The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2011
Bell advertised $69.90 — the bill was $80.27, and Canada's watchdog took the maximum
June 2011: Bell Canada paid the maximum $10M penalty — ads showed phone, internet and TV prices that mandatory fees quietly raised by 15%.
Bell Canada · 2011-06
What happened
Since December 2007, Bell Canada advertised monthly prices for home phone, internet, satellite TV and wireless service — clean, round numbers like a $69.90 bundle. What the ads did not carry were the mandatory extras: TouchTone, modem rental, digital television services. The real price of that bundle was $80.27 a month — fifteen percent higher than the number in the ad.
Canada's Competition Bureau found the practice deceptive: when a price is advertised, it must be attainable, and burying mandatory fees in fine print does not cure it. On 28 June 2011 Bell agreed to pay a $10 million administrative monetary penalty — the maximum allowed under the Competition Act — stop the misleading representations, and bring all non-compliant ads into compliance within 60 days. Commissioner Melanie Aitken: 'Including a fine-print disclaimer is no licence to advertise prices that are not available.'
Bell's response made the case famous: its advertising 'has always complied with all applicable laws and been comparable with common advertising practice', it said — and it had 'decided to immediately resolve the issue and move forward' by paying $10 million. The 'everybody does it' defence and the maximum penalty appeared in the same announcement.
Why it happened
- The advertised price was bait: mandatory fees made the real bill 15% higher than the number in the ad.
- Fine print was treated as the cure — the Bureau ruled that disclaimers cannot make an unattainable price honest.
- Bell paid the statutory maximum while denying the premise — a settlement that conceded nothing and cost everything.
The lesson
An advertised price must be attainable: mandatory fees in fine print make the ad deceptive, and a disclaimer does not legalise them. Canada's watchdog priced that lesson at the statutory maximum.
Aftermath
Bell paid the $10 million and rewrote its ads within 60 days. The case became Canada's reference point for 'drip pricing' — when Parliament wrote the practice into the Competition Act in 2022, the Bureau's next target was movie-ticket fees.
Sources
- CBC News — Bell Canada pays $10M over misleading ads
- Business Chief — Bell Canada Fined $10 Million for Misleading Ads
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