This post is terribly, terribly overdue as I asked a friend if I could post part of her email back in October! She had sent out a great informational email about TELUS instituting Long Distance access charges and her phone call with one of their reps. If anyone has any more info on this, or a different take on it, I'd love to hear about it. I have to admit, I haven't really looked into this myself at this point (I know, I know! Bad library girl!!), but plan to at some point, as one of Claude's cousins is working for a VOIP company and would like to sign us on.

Karen's email, used with her permission:
Subject: TELUS money grab...

Or at least so I think...

Just a warning to all of you! Check your phone bill this month. There might be a notice regarding a $2.95 monthly Long Distance Access charge per month starting next month (or maybe it's just mine, but I thought I'd forward this on...) Basically, even if you don't dial long distance YOU WILL STILL BE CHARGED unless you block LD calls from your phone. If you do block LD calls from your phone and then you want to reinstate LD calls, they will charge you $10 to get the service back up and running.

Utter crap I say!!!

Thankfully I use DialNSave as my 3.8cents a minute LD provider...you dial a local # to then dial a LD number so I can block LD calls but still have LD access. The customer service rep was trying to tell me "well...it's like having insurance for your car." and I responded "so if I don't have a car, I still have to pay insurance?" She didn't really have an answer for that one...I'm guessing they're getting a few phone calls about this hahaha.

Regardless, anyone know a good alternative to Telus?