How to Complain About Your Phone or Internet Service in Canada

A complaint about phone, internet, or TV service in Canada follows a fixed order: complain to your provider first, then escalate to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS), Canada's telecommunications and television ombuds. The CCTS is independent and not-for-profit, its service is free to consumers, and most Canadian telecom and TV providers are required to participate. This guide covers complaint mechanics only: the provider-first step exactly as the CCTS states it, what to file, and what happens at each stage.

Step 1: Complain to your provider first, in writing

Before the CCTS will act, you must attempt to resolve the complaint directly with your service provider. The CCTS complaint form is blunt about this: if you answered no to having tried to resolve the complaint directly with the company, the CCTS will record the complaint but will not proceed with any action. The CRTC's complaint page puts it the same way: the first step is to contact your telephone company directly, and many complaints can be resolved at that stage.

Complain in writing, by email, chat, or the provider's complaint form, and keep a copy with the date. Note what you asked for, what the provider offered, and the names of the people you dealt with. A phone call can start a complaint, but only a written record proves what was said and when. State plainly what resolution you want: a corrected bill, a refund, a repair, a cancellation without penalty, or a correction to a credit report. The CCTS form asks for exactly that, in the complainant's own words, so settling the wording with the provider first makes the later form easier to complete.

Step 2: Check that the CCTS covers your complaint

The CCTS helps individual consumers and small business customers, with one important exception for television. A consumer is someone who receives telecommunications services for personal use. A small business is a business customer whose monthly bill for all telecommunications services from the provider is normally $2,500 or less before taxes, as the complaint form defines it. The CCTS cannot accept television service complaints from small business customers.

The services covered are wireless and mobile services, internet delivered to a fixed address, telephone services, residential television delivered to a fixed address by cable, IPTV, or satellite, directory assistance, and operator services. The issues covered are billing, service delivery, contract disputes, and credit management, including White Pages listings. The CCTS states it can help with billing, contract disputes, service delivery, and more, and that it administers four industry codes setting minimum standards for providers.

Outside the mandate, and worth checking before you file, are complaints about the price of products or services, television or broadcasting content, privacy issues, claims of false and misleading advertising, infrastructure such as rights of way, plant, poles, or towers, customer-owned equipment or wiring, digital media broadcast undertaking services, and interactive services and applications provided by TV service providers. The CCTS television page lists those exclusions for TV complaints, and the annotated guide to the Procedural Code sets out the same scope principle for telecom complaints: the CCTS covers unregulated retail services, not matters handled by another authority, regulated matters, or content carried over the networks. If your issue is out of mandate, the CCTS notifies you and refers you to a more appropriate body rather than investigating it.

Step 3: File the complaint with the CCTS

The CCTS strongly recommends its online complaint form, because it prompts you for all the necessary information as you submit. Before you begin, read the "Information we need to help you" page the CCTS points to from its methods page. The form asks for the account holder's name and contact details, the provider, the service, when you became aware of the problem, whether you tried to resolve it with the provider, the steps you took and the provider's response with dates, a brief summary, and what you would like the provider to do. It also asks whether the complaint is before another organization that can compensate you: if it is, the CCTS records the complaint but does not proceed.

If you cannot use the online form, the CCTS accepts complaints by fax at 1-877-782-2924, by mail to P.O. Box 56067, Minto Place RO, Ottawa, Ontario K1R 7Z1, and by phone at 1-888-221-1687, with TTY service at 1-844-713-3010 and Video Relay Service for customers who prefer it. Phone complaints are accepted to ensure reasonable access, particularly for persons with disabilities, and you should be prepared to give all the information the online form asks for. Download the paper complaint form, fill it out, and fax or mail it to the addresses above.

Step 4: Initial referral, informal resolution, and investigation

Once the CCTS accepts a complaint, it sends a copy to the provider, asks the provider to work with you to solve the issue, and asks the provider to tell it within 20 days whether the complaint was solved. That 20-day figure is the one the current complaint form states. If the complaint is solved at that stage, the CCTS evaluates the provider's response to confirm it is resolved to your satisfaction.

If the complaint is not solved at referral, CCTS staff work with you and the provider to try to settle it, requesting further information and documents from both sides. If settlement fails, the CCTS investigates whether the provider reasonably performed its obligations under your contract and any relevant codes of conduct, and it can make a written Recommendation or Decision. The CCTS states it can direct a provider to correct billing errors, issue refunds or credits, waive fees or charges that are not valid, apply discounts or promotions that were promised, update or correct credit reports where incorrect information was sent to a credit bureau, and restore service suspended or cancelled without a valid reason. It may also recommend a payment for loss, damage, or inconvenience arising directly from the facts of the complaint. Keep cooperating at every stage: the CCTS closes complaints where a customer does not respond to its inquiries or refuses to engage with the provider during referral, after several attempts to engage.

If the CCTS cannot help, or you disagree with the outcome

If the CCTS declines your complaint as out of mandate, use the referral it gives you rather than refiling the same complaint. Pricing, privacy, and advertising complaints each have their own route, and a complaint already before a body that can compensate you blocks CCTS action until that route ends. The CRTC also accepts complaints directly and forwards them to the provider for reply, but for an individual service dispute the CCTS is the body that investigates and decides. This guide states no appeal route or deadline for a CCTS decision, because no opened current CCTS page states one.

Figures this guide does not state

No opened current CCTS page states a total resolution time from filing to decision, a compensation cap, or a filing deadline, so this guide states none of them. Older CCTS documents quote different referral periods and a compensation figure, but the current complaint form states 20 days for the provider to report at referral, and that is the figure used here. Confirm any deadline that applies to your complaint on the CCTS site at filing time, and do not wait: the form asks when you became aware of the problem, which suggests delay weakens a complaint even where no deadline is published.

Related guides:

• How to escalate a consumer complaint in Canada
• How to lower your internet bill in Canada
• How to start getting a cheaper phone plan in Canada

Sources

• Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, What We Do — the CCTS as Canada's telecom and TV ombuds, independent and not-for-profit, free to consumers, the services and issues it helps with, the remedies it can direct, and the four industry codes it administers.
• Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, How to File a Complaint Against a Cell or Cable Company — the online form recommendation, fax, mail, phone, TTY, and Video Relay Service routes with numbers and the mailing address.
• Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, Complaint Submission Form — the provider-first requirement and its consequence, the consumer and small business definitions, the television small business exclusion, the 20-day referral report, the other-compensating-body bar, and the resolution examples.
• Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, How to File a Cable or Television Company Complaint — individual-only TV complaints, the TV complaint types accepted, and the exclusions including pricing, content, privacy, advertising, infrastructure, and customer-owned equipment.
• Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services, Annotated Guide to the CCTS Procedural Code — the scope principle, the billing, contract, service delivery, and credit management issues in scope, and the investigation, Recommendation, and Decision stages.
• Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, How to Make a Complaint About Your Telephone Service — contacting the telephone company first, escalation to the CCTS, and the CCTS contact details.