Beachballin’

Fido Adventures

Today was a big week for me as far as the iPhone goes. I’ve had issues with both Fido and Apple that necessitated a call (for the former) and a Genius appointment (for the latter).

If you haven’t been to the Fido website lately, you won’t have seen the changes - and they’re dramatic. The entire look and feel has changed. After updating their website when the iPhone was launched, they’ve thrown all of that away - and taken the plans with them.

In an effort to compete with Koodo (warning: ugly) and Solo, the no-frills carriers run by Telus and Bell respectively, Fido’s plans have been completely redone. How redone? Well, you can now get no-frills cellular service for $16.95 after tax.

Having signed up for their plans quite a while ago, and having two iPhones on my plan, my bill runs around $170 every month, and so I figured there was some room for improvement there. I was right, of course, but the difference was not as much as I had hoped. I can technically save money on my phone, but because I have a group plan, the cost on the other line would go up, and my total cost would remain the same (and I would lose 5.5 GB of data per month).

What they did offer me, however, is to trim the System Access Fee from my plans, saving me $15 every month - a reasonable change that I’m willing to accept.

The interesting thing here - they are not doing this for all of their customers. They will continue to charge you the SAF unless you call in and ask them about it. They can remove it, but there are conditions - if you are getting a discount already through some negotiating you’ve done before, you have to choose between that and losing the SAF, so if you’re already saving $7.50 or more then it’s not worth it.

If, unlike me, you aren’t on a group plan, you can probably save a fair chunk of change by switching. You also have the option, if you do less than 500M of data, of going with the $60 iPhone plan and adding unlimited incoming calls and caller ID if you want them (if not, you save even more!). There are various benefits and drawbacks you’d have to weigh.

So, if you’re a Fido customer, go to their website, check out their voice plans, check out their iPhone plans (just add any iPhone to your cart to see plan options), and see if there’s anything that will benefit you. At the very least, stop paying the system access fee!

Here’s a little table of what my options (for my first line) came out to. 

	Old Plan	Change Plan	iPhone Plan
Voice	$35	$25	$60
Data	$30	$30
Extras	$15	$10	$16
SAF	$7.50
Total	$87.50	$65	$76

 

Honestly, the only change that would really benefit me at this point would be if Fido introduced a 500 megabyte data plan for $10 (which compares favourably with their 6GB promotion for $30). They won’t do this, of course, because even people with the 6 GB plan are probably only using between 50-150 MB of data per month at most, so they’re making three times the money and providing the same amount of service. Perhaps once their network is built out and the instabilities are ironed out, they’ll consider more competitive rates.

For more iPhone fun, check out my same-day iPhone Adventures, where I exchange my iPhone for a new one, which probably won’t help me.

2 Comments to Fido Adventures

1. [...] more Fido fun, check out my recent Fido Adventures, wherein I try and fail to update my plan, and still save $15 per month. Wednesday, November 12th, [...]
iPhone Adventures | Beachballin’ on November 12th, 2008
2. 

   Thanks for this. I went to Fido to get my iPhone and I’ve seen the ads for lower prices and was wondering if I could get a better deal. Sneaky tricks with the system access fee. Telecoms are so dirrty.
bree on November 12th, 2008

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