Telus is telling the CRTC that the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), the watchdog that handles unresolved phone, internet and TV complaints, has no legal authority to enforce the regulator’s consumer rules, and it wants the CCTS taken off the job.
The carrier made the argument in a filing with the CRTC back in August, the same one in which it asked the regulator to override provincial consumer laws. The CRTC is merging the Wireless Code, the Internet Code and the TV code into a single consumer code, and it asked whether the CCTS should keep administering it.
Telus says it shouldn’t, because “the CCTS’ authority is rooted in an unlawful subdelegation of powers from the Commission.” In other words, Telus argues the CRTC handed off powers that Parliament gave to the CRTC alone, and that neither the Telecommunications Act nor the Broadcasting Act allows that.
Telus notes the CCTS isn’t mentioned in either law, while its banking counterpart, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, is spelled out in the Bank Act. The CRTC rejected a similar argument from carriers in 2008, which Telus says it did “in two brief sentences,” and Telus wants the question reopened. Since CCTS decisions can’t be appealed to the CRTC, Telus says carriers are “confronted with an illegitimate body whose decisions have no path to review by the Commission.”
If the CCTS stays, Telus wants a way to appeal its decisions to the CRTC, and wants the CRTC settling any dispute over what the code means. It says CCTS rulings don’t set precedent, so the same rule can be read differently from case to case, and that the CCTS “has proven unable to provide stable and accurate interpretations of the codes.”
Telus also objects to how the CCTS hands out money. It says a 2008 CRTC decision limits CCTS compensation to “direct damages” for “losses actually incurred,” yet the CCTS has paid out in cases where the customer “did not claim direct loss.” In one case, Telus says, the customer “was not requesting any compensation” and got some anyway. “In these cases, the CCTS has simply awarded an arbitrary amount due to ‘inconvenience’,” Telus writes, adding that factors like “the severity of the issue” and “the responsiveness of the service provider” appear to be “geared to punishing service providers.”
This is a different, broader fight than the one we covered on October 14, when a separate Telus filing asked for written proof that customers escalated before the CCTS takes a case. That ask was about who gets through the door. This one questions whether the CCTS should be running the building at all.
Right now, if your carrier won’t fix a billing error, you can take it to the CCTS for free. The CCTS can order the carrier to correct your bill or pay you compensation, sometimes including a sum for the hassle, and the carrier can’t appeal that to the CRTC.
Under Telus’ main ask, administration of the code would rest with the CRTC itself, though Telus doesn’t explain how the regulator would handle individual complaints at the volume the CCTS sees, which hit a record 53,195 complaints in its latest year. Under Plan B, a customer who wins could see the carrier take it to the CRTC, and a payment for your time without a receipt behind it would likely disappear.
The CCTS fight is one of several asks in the same filing. Telus also wants to stretch phone financing to four years, scrap the $100 roaming cap, shorten trial periods to 15 days and claw back gift cards if you cancel early, and limit 60-day change notices to home internet customers.
Wanting a second referee only after the first one rules against you is a very human instinct. The CRTC hasn’t decided anything yet, and its public hearing on the new code starts November 30 in Gatineau.
Should carriers be able to appeal CCTS rulings that go against them?
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