The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

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Chef Boi RD
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The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Chef Boi RD »

I love my country but IMO the Big 3 providers Rogers, Bell and Telus are fucking scumbag crooks.

I'm done with iPhone App World, I want to jump onto the S4 bandwagon, but I got a thing called a contract.
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Zamboni Driver »

RoyalDude wrote:I love my country but IMO the Big 3 providers Rogers, Bell and Telus are fucking scumbag crooks.

I'm done with iPhone App World, I want to jump onto the S4 bandwagon, but I got a thing called a contract.
Rogers is so annoying anyways pushing their crap Toronto teams.
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cousin Strawberry »

In the rest of the world, nobody has contracts(for personal cell phones) and the providers bend over backwards for your money. Basically, it's all pay and talk as nobody would be so stupid to lock in for a term.
Coincidentally, there generally isn't locked mobiles. You buy your toy outright and then if you prefer to try someone else you go buy a $2 sim card, swap it out and keep on rockin.
Canada absolutely sucks for the cell phone consumer
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Chef Boi RD »

Well I guess in Canada, it's all about monopolizing, protectionism and control. Big 3 Providers, ICBC, BC Liquor Board, Terasen Gas, BC Hydro, Canada Post, CN Rail, Canada Wheat blah, blah, blah but yeah, the whole provider system up here is a fucking joke. In the states, you buy a phone and then you have a pick of thousands of providers to choose from and it's non contractual.
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Zamboni Driver
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Zamboni Driver »

Uncle dans leg wrote: Canada absolutely sucks for the cell phone consumer
I ditched my Canadian plan years ago, now I have Verizon North America. Works just fine and no bulls**t Canadian plan
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cousin Strawberry »

Zamboni Driver wrote:
Uncle dans leg wrote: Canada absolutely sucks for the cell phone consumer
I ditched my Canadian plan years ago, now I have Verizon North America. Works just fine and no bulls**t Canadian plan
Nice! Do you need a US PO Box or how do you get around the address thing?
I'm still rolling with my jailbroken iPhone 3 on Virgin prepaid. $35/mo all in, unlimited incoming calls, texts and I think 500 something bytes of data. When I'm in Europe or Oz I just snag a local sim card and roughly 20 Cdn dollars worth of credit. Easy. That's the best you'll find in Canada
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Aaronp18 »

RoyalDude wrote: I want to jump onto the S4 bandwagon, but I got a thing called a contract.
So you signed a contract with something you thought you'd be happy with three years down the line and now you would like to somehow get out of it!

Does your wife bring up your regretful decision in every conversation you have?

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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by dbr »

Last phone I bought was purchased outright from Apple, unlocked from any particular carrier. I was totally happy with it and was able to turn it over within about a year, I'd definitely go that way again in the future.

Saving a couple hundred upfront on your device in exchange for a contract you'll want out of halfway through is silly (unless you've looked at how much it'll cost you to buy out a year or two of your deal).
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

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Uncle dans leg wrote:In the rest of the world, nobody has contracts(for personal cell phones) and the providers bend over backwards for your money. Basically, it's all pay and talk as nobody would be so stupid to lock in for a term.
Coincidentally, there generally isn't locked mobiles. You buy your toy outright and then if you prefer to try someone else you go buy a $2 sim card, swap it out and keep on rockin.
Canada absolutely sucks for the cell phone consumer
Uhm... Not true. You see both here. Whereas I prefer to pay my phone upfront and have a contract that can be terminated at will, most idiots fall for the pied piper's pipe dream and "get their phone for free" by signing two, three or even four year deals that make them end up paying twice as much for the phone than they should have. There's no such thing as a free phone. There are people paying CAD 50-100 /month for their phone bills, whereas I usually end up paying roughly CAD 10. Thus after two years they have paid some CAD 1000-2000 for that phone. That's one expensive phone. :drink:
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cousin Strawberry »

Per wrote:
Uncle dans leg wrote:In the rest of the world, nobody has contracts(for personal cell phones) and the providers bend over backwards for your money. Basically, it's all pay and talk as nobody would be so stupid to lock in for a term.
Coincidentally, there generally isn't locked mobiles. You buy your toy outright and then if you prefer to try someone else you go buy a $2 sim card, swap it out and keep on rockin.
Canada absolutely sucks for the cell phone consumer
Uhm... Not true. You see both here. Whereas I prefer to pay my phone upfront and have a contract that can be terminated at will, most idiots fall for the pied piper's pipe dream and "get their phone for free" by signing two, three or even four year deals that make them end up paying twice as much for the phone than they should have. There's no such thing as a free phone. There are people paying CAD 50-100 /month for their phone bills, whereas I usually end up paying roughly CAD 10. Thus after two years they have paid some CAD 1000-2000 for that phone. That's one expensive phone. :drink:
All of my friends and my wifes' family in southern Sweden pay up front. Nobody seems to go that route...

In Australia I would spend $20 and they would give me 1gig of data, 400+ minutes of daytime talk, unlimited text including international and after 6/weekends free. Unreal compared to here.
When we went to Sverige I bought a 100SEK sim card and never came close to burning it up. That included surfing, texting, etc but when we got to Germany it was toast in about 5 minutes :evil: Stupid Krauts
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Per »

Uncle dans leg wrote: All of my friends and my wifes' family in southern Sweden pay up front.
So, you're hanging with smart people then. Kudos! :drink:

When you go into a store to buy a phone, they only advertise these deals that will have you locked up for two to three years. You have to ask them how much the phone is without any of those contracts.

They may be disappearing soon though, as there is discussion of passing a law that would allow any private person (it would not apply to companies) to terminate any phone plan with one months notice. If they pass that law, the con men will have to start thinking up new schemes to make fools part from their money... :lol:
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cornuck »

What am I missing here? Isn't the phone plan the same whether you buy a phone or get a free one?
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cousin Strawberry »

Cornuck wrote:What am I missing here? Isn't the phone plan the same whether you buy a phone or get a free one?
Grass, Gas or Ass Corny...NOBODY rides for free :twisted:
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Topper »

Mining your iphone

http://amebc.informz.net/amebc/data/ima ... iphone.jpg

1,600,000 tons of rock from Yanococha gold mine

68,000 tons of rock from Escondida (the worlds largest Cu mine - they move 230,000 tonnes a day)

33,000 tons of rock from Cannington silver mine

made roughly 45 million iphones
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Re: The Great Canadian Cell Phone Provider Monopoly

Post by Cookie La Rue »

I can tell you what, i hate i-, smart- or what do i know-phones and all these shit what comes around.
Instead of talking to people around and building up some real social connections, everybody is busy with this evil thing most of the time.

I don't have it and i don't need a mobile internet connection. You know the times when nobody even had a mobile phone and it went without too. Damn modern society which's killing itself. :devil:
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