The elephant in the room is financial services. Specifically visa&Mastercard. The rest of the world is way ahead of Canada. The EU has capped interchange fees making credit cards less appealing. There's pix in Brazil. My understanding is that digital wallets - such as wero - are much more common in Europe too.
That's another function of Canada's banking system being quite behind much of the rest of the world. As you point out, credit card fees are considerably lower elsewhere... another tax on businesses here.
It strikes me a lot of time and effort spent on trying to fix complaints directed at our monopolies. If they just improved their processes they could save a lot of time and money for everyone and the government as well.
Fixing their processes would make life easier for everyone.
Reporting a simple problem and tying to resolve it is like walking into a mind numbing hell. I was trying to renew a contract and spend 14 hours on hold. In the end I could not get a hold of anyone.
The only solution was to file a complaint with the CCTC.
I recently closed a credit card account. When they asked why I was closing my account I told them, no particular reason. They hung up on customers when they cannot solve a problem. Incredibly bad service. There was no yelling or abusive behaviour on my part. I figured that why should I help the bank when they treat their customers with such contempt.
Good customer service is always more profitable than p-o'd customers who move their business elsewhere.
A good reason to not tie all your email contacts to your ISP. That way if you have to leave you can just drop them and move to another provider.
That goes for the same with financial providers. Having all your eggs in one basket makes a move to a competitor much more painful.
When I was reporting on telecom, I used to tell people that my number one tip was to never bundle your services. The slight discount was never worth the trap you were in if you wanted to move one of your services.
Another thing you touch on is ease of cancellation - I’ve long believed that doing so should be as easy as signing up. Funny enough, I’ve pitched this story to a few editors before and they never accepted it because newspapers are among the guiltiest parties here. I’ve been meaning to cover this here and you’ve reminded me to do so. More soon!
In your interview with Cory Doctorow I learned about KAGI as an alternative to Google. Trying it out (the first 100 searches are free) and excellent results so far! Google searches have become worse these last few years and now it bombards you with AI results. (Even when you first type -ai they still seep through.) In contrast, KAGI is clean and has no sponsored results. Looks like it will be worth the $10/month.
The elephant in the room is financial services. Specifically visa&Mastercard. The rest of the world is way ahead of Canada. The EU has capped interchange fees making credit cards less appealing. There's pix in Brazil. My understanding is that digital wallets - such as wero - are much more common in Europe too.
That's another function of Canada's banking system being quite behind much of the rest of the world. As you point out, credit card fees are considerably lower elsewhere... another tax on businesses here.
It strikes me a lot of time and effort spent on trying to fix complaints directed at our monopolies. If they just improved their processes they could save a lot of time and money for everyone and the government as well.
Fixing their processes would make life easier for everyone.
Reporting a simple problem and tying to resolve it is like walking into a mind numbing hell. I was trying to renew a contract and spend 14 hours on hold. In the end I could not get a hold of anyone.
The only solution was to file a complaint with the CCTC.
I recently closed a credit card account. When they asked why I was closing my account I told them, no particular reason. They hung up on customers when they cannot solve a problem. Incredibly bad service. There was no yelling or abusive behaviour on my part. I figured that why should I help the bank when they treat their customers with such contempt.
Good customer service is always more profitable than p-o'd customers who move their business elsewhere.
A good reason to not tie all your email contacts to your ISP. That way if you have to leave you can just drop them and move to another provider.
That goes for the same with financial providers. Having all your eggs in one basket makes a move to a competitor much more painful.
When I was reporting on telecom, I used to tell people that my number one tip was to never bundle your services. The slight discount was never worth the trap you were in if you wanted to move one of your services.
Another thing you touch on is ease of cancellation - I’ve long believed that doing so should be as easy as signing up. Funny enough, I’ve pitched this story to a few editors before and they never accepted it because newspapers are among the guiltiest parties here. I’ve been meaning to cover this here and you’ve reminded me to do so. More soon!
In your interview with Cory Doctorow I learned about KAGI as an alternative to Google. Trying it out (the first 100 searches are free) and excellent results so far! Google searches have become worse these last few years and now it bombards you with AI results. (Even when you first type -ai they still seep through.) In contrast, KAGI is clean and has no sponsored results. Looks like it will be worth the $10/month.