i got a letter yesterday that shocked me, not because of the content, but because of the person who sent it.
i've come to recognise the rounded variety on century gothic that bell canada uses in their love letters to me and, since i hadn't blogged about them in a while, i was greatly looking forward to another "please come back" missive from my mysterious suitor, mr. steve bickley. so imagine my surprise when the letter turned out to be from a woman by the name of heather tulk, who seems to have taken over mr. bickley's position as senior vice president of residential services.
i've no idea what's become of steve. did my consistent rejections, on the basis that bell had treated my like an inmate in their telecommunications prison, who tried to bill me for months of service when they forgot to disconnect my toronto line and accused me of lying when i insisted that i had ordered a disconnection (and even claimed that i should pay if they had been at fault, which they were), drive him into some sort of frenzy? while i don't think i'm ugly, i'm not generally the kind of girl who makes men crazy, even if they have been sending me letters for almost three years to tell me how much they miss me.
heather's letter is interesting. she's obviously after me to return to bell, but she avoids any mention of my whole history with steve. she makes no mention of him, or of the fact that i was once a bell customer. her case is ruthlessly practical: i should go back to bell for purely fiduciary reasons. i will save, over the course of two years, almost $1400 from what i'm currently paying videotron (how do they know?) for my services. i respect that practicality, that forwardness, that desire to start from a clean slate. there's something in it that touches a chord in my chilled heart.
CAN A NEW BELL FACE WIN ME BACK?
when i googled ms. tulk, i found out why. turns out, she, like me, hails from eastern canada. she has that awareness of the importance of dollars and cents that is bred in the blood of an area of the country that generally has very little of either. while she comes originally from newfoundland, she has spent, as far as i can tell, the last several years in a position of high authority with aliant, bell's arm in the maritime provinces. it was on reading that little tidbit that her message went from striking a chord to striking a nerve.
you see, dom and i bought my mother a portable phone for christmas. we wanted her to have this because we knew that, in the spring, she was due to have hip replacement surgery and neither of us wanted her to be phone-less in case of an accident or to have to exert herself to answer the daily calls i'm going to be giving her until i'm sure she's all right. because my mother has digital internet service through alliant (as well as her cable and phone service), she needed to get a noise reduction box to keep her phone and internet service from interfering with each other. ok, i understand. we have one of those too.
however, when she called aliant, they told her that, if she were to install the device to allow her internet and phone to work together, her cable would stop working. excusez-moi? no matter what this poor woman does, having a portable phone is going to deprive her of one of the services that she pays for from bell aliant? end of story?
sadly, yes, that seems to be just as far as aliant is willing to help her. now my mother is freshly returned from the hospital and every time she gets a phone call, she has to make her way painfully to a phone anchored to the wall because apparently, in the digital age, no one at aliant hasa ever considered the possibility that phones might be made portable.
heather, i appreciate your easterner's pluck and your attempt to court me simply by pointing out your advantages, but i can hardly return to bell's loving arms when they've treated first me and now my mother so poorly. and yes, i'm still bitter about that internet cap thing you tried to push on all of us. i'd suggest that you move on to winning back the hearts of some of the other people who ran from your clammy clutches over the years. but if you see steve bickley, do give him my regards.
Showing posts with label bell canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bell canada. Show all posts
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
one hand washes the other and stabs you in the back
it's bad enough that the crtc is in bed with big telecoms, backing their demands to limit internet usage for no logical reason (other than wanting to be able to bill canadian consumers more and put a choke hold on smaller competitors at the same time) but now it turns out they're both having a three-way with the cbc? send help.
the cbc is supposed to serve the public interest (then again, so is the crtc), although its role as a public watchdog isn't nearly so entrenched here as it is in countries such as sweden or holland. still, you'd like to think that they are at least dedicated to presenting a comprehensive and multifaceted debate on issues of importance to the canadian populace. but, as it turns out, they're a little reluctant.
this past week, the current, one of their flagship current events shows, aired a discussion and debate on the subject of the crtc's decision (informed by private, for-profit entities like my bete-noire bell canada) to allow telecommunications providers to cap internet usage and bill consumers when they exceed their monthly ration. after being publicly embarrassed by protest and rebuked by the government, the crtc has put the decision under review. so the cbc rightly thought this would be a good time to let canadians hear the different points of view on the debate.
invited to participate were leonard waverman, a business school professor representing the perspective of the telco giants, steve anderson of openmedia.ca, the site that started the petition to have the decision revisited and andrew wright from halifax's chebucto community net, the country's second oldest freenet (well, almost free, since circumstances force them to charge a nominal amount for the service that they provide). the idea, one assumes, was to present opinions from the points of view of corporate interests, those who are angered by the specific decision and that of the larger public. The three were invited to present their arguments, after which they would engage in a debate.
although i didn't hear the original broadcast, i'm told that wright stood his ground and pointed out errors in the statistics presented by waverman in support of the telcos arguments. apparently, calling your opponents out on their presentation is a big no-no, since wright was told afterward that he wouldn't be needed for the debate portion of the show. that's too bad, because this is someone with a lot of experience in the area of public access, beyond the issues surrounding this decision.
normally in these circumstances, i'd just listen to the show on line and see what he said to get himself uninvited to the debate party, but unfortunately, i can't do that, because the cbc chose to expunge his contribution from the portion of the show that they made available on line. so the debate that one can listen to now is free of the voice that challenged the corporate representative on his facts. way to go, cbc. for an organisation tasked with representing the public interest, you're doing a great impression of playing on the side of corporate power.
the cbc is supposed to serve the public interest (then again, so is the crtc), although its role as a public watchdog isn't nearly so entrenched here as it is in countries such as sweden or holland. still, you'd like to think that they are at least dedicated to presenting a comprehensive and multifaceted debate on issues of importance to the canadian populace. but, as it turns out, they're a little reluctant.
this past week, the current, one of their flagship current events shows, aired a discussion and debate on the subject of the crtc's decision (informed by private, for-profit entities like my bete-noire bell canada) to allow telecommunications providers to cap internet usage and bill consumers when they exceed their monthly ration. after being publicly embarrassed by protest and rebuked by the government, the crtc has put the decision under review. so the cbc rightly thought this would be a good time to let canadians hear the different points of view on the debate.
invited to participate were leonard waverman, a business school professor representing the perspective of the telco giants, steve anderson of openmedia.ca, the site that started the petition to have the decision revisited and andrew wright from halifax's chebucto community net, the country's second oldest freenet (well, almost free, since circumstances force them to charge a nominal amount for the service that they provide). the idea, one assumes, was to present opinions from the points of view of corporate interests, those who are angered by the specific decision and that of the larger public. The three were invited to present their arguments, after which they would engage in a debate.
although i didn't hear the original broadcast, i'm told that wright stood his ground and pointed out errors in the statistics presented by waverman in support of the telcos arguments. apparently, calling your opponents out on their presentation is a big no-no, since wright was told afterward that he wouldn't be needed for the debate portion of the show. that's too bad, because this is someone with a lot of experience in the area of public access, beyond the issues surrounding this decision.
normally in these circumstances, i'd just listen to the show on line and see what he said to get himself uninvited to the debate party, but unfortunately, i can't do that, because the cbc chose to expunge his contribution from the portion of the show that they made available on line. so the debate that one can listen to now is free of the voice that challenged the corporate representative on his facts. way to go, cbc. for an organisation tasked with representing the public interest, you're doing a great impression of playing on the side of corporate power.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
if it's customer abuse, it's gotta be bell
ooh, i can barely contain my giggles. i have finally settled (somewhat) my year and a half long battle with bell canada over the fact that they left my previous phone line connected for three months after i moved, tried to strong-arm me into paying for their mistake, accused me of breaching a contract when i left for another provider and insisted that the onus had been on me to request a copy of said contract, although they had never informed me of its existence. i can't get back the hours of my life i wasted on the phone being subject to verbal abuse while i tried to get this cleared up. it is some minor comfort to know that at least i am not alone. witness this tale of horror from someone who merely tried to contact bell with a billing question.
of course, if you've followed news in canada lately, you'll be aware that i'm not alone at all. in fact, it looks like this sort of behaviour is actually part of bell's customer service strategy, at least if you take the word of the 10,000 people who've complained about their telemarketing practices. you'll note in the article that the crtc- probably third behind bell canada and wal-mart on the list of organisations i'd like to see blasted into outer space- basically dispensed with the complaints by giving bell a slap on the wrist compared to the fines it's doled out for lesser offenses to smaller companies. (although it claims to be driven purely by the volume and content of complaints, the crtc has a history of establishing precedent by hammering on the little guys who can't afford to fight back. but that's another story.) apparently, the crtc don't take it very seriously that the principal abuser of the country's "do not call" list is the corporation they entrusted to maintain it in the first place.
through all this, i continue to get the most melancholy, heartfelt form letters signed in the name of vice-president steve bickley, mourning our long-standing past relationship and promising me, as abusers often do, that everything will be well again if i just come back. and, while i haven't been cursed at by any of them, i do receive calls from telemarkters on a somewhat frequent basis (although it does seem that their efforts are flagging), attempting to woo me on bell's behalf. honestly, the whole nightmare has grown so bizarre that i actually look forward to these calls, these opportunities to explain calmly that not only am i never returning to bell, but i am encouraging everyone i know to leave them for greener pastures. i get a sadistic sort of amusement from the fact that bell has provided no script or tips whatsoever to their telemarketers to deal with customers who left not for financial reasons, but because they were just so aggravated by bell's miserable customer service that anything looked good by comparison. with at least 10,000 complaints on the books, one would hope that mr. bickley has his little elves working on a cheat sheet for that.
personally, i think that if bell wants to impress people with its customer service and responsible actions, it should start by not calling people who don't want to be called, not wasting paper by sending out form letters and by keeping track of those who have left out of anger and frustration, rather than because they were offered a better deal somewhere else. i also think that, given bell's increasingly dodgy record on all counts, that the crtc should be keeping them on a lot shorter leash than what we've seen.
rather get trapped in the horror of addressing the crtc directly, you can request that bell be subject to higher scrutiny by reaching out to industry minister tony clement. his contact information is pretty comprehensive (no cell number, though). you might want to remind him that his government is already dragging their feet on long-promised telecommunications reform and that letting bell operate at a lower standard than smaller competitors is a step in the wrong direction.
if any of you are in the same boat as me, getting unrequited love notes from steve bickley and you're ready to let him know that it's never going to happen between you, you could always try contacting him directly:
phone: 416-446-3234
e-mail: steven.bickley@bell.ca
whatever part of this seamy corporate thuggery you object to, the one thing that i encourage you to do is object loudly, consistently, articulately and politely. bell has been able to get away with a lot of things because they are big compared to you, the individual. but when stories of thousands of irate customers (and would-be customers) start surfacing, the time has come to call their bluff.
[note :: the graphic that accompanies this piece was something i found originally in an article from the montreal gazette. the article, which is itself an interesting piece on bell canada and includes (in the comments) reactions from current and former bell customers.]
Friday, April 17, 2009
bell's hell
oh, i thought this was done already. i thought the blogs about bell canada were at an end. after all, since i'm no longer a customer, it stands to reason that there is nothing further that they could do to hurt/ annoy/ gouge me. ah, so much for reason.
the day before yesterday, i received a bill in the mail. this was not my "final bill", for services rendered, which has already been paid. this is a bill charging me for a disconnection fee ($25, which i think is asinine, but which i can probably come to terms with) and a fee for the early termination of my contract ($75).
that second charge had me scratching my head. early termination of contract? i certainly never signed a contract with bell and, even if i had, i would have looked at it carefully enough to determined that it included no provision that they leave my previous number active without telling me and then try to blame me (and charge me) for their mistake.
so, once again, since i obviously have far too much time on my hands, i call bell to get the matter sorted out. when i get through to someone, after the obligatory delay, i already have my back up. after getting me to enter my relevant information, they ask me for that same information once again when i'm connected to a live human. i'm curt with the woman who i speak to; nay, i am rude. i feel sorry, because this is bad behaviour on my part and i regret it. of course it doesn't matter, because she can't help me. she's in the collections department and i need to talk to customer service in order to get this resolved. she transfers me and the man to whom i am connected asks e to repeat the information i've already given twice since i picked up the phone. while i'm in the process of doing so, he disconnects me.
this could be a case of "accidents happen", but i will note that this is the second time that i've been disconnected when i've called bell to complain. i will also say that, at this point, i was not angry and rude, so this wasn't the cause of me getting disconnected.
i call back and am routed once more to the credit department, who once more cannot help me. the gentleman who transfers me actually sends me back to the introductory menu, where, as a non-customer, i am routed once again to the credit department. they finally transfer me to customer service. so what i've just written about has all been the process of getting to someone who can listen to my complaint.
listen, in fact, is all she does. she asks me once again for my relevant information and then explains coolly and without any soupcon of remorse that it would be impossible for her to make any changes in the account because this is standard treatment for all bell's customers. my argument that they should feel some moral obligation to waive the charges because my reason for leaving was their own incompetence and subsequent intransigence falls, as i might have predicted, on deaf ears.
my second line of argument should be more compelling. i have never heard tell of this contract whose terms i am violating. if there was a contract, shouldn't i have been given a copy? i could have received a copy at any time, if i had only asked. let me repeat that: if i had asked for a copy of the contract, the existence of which was unknown to me until wednesday, they would have sent me one. the woman brushes off the deranged logic of this statement as standard operating procedure. she says that the person who set up my service should have told me that i had a contract, but if he didn't, that's not bell's problem- it's just one in a long series of employee mistakes.
her next response is even more puzzling. apparently, it was the responsibility of my new service provider to tell me about the existence of my contract with bell. huh? apparently bell was under no obligation to inform me of the contract when it went into effect, but my new provider, should have told me about it when i ended my bell service. that's ludicrous and i tell her so, but she sticks to her guns.
so that is the end game. i am to pay bell a hundred dollars to end a contract they never told me about and never forwarded, a contract that i ended because of their malfeasance. what's most galling about this whole situation, actually, is their flat refusal at every point in this sad saga to take any responsibility for any portion of the mistake. while they were eventually forced to remove the charges from the line they left open, no one has ever admitted that the company made a mistake. every time i have called, i have been given different information and told, with no sense of corporate remorse, that the person to whom i had previously spoken had not done their job properly. as far as i can tell, no one is doing their job properly. and bell considers this to be standard customer service.
yesterday, when i went to get my mail, i found a strange little envelope with the ubiquitous new bell logo. it obviously wasn't a bill, so i opened it. enclosed was a letter from steve bickley, senior vice-president of residential services. mr. bickley wanted me to know that i was important to bell and that, if i wanted to come back to them, they would let me do so without charging me for reconnection.
my advice to mr. bickley, not that he'll ever hear it, is that he could have saved the postage, as well as the tree killed to make the card, if he had concentrated on establishing customer service that was prepared to deal with a problem without trying to blame the customer, other employees, or the competition. the best way to win customers is to make sure you don't give them reason to leave in the first place.
the day before yesterday, i received a bill in the mail. this was not my "final bill", for services rendered, which has already been paid. this is a bill charging me for a disconnection fee ($25, which i think is asinine, but which i can probably come to terms with) and a fee for the early termination of my contract ($75).
that second charge had me scratching my head. early termination of contract? i certainly never signed a contract with bell and, even if i had, i would have looked at it carefully enough to determined that it included no provision that they leave my previous number active without telling me and then try to blame me (and charge me) for their mistake.
so, once again, since i obviously have far too much time on my hands, i call bell to get the matter sorted out. when i get through to someone, after the obligatory delay, i already have my back up. after getting me to enter my relevant information, they ask me for that same information once again when i'm connected to a live human. i'm curt with the woman who i speak to; nay, i am rude. i feel sorry, because this is bad behaviour on my part and i regret it. of course it doesn't matter, because she can't help me. she's in the collections department and i need to talk to customer service in order to get this resolved. she transfers me and the man to whom i am connected asks e to repeat the information i've already given twice since i picked up the phone. while i'm in the process of doing so, he disconnects me.
this could be a case of "accidents happen", but i will note that this is the second time that i've been disconnected when i've called bell to complain. i will also say that, at this point, i was not angry and rude, so this wasn't the cause of me getting disconnected.
i call back and am routed once more to the credit department, who once more cannot help me. the gentleman who transfers me actually sends me back to the introductory menu, where, as a non-customer, i am routed once again to the credit department. they finally transfer me to customer service. so what i've just written about has all been the process of getting to someone who can listen to my complaint.
listen, in fact, is all she does. she asks me once again for my relevant information and then explains coolly and without any soupcon of remorse that it would be impossible for her to make any changes in the account because this is standard treatment for all bell's customers. my argument that they should feel some moral obligation to waive the charges because my reason for leaving was their own incompetence and subsequent intransigence falls, as i might have predicted, on deaf ears.
my second line of argument should be more compelling. i have never heard tell of this contract whose terms i am violating. if there was a contract, shouldn't i have been given a copy? i could have received a copy at any time, if i had only asked. let me repeat that: if i had asked for a copy of the contract, the existence of which was unknown to me until wednesday, they would have sent me one. the woman brushes off the deranged logic of this statement as standard operating procedure. she says that the person who set up my service should have told me that i had a contract, but if he didn't, that's not bell's problem- it's just one in a long series of employee mistakes.
her next response is even more puzzling. apparently, it was the responsibility of my new service provider to tell me about the existence of my contract with bell. huh? apparently bell was under no obligation to inform me of the contract when it went into effect, but my new provider, should have told me about it when i ended my bell service. that's ludicrous and i tell her so, but she sticks to her guns.
so that is the end game. i am to pay bell a hundred dollars to end a contract they never told me about and never forwarded, a contract that i ended because of their malfeasance. what's most galling about this whole situation, actually, is their flat refusal at every point in this sad saga to take any responsibility for any portion of the mistake. while they were eventually forced to remove the charges from the line they left open, no one has ever admitted that the company made a mistake. every time i have called, i have been given different information and told, with no sense of corporate remorse, that the person to whom i had previously spoken had not done their job properly. as far as i can tell, no one is doing their job properly. and bell considers this to be standard customer service.
yesterday, when i went to get my mail, i found a strange little envelope with the ubiquitous new bell logo. it obviously wasn't a bill, so i opened it. enclosed was a letter from steve bickley, senior vice-president of residential services. mr. bickley wanted me to know that i was important to bell and that, if i wanted to come back to them, they would let me do so without charging me for reconnection.
my advice to mr. bickley, not that he'll ever hear it, is that he could have saved the postage, as well as the tree killed to make the card, if he had concentrated on establishing customer service that was prepared to deal with a problem without trying to blame the customer, other employees, or the competition. the best way to win customers is to make sure you don't give them reason to leave in the first place.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
goodbye and good riddance...
well, after a slight delay, i am officially severing my ties with bell canada. yesterday, i arranged to have my telephone services transferred to another provider- something that even a few years ago would not have been an option.
strangely, i remember that years ago, bell canada's customer service was not that bad. it seems that, perversely, they've gotten worse since the market has opened up. then again, maybe it's not so perverse. after all, the opening of the market to competition means that everyone is vying for the greatest number of dollars. so in order to get the largest infusion of money, companies like bell are going to give priority to their largest customers, the people who have the biggest effect on their balance sheets, whereas, when customers had no one else to go to, bell might have been able to afford a slightly more egalitarian structure. chances are that my nightmarish experience with bell is offset somewhere along the line by a huge corporate contract that went their way, because their competent people have been diverted to working on that sort of thing.
frankly, i don't care.
all i care about is that the phone works and that i'm getting bills that are accurate. since i have other services with my new provider, i'm confident that they can meet these requirements. the fact that their service is also far cheaper than bell's is really just a bonus.
so, after a lifetime of service from bell or its subsidiaries, i've moved on. my infuriating saga with them (see earlier blog posts tagged "bell canada") may live on as some training seminar for prospective customer service representatives. i just hope that, when they're playing back the phone calls and going through the good points and bad points, that they know to tell them how the story ends and why.
strangely, i remember that years ago, bell canada's customer service was not that bad. it seems that, perversely, they've gotten worse since the market has opened up. then again, maybe it's not so perverse. after all, the opening of the market to competition means that everyone is vying for the greatest number of dollars. so in order to get the largest infusion of money, companies like bell are going to give priority to their largest customers, the people who have the biggest effect on their balance sheets, whereas, when customers had no one else to go to, bell might have been able to afford a slightly more egalitarian structure. chances are that my nightmarish experience with bell is offset somewhere along the line by a huge corporate contract that went their way, because their competent people have been diverted to working on that sort of thing.
frankly, i don't care.
all i care about is that the phone works and that i'm getting bills that are accurate. since i have other services with my new provider, i'm confident that they can meet these requirements. the fact that their service is also far cheaper than bell's is really just a bonus.
so, after a lifetime of service from bell or its subsidiaries, i've moved on. my infuriating saga with them (see earlier blog posts tagged "bell canada") may live on as some training seminar for prospective customer service representatives. i just hope that, when they're playing back the phone calls and going through the good points and bad points, that they know to tell them how the story ends and why.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
for whom the bell canada tolls
as someone who has recently done battle with a telecommunications company and someone who pays taxes, i would hope that someone, somewhere in the bowels of government is using some of that tax money to ensure that i'm protected when it comes to the predatory nature of telecommunications providers.
however, in canada, it seems that we're on our own.
however, in canada, it seems that we're on our own.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
bellsh*t
i was smart enough to avoid ever getting internet service from bell, but, as you can see, those who decided to give their service a chance can look forward to a slow, grinding future on the internet, thanks to a new crtc ruling on the subject of "internet throttling".
this process basically allows bell to offer different access speeds to customers paying for the same service. more disturbingly, it gives bell, a privately held company with no responsibility to the public, the exclusive right to determine whose internet access will be slowed and when. despite the fact that the internet, as a part of the national communications infrastructure, is supposed to be administered in the public interest, control over whose access takes precedence is left in the hands of a company that already seems to hold its customers (see previous posts "bellderdash", "insult to injury", "the never-ending story" and "end game") beneath contempt, even when they are at fault.
sadly, this is something which is to be expected from the crtc, a perennially out-of-touch, slow-to-respond bureaucratic monolith and useless vacuum of taxpayer money. this is an organisation that has for decades cried out to be leveled and rebuilt from the ground up. let's see if any political parties are willing to rise to that challenge.
this process basically allows bell to offer different access speeds to customers paying for the same service. more disturbingly, it gives bell, a privately held company with no responsibility to the public, the exclusive right to determine whose internet access will be slowed and when. despite the fact that the internet, as a part of the national communications infrastructure, is supposed to be administered in the public interest, control over whose access takes precedence is left in the hands of a company that already seems to hold its customers (see previous posts "bellderdash", "insult to injury", "the never-ending story" and "end game") beneath contempt, even when they are at fault.
sadly, this is something which is to be expected from the crtc, a perennially out-of-touch, slow-to-respond bureaucratic monolith and useless vacuum of taxpayer money. this is an organisation that has for decades cried out to be leveled and rebuilt from the ground up. let's see if any political parties are willing to rise to that challenge.
Monday, November 17, 2008
end game
so they called again.
a brief call, this time, to let me know that, without me calling back, they had somehow known to apply the credit from my ontario account to my quebec account. somehow, despite the fact that no one at bell can apparently access information available to any department other than their own and couldn't tell that there was a pending issue on my account beforehand), they knew to do that for me. (i now owe them a grand total of $4.17.)
somewhere, deep in the subterranean labyrinth that is bell world headquarters, there is an alarm that starts ringing every time someone thinks of calling my number.
i win.
a brief call, this time, to let me know that, without me calling back, they had somehow known to apply the credit from my ontario account to my quebec account. somehow, despite the fact that no one at bell can apparently access information available to any department other than their own and couldn't tell that there was a pending issue on my account beforehand), they knew to do that for me. (i now owe them a grand total of $4.17.)
somewhere, deep in the subterranean labyrinth that is bell world headquarters, there is an alarm that starts ringing every time someone thinks of calling my number.
i win.
Friday, November 14, 2008
the never-ending story
ring ring
hello?
hello, may i speak to kathleen macdonald?
yes, this is she.
ms. macdonald, i am calling from bell canada regarding your past due account.
this is not the number you should be calling, my friend.
really?
look carefully at your screen. do you see a note on there that i am waiting on a credit from you, in order to clear the balance of my current account?
oh, yes, i see that you are supposed to be getting a credit, but it doesn't tell me when.
can you see what my billing cycle is?
oh, yes, it says you'll be getting your final bill on november 14th.
you mean today.
yes
so why are you calling me if you can see that there's an issue with the account that's pending and that i've already spent nearly four hours on the phone with you getting it resolved? i was told that i wouldn't be getting any more phone calls.
well it's an automatic dialer.
why hasn't my number been removed from the automatic dialer?
i guess the last person you talked to didn't do that.
the last person i talked to told me that the person before him was supposed to have done it.
i don't know why he didn't remove your name, ma'am.
[continue dialogue along these lines until a promise that my name is being removed at that very moment is extracted.]
congratulations adam from bell. (and i can only assume that you're prohibited from giving out last names because of the inevitable crank calls to your homes.) you are one more idiot in my rogue's gallery.
hello?
hello, may i speak to kathleen macdonald?
yes, this is she.
ms. macdonald, i am calling from bell canada regarding your past due account.
this is not the number you should be calling, my friend.
really?
look carefully at your screen. do you see a note on there that i am waiting on a credit from you, in order to clear the balance of my current account?
oh, yes, i see that you are supposed to be getting a credit, but it doesn't tell me when.
can you see what my billing cycle is?
oh, yes, it says you'll be getting your final bill on november 14th.
you mean today.
yes
so why are you calling me if you can see that there's an issue with the account that's pending and that i've already spent nearly four hours on the phone with you getting it resolved? i was told that i wouldn't be getting any more phone calls.
well it's an automatic dialer.
why hasn't my number been removed from the automatic dialer?
i guess the last person you talked to didn't do that.
the last person i talked to told me that the person before him was supposed to have done it.
i don't know why he didn't remove your name, ma'am.
[continue dialogue along these lines until a promise that my name is being removed at that very moment is extracted.]
congratulations adam from bell. (and i can only assume that you're prohibited from giving out last names because of the inevitable crank calls to your homes.) you are one more idiot in my rogue's gallery.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
insult to injury
so i'm at home, trying to get some writing done and the phone rings. although it's from the same phone bank as my previous calls from the bell canada billing office, i answer, preparing, teeth gritted, to explain to yet another uninformed moron that there is an issue with my account that they need to resolve and that they will receive their money (which, in point of fact, they have already received, but which has been credited to the wrong account) in due course.
the result? despite the fact that i stayed on the line for some time, repeating "hello? hello?"there was no response.
that's right. faced with the reality that they have made a mistake and that their own bureaucracy has slowed down the process of correcting it, compounded by the fact that their organisation is completely incapable of transmitting information from one branch to another, bell canada has started crank calling me.
the result? despite the fact that i stayed on the line for some time, repeating "hello? hello?"there was no response.
that's right. faced with the reality that they have made a mistake and that their own bureaucracy has slowed down the process of correcting it, compounded by the fact that their organisation is completely incapable of transmitting information from one branch to another, bell canada has started crank calling me.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
bellderdash
no one really likes dealing with utility companies. i don't know why, but they're always organised in such a way as t to make communication infuriating and to make any deviation from normal needs exponentially harder than it has to be. but even among utility companies, there are some that really do seem to take customer service to a new low.
to that end i present: katred vs. bell telephone
to start with, i moved from toronto, ontario to montreal, quebec on 1 july 2008. shortly before that time (the 19 june to be exact) i called bell, my phone company, to have my toronto number disconnected and my montreal number set up.
it actually took them the better part of a month and three technicians to get my phone line set up at all. but that's not what this story is about.
i made payments on my bell bill, from july on, although this was complicated by the fact that i wasn't receiving my bills. i generally paid when i got phone calls at home reminding me that i hadn't, since i knew that i was supposed to be receiving bills and had a rough idea what they should be. it did seem like i was getting calls more frequently than i should, but it took me three long, painful attempts to get my address corrected in the system.
on october 24th, i finally got a paper bill. for my toronto number, showing that a) it had never been disconnected and b) all my payments had been going towards that number, rather than towards my montreal number.
so i called. and was told by customer service (after a 20 minute wait) that they couldn't help me and that they needed to transfer me to disconnections. disconnections was able to shut down the toronto line, supposedly, but they couldn't help me with getting the balance i'd paid retroactively applied to my montreal bill. that had to be done by billing in quebec. so i waited on line for another 15 minutes (i should add that the disconnection process took almost and hour), only to be told that the person in disconnectoins hadn't done his job, and that he should have been the one to deal with the credit. so, after blowing my top at the billing guy, i'm transfered back to disconnections. and told that they can't help, but that they can get someone from the credit department on the line to deal with the problem.
once on the line, the woman from the credit department tells me that it's not their fault that the toronto line wasn't disconnected, because there's no record that i ever asked for it to be disconnected. that, she informs me, is why they tell people to make sure that they get the name and employee number of whoever they are speaking with, so that these transactions can be followed. i'm quick to tell her that no one has ever apprised me of that until now and that i want to speak to a supervisor. she resists, telling me that the supervisor won't saying anything different, but i stick to my proverbial guns (and oh, how i wished they were real guns) and finally she acquiesces to transfer me. after waiting on hold another 5 minutes, she comes back on the line to inform me, shrilly, that a supervisor will speak to me now. and then, accidentally, we'll say, i'm disconnected.
barely able to contain myself, i call back and am connected to someone brand new. the first words out of my mouth in response to the question of how they can help me is to say 'i'm going to try to remain calm'. but this is different. this woman, in twenty minutes, is able to do everything that five people in four departments were unable to accomplish in almost two hours. in that twenty minutes, i'm able to determine that the disconnection that had been done half an hour earlier- for which i had a confirmation number- didn't take. so this woman did it again, making sure that it was retroactive to 30 june. plus, she was able to determine that, contrary to what the credit department woman had told me 15 minutes earlier, there was a record of my request to have the line in toronto disconnected (and, in fact, that her supervisor would have been able to see this). she was able to put a note on the account, informing the billing department to stop calling until the closure of the toronto line is complete (when the final bill is sent) and tells me what to do in order to get the balance transfered. TAA-DAA!!
so in the last couple of days, i was bewildered by the fact that i started getting calls from the bell billing department. i called today and... well, i ended up speaking to three different people, one of whom had the audacity to try to convince me that i should just hand over the money owing up front (without waiting for the credit from my toronto line to show up). i explained, very carefully, what the competent woman had told me and every time this person tried to contradict me, i responded with 'could you please check that again'. and every time i turned out to be right (including the part about there being a note on my account saying not to call until after the 7 december).
the fact that i got connected that second time to what i can only assume is one of six competent employees in a company with a staff of thousands is purely luck. without her, there is every possiblity that i would never have had the problem resolved. but in a way, her ability to deal with the issue makes the surrounding circumstances even more infuriating. after all, she proves that an admittedly complicated situation can be dealt with by one individual in less than half an hour. what's wrong with the rest of the company? (caveat: i know that she personally wasn't dealing with all the issues- she was putting me on hold to contact different departments- but it was more of a comfort to me that i only had to speak to one individual, rather than the first call, where i had to explain the problem from scratch to a succession of indivudals.)
the ultimate irony is that, had i set up my phone line with a competitor, i would have become aware of the problem much sooner- because i would have known that getting calls from their billing department was indication of a mistake.
one of my former bosses, not a genius by any means, but a successful businessman, once made the point that a customer evaluates a company not primarily on the basis of the quality of the products or service they provide, but on how you handle problems when they arise. sage advice.
more here and here and here and here and here...
to that end i present: katred vs. bell telephone
to start with, i moved from toronto, ontario to montreal, quebec on 1 july 2008. shortly before that time (the 19 june to be exact) i called bell, my phone company, to have my toronto number disconnected and my montreal number set up.
it actually took them the better part of a month and three technicians to get my phone line set up at all. but that's not what this story is about.
i made payments on my bell bill, from july on, although this was complicated by the fact that i wasn't receiving my bills. i generally paid when i got phone calls at home reminding me that i hadn't, since i knew that i was supposed to be receiving bills and had a rough idea what they should be. it did seem like i was getting calls more frequently than i should, but it took me three long, painful attempts to get my address corrected in the system.
on october 24th, i finally got a paper bill. for my toronto number, showing that a) it had never been disconnected and b) all my payments had been going towards that number, rather than towards my montreal number.
so i called. and was told by customer service (after a 20 minute wait) that they couldn't help me and that they needed to transfer me to disconnections. disconnections was able to shut down the toronto line, supposedly, but they couldn't help me with getting the balance i'd paid retroactively applied to my montreal bill. that had to be done by billing in quebec. so i waited on line for another 15 minutes (i should add that the disconnection process took almost and hour), only to be told that the person in disconnectoins hadn't done his job, and that he should have been the one to deal with the credit. so, after blowing my top at the billing guy, i'm transfered back to disconnections. and told that they can't help, but that they can get someone from the credit department on the line to deal with the problem.
once on the line, the woman from the credit department tells me that it's not their fault that the toronto line wasn't disconnected, because there's no record that i ever asked for it to be disconnected. that, she informs me, is why they tell people to make sure that they get the name and employee number of whoever they are speaking with, so that these transactions can be followed. i'm quick to tell her that no one has ever apprised me of that until now and that i want to speak to a supervisor. she resists, telling me that the supervisor won't saying anything different, but i stick to my proverbial guns (and oh, how i wished they were real guns) and finally she acquiesces to transfer me. after waiting on hold another 5 minutes, she comes back on the line to inform me, shrilly, that a supervisor will speak to me now. and then, accidentally, we'll say, i'm disconnected.
barely able to contain myself, i call back and am connected to someone brand new. the first words out of my mouth in response to the question of how they can help me is to say 'i'm going to try to remain calm'. but this is different. this woman, in twenty minutes, is able to do everything that five people in four departments were unable to accomplish in almost two hours. in that twenty minutes, i'm able to determine that the disconnection that had been done half an hour earlier- for which i had a confirmation number- didn't take. so this woman did it again, making sure that it was retroactive to 30 june. plus, she was able to determine that, contrary to what the credit department woman had told me 15 minutes earlier, there was a record of my request to have the line in toronto disconnected (and, in fact, that her supervisor would have been able to see this). she was able to put a note on the account, informing the billing department to stop calling until the closure of the toronto line is complete (when the final bill is sent) and tells me what to do in order to get the balance transfered. TAA-DAA!!
so in the last couple of days, i was bewildered by the fact that i started getting calls from the bell billing department. i called today and... well, i ended up speaking to three different people, one of whom had the audacity to try to convince me that i should just hand over the money owing up front (without waiting for the credit from my toronto line to show up). i explained, very carefully, what the competent woman had told me and every time this person tried to contradict me, i responded with 'could you please check that again'. and every time i turned out to be right (including the part about there being a note on my account saying not to call until after the 7 december).
the fact that i got connected that second time to what i can only assume is one of six competent employees in a company with a staff of thousands is purely luck. without her, there is every possiblity that i would never have had the problem resolved. but in a way, her ability to deal with the issue makes the surrounding circumstances even more infuriating. after all, she proves that an admittedly complicated situation can be dealt with by one individual in less than half an hour. what's wrong with the rest of the company? (caveat: i know that she personally wasn't dealing with all the issues- she was putting me on hold to contact different departments- but it was more of a comfort to me that i only had to speak to one individual, rather than the first call, where i had to explain the problem from scratch to a succession of indivudals.)
the ultimate irony is that, had i set up my phone line with a competitor, i would have become aware of the problem much sooner- because i would have known that getting calls from their billing department was indication of a mistake.
one of my former bosses, not a genius by any means, but a successful businessman, once made the point that a customer evaluates a company not primarily on the basis of the quality of the products or service they provide, but on how you handle problems when they arise. sage advice.
more here and here and here and here and here...