but it seemed like most people would come across difficulty in doing so leading them to call in. You have no idea how many calls I would take from people who tried activating online, then needing to call customer service to fix the problem then having to tie up the line trying to get a “manager” (help desk) on the line to approve waiving the fee for speaking to customer service then you’d spend more time answer more questions from the customer who normally wouldn’t have called to ask but since your on the line, why not.