By: Pat Daley

  Have you received your cute little envelope from Bell Canada yet? It's offering the "Special Connections" bundle of services - call waiting, call answer, call display, call forwarding, call return, three-way calling - that lets you "save 36% compared to buying all of these services separately!"
  Chances are that if you already subscribe to all of these services, you'll never see the offer. It's only meant for people like me who decided most of these "Smart Touch" options are unnecessary.
  Ma Bell thinks I'm an easy touch. My personalized letter tells me I can purchase this bundle for "just $4.95 a month more than you currently pay." The first time they sent the package, I had a good how-dumb-do-they-think-I-am laugh and threw the whole thing out. When it arrived again on Friday, I understood the strategy.
  Earlier this month, Toronto Star reporter John Spears described a Bell Canada memo instructing staff not to actively promote the bundle to customers who will save money because "this will put the company at a disadvantage financially." Sure enough, I checked with a friend who has already subscribes separately to all the bundled services. Bell hasn't sent a personalized letter to her.
  But we will all get a chance to pay the increased rates for these services that were approved behind closed doors in December by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
  My phone bill also arrived on Friday. It had an mysterious new 50¢-a-month charge called "Thanks for choosing Bell services."
  It's not a new charge, said the client services rep when I called. It's just that Bell is no longer giving you a 50¢ discount for buying two "Smart Touch" services. Then she tried to sell me a bundle.

Pat Daley is a freelance writer and editor in Athlone in Simcoe County, Ontario.