Bell and Virgin Plus have jacked their “connection service fee” to $70, matching what Rogers and Fido kicked off in July, plus Telus and Koodo following suit in August.
The Bell website’s fine print explains, “A one-time Connection Service Fee (($70) per member) is applied on your first bill to activate your device on the Bell network. Additional one-time fees are subject to change over time.”
Previously, this fee was $60 but now it has increased by $10 to $70. With mention of one-time fees “subject to change over time”, the sky’s the limit. The connection fee is literally an ATM to print money.
These $70 connection fees are waived if you activate your device online. They are only charged if you talk to or deal with a human at a store. Sometimes dealers will waive the connection fee during promo periods to seal the deal.
Bell also has launched a new Promo 50 plan for existing mobility customers, priced at $39/month (bring your own phone) after autopay credit with 50GB of 5G non-shareable data. For device activation and upgrades which includes voicemail to text this plan is $49 per month.
Back in the summer, the connection fee increase by Rogers caught the eye of the CRTC, which asked the telecom for more info (not like that will do anything).
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The $39/50 and $49/50 plans are for adding a line only – they're only available if you're a new, 2nd+ line being added to an existing account, misleading headline…
They've also been around for a little while now…
Absolutely brutal. It's not like that's what they're paying the employee in commission. Employees get paid much less than that for a line activation. It's just some wallet padding fee that doesn't need to exist.
its a cash grab! it doesnt cost anything to activate a line! its automated. they are idiots
Bell is crap
5g is overrated
5G up here in Northern Ontario is like 4G+ as when you do 5G speed tests up here its maybe 5mbs faster than 4G on a good day.
And 5g can’t penetrate buildings like 4g can… So you get even less signal indoors than with 4g..
It is very sad to see how high this fee has become in 2017 Bell's connection fee was only $15 in Ontario and now its up to $70 that is a horrid amount to be charging especially since any store employee's that do make a commission from selling you a phone maybe get $15 at most when they do sell you a new device. Once the CRTC got rid of the unlocking fee that's when connection fees started to rise and rise and rise each year. I could understand a connection fee for a new customer signing up with the carrier but when your an existing customer their shouldn't be any fee. CRTC needs to step in again and get this to stop.
Well, they won't get my business on their Tier 2 or Tier 1 platforms. It is either prepaid Public, Lucky, Chatr, PC Mobile, No Name, or Freedom. I would want to buy it outright now.
Lucky is Bell. You may want to look at Fizz from Videotron as they're a MNVO so they get a pretty good signal on average vs some weak signal spots with the big 3 and their subs.