As telecom complaints soar by 79%, this law professor is fighting a bid by Telus to make filing them harder - Toronto Star

A Telus proposal to the CRTC would require proof of internal escalation before a watchdog steps in. Experts say that puts consumers at a disadvantage.

“Consumers should not have to understand their provider’s organizational chart before they can seek recourse,” says University of Ottawa’s Marina Pavlović. “The goal, should be fewer unresolved problems.” 

Every week, my inbox overflows with emails from consumers seeking help dealing with telecom trauma.

Billing errors nobody will fix. Credits promised and never delivered. Service disruptions and no one to speak with. 

Since there’s only one of me, I’ve urged many of you to appeal to the telecom complaints watchdog, the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS).

Now, Telus wants to make that process harder.

In a recent filing to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Telus asked that the CCTS “refuse to accept or register any consumer complaint” unless the customer provides “verifiable documentary evidence” that the dispute was formally escalated to the provider’s “second-level” support. 

“The concept is not consistently defined or communicated to customers,” says Eric Finkel, a B.C. resident who appealed to the CCTS for help in May after Fido, owned by Rogers, failed to resolve his complaints about pricing, contract inaccuracies and service issues. He calls Telus’s proposal “disconcerting.” 

“I did not know what constituted a ‘second level’ and had no way to know when I had reached it,” Finkel writes in a formal and public intervention he filed with the CRTC, encouraging the regulator to support public access and awareness of the CCTS.

“In my case, weeks passed between my initial complaint and any meaningful response from Fido,” he said. “During that time I had no way of knowing whether I could or should escalate elsewhere.”

Finkel urged the CRTC to impose a fixed deadline — “a clear and enforceable backstop” — of 10 to 15 business days from the date a complaint is first made, after which the service provider must inform the customer of their right to escalate to CCTS. 

The CRTC said it will weigh the feedback it has received from industry and consumers after the consultation closes Nov. 13.

It’s not difficult to find examples of Big Telecom foot dragging.

Remember Hazel Maki, the retired art teacher from South Porcupine, Ont., who waited nine months for Koodo, which is owned by Telus, to reimburse her accidental overpayment of $13,000? Or the Toronto couple who spent four days just trying to reach a Rogers agent to cancel their internet ahead of a move?

Telus’s Oct. 7 proposal to the CRTC to make it harder for consumers to escalate concerns landed just before the industry watchdog reported a record jump in complaints.

The commission received 53,195 complaints in 2025-2026, according to a report it released earlier this month, up 79 per cent from the year before. 

The watchdog’s most recent annual report shows Telus drew the largest spike in complaints among the big three telecom providers with a 77.9 per cent increase in 2024-2025. 

Marina Pavlović, a University of Ottawa law professor who studies consumer protection, says the change proposed by Telus would leave telecom customers dependent on their provider to escalate a complaint and supply proof of the escalation. 

“Consumers should not have to understand their provider’s organizational chart before they can seek recourse,” she wrote in an email to the Star. “Missing documentation should not automatically close the door to independent assistance for unresolved issues.”

Under current rules, customers must give their provider “a reasonable opportunity to investigate and resolve the matter” before CCTS can intervene, but they don’t have to prove how far up the chain they went. 

The Star asked Telus to explain how its proposal would work in practice.

“We refer you to our Oct. 7 CRTC submission (BTNC 2025-274) for full detail on our position,” Telus spokesperson Emily Piccinin wrote in an email. “As outlined in our filing, our recommendations focus on ensuring service providers continue to have the first, reasonable opportunity to resolve customer concerns directly and quickly before engaging a third-party.”

In its CRTC submission, Telus pointed to a survey it commissioned from Cicic Research: an online poll of 1,100 Canadians in September. 

After reading a short description of the CCTS, the respondents, who were not told which telecom company commissioned the survey, were asked to answer a string of questions. 

According to Telus, 81 per cent of the people surveyed agreed providers should get a reasonable chance to resolve a complaint. 

But the questions, Pavlović noted, don’t test Telus’s actual proposal, which seeks to force the watchdog to reject complaints that don’t include documented second-level escalation.

“Consider someone,” she says, “who repeatedly calls about an incorrect bill, is transferred between agents, and receives no written confirmation identifying the support tier reached, if any.” 

Pavlović filed her own proposal to the CRTC with two of her law students. She wants the regulator to require carriers to tell customers about the CCTS as soon as they complain.

Telus’s own survey, Pavlović pointed out, found 57 per cent of respondents had never heard of the CCTS and another 24 per cent knew only of its name. 

“The goal should be fewer unresolved problems.” Pavlović says. “Making complaints harder to file could reduce the count without resolving those problems.”

A broader public hearing on refining the CRTC’s consumer protection codes starts Nov. 30 in Gatineau, Que. 

The Advocate is a regular feature by Diana Zlomislic that helps Canadians hold companies and policymakers to account for the goods and services they provide. If you need help or want to share your story, email Diana at dzlo@thestar.ca