I agree in principle that competition is good for the consumer. However this "good result" does not always pan out in practice. Take the big banks for example, and ponder their "service" charges for a moment.
I admire the firestorm of comment the Rogers pricing plans have raised regarding the I-phone rollout July11. I can only hope that the public hue and cry and the vociferous outrage will have at least some desired effect on Rogers other than Apple simply halving their supply of I-phones for the rollout.
Back to the banks and our Canadian "sheepish" attitude of taking it all in stride. Was there a public outcry when the banks stopped calculating and paying interest on their saving accounts? Was there a public outcry when they invented a new service charge whereby corporate accounts are actually charged money to DEPOSIT funds? This applies to non-profit / charitable accounts as well. At CIBC, this started out as a "service" charge of 13 cents a cheque. This is akin to the telco's charging BOTH the sender and the receiver of a phone call or text message. The cheque sender already pays a "service" fee for writing the cheque... either a monthly plan or a per cheque rate over a certain limit. (Sound familiar?). This same "service" charge has now been upped to .16 cents per cheque deposited. They also charge a service fee at a different rate for depositing Cash, and another for depositing coin. You are giving them their life-blood. Without deposits on hand, how can a bank make money? Yet they money-grab even the deposits, and we say NOTHING! You cannot escape these charges by dealing with another of the "big" banks as they all have similar fee structures. (Where's the competition there?) When pressed, a bank manager says ...you're quite free to attempt to find a better solution at another bank, knowing that they're all in collusion. These "public" institutions bilk and milk us daily, while we sit idly by and let them squander BILLIONS of dollars on a hyper-inflated US real-estate market that crashed and burned. In their defence, they were trying to make money but now they'll have to increase the "service" charges again to keep from going into the hole. Who PAYS?.... you guessed it.. .the Canadian sheep public customer.
Compared to the banks, Rogers et al is a cheap hucksterish johnny-come-lately to the "old-boys" group that really know how to get Canadians en-masse to bend over and take it with a smile!
