crows to burnaby

...because picking on Telus is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

My built-in ringtones are pretty crappy, my phone doesn't have the ability to make new ones, and so Telus is the sole source of new ringtones for me. I've bought two or three from them over the past two years that I find tolerable. I was thinking about picking up another one recently, and then it occurred to me: what happens if I replace my phone, in a year or two? The ringtones should be associated with my Telus account - so could I download them again, or would they say it's only associated with the phone?

I sent them a note. They informed me:

Downloaded items (ringtones, truetones, images, videos, games) cannot be transferred from one handset to another. Downloading that item allows you the license to use that property on that one specific TELUS wireless handset. You are expressly prohibited from transmitting, distributing, reproducing and modifying any ringtone, image, or game downloaded from mytelusmobility.com to your handset.

Here's my response:

This is unfortunately what I expected. I understand that a download is a license for a single handset - and so I'll never buy a ringtone or game from you again. Let me explain:

If I buy a song from Apple's iTunes online, it would cost me 99 cents and I would receive a digital download of a song, perhaps 5-6 minutes long. It would be fairly high quality. I could authorize multiple computers to play the file, I could burn a CD that I could listen to on my home stereo, and I could listen to it on my iPod, all perfectly legally. This is a good deal.

If I buy a ringtone from Telus, it would cost me as much as $2 or $3 for an extremely short sound file - maybe a sound effect, 4 seconds long, or a beepy polyphonic version of a song. I can only ever play it on this phone, which'll be outdated in a year or so. If I buy a new phone FROM TELUS, replacing the old one - and maybe renewing my contract in the process - you would still expect me to pay ANOTHER $2 or $3 for the privilege of downloading and reinstalling the same ringtone I ALREADY PAID FOR?

This is not a good deal.

I won't be suckered into it again.

I doubt a single pissy email is going to topple their overpriced DRM scheme overnight, but I thought I'd post this for anyone else with a Telus plan who hadn't really thought about this before either.