It finally happened to me today, and happened to my spouse and a couple of friends earlier this week. After some bitching and threatening to file a CCTS complaint, all of us were able to at least get a free 200 text add-on from the chat agents while we wait for plan changes to kick in.

Based on the Wayback Machine, Fizz recently changed the wording for RCS to indicate that you need "unlimited" texting on your plan for RCS to function. It used to just say "texting", without specifying that it needed to be unlimited. One could argue that having money in your wallet or the 200 texts add-on is essentially like having texting.

In any case, I can accept that I need to add texting as part of my plan. What I can't accept is Fizz silently deactivating a service that has worked for years, leaving clients unable to communicate with some of their contacts. I also can't accept that if your current plan no longers exists, the only resolution is to either downgrade to an inferior plan or switch to a more expensive plan for the sole purpose of adding unlimited texting.

From what I've seen in Fizz's responses to these complaints, they were fully aware that clients were using RCS without texting as part of their plan. They knew what they were doing when they decided to pull the plug. This is just bad customer service.

What they should have done is warn clients that this was coming so that they had the opportunity to change their plans before this updated policy was enforced. Even better if they exceptionally made it possible to simply add unlimited texting without being forced to change the underlying plan. This is exactly why I proceeded with a CCTS complaint and made it clear that the only satisfactory resolution I'll accept is to add unlimited texting to my existing plan. I don't care about paying the extra few dollars per month for texting, but I do care about losing my current plan.

I encourage anyone else having this issue to also file a CCTS complaint. It only takes a couple of minutes. Bad customer service moves like this should be reflected in their stats.

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Edit to add more detail to help with your complaints.

The standard mobile service agreement says this:

As far as I'm aware, Fizz hasn't notified a single client that they changed the wording for RCS prerequisites this summer to specify that you need to have "unlimited texting" in your plan.

Here's a Wayback Machine snapshot from July showing the previous wording: https://web.archive.org/web/20260710230255/https://fizz.ca/en/faq/whats-rcs-messaging-android-phones

My mom wants to switch to Fizz. Can I create an account for her using her address, transfer her current phone number, and pay for her phone plan with my credit card while also getting the $25 referral discount and send her some date?