The lovely folks at Bell Canada...(update)

[phorbesie]

yes i got 250 aeroplan miles for it.

i didn't have to take the survey, it was optional.

ps. i haven't had any major issues with my phone service. but i know lots of people who have so i included that info. i use magma (now primus) for internet which is stellar, although more expensive.

Edited April 25, 2007 by Guest

[bouche]

Vonage ROCKS! There are so many killer features to it (call bursting, emailing voicemail as mp3s, keep your number, no long distance within North America AND Western Europe!!!)

If anyone wants to try it, pm me, and I can send you an invite (i did this with SolarGarlic last summer). Not that you need one, but it helps cut the phone bill that much more .

Hey! I posted Vonage first! I get the referrals! GRRR!

[Kanada Kev]

LOL ... at least Vonage is good about crediting you if you do get a referral. I think i'm going to go back to the $19.99 a month plan. I'm just not using enough long distance every month to warrant th $39.99 plan.

[PassedOutGuy]

start callin me in Alaska Kev, we could ring up the savings in no time

[headymamamyrna]

I have never had a problem with bell.

I have every feature on my phone with them and they always list what I have on my bill.

Maybe I am just too good of a customer and pay my bill the day it comes in.

I had to call a few times about issues and I got great service right away.

I wouldn't change even if I could get the same features for half the cost which I can with Cogeco.

Then again I hate change!!!

[larry_llama]

What's call bursting?

Does anyone here have experience with primus? I'm thinking of changing over to their flat rate $70 plan for unlimited phone/internet

[Kanada Kev]

start callin me in Alaska Kev, we could ring up the savings in no time

Bob, pm me yer number!

[rubberdinghy]

What's call bursting?

Does anyone here have experience with primus? I'm thinking of changing over to their flat rate $70 plan for unlimited phone/internet

I'm with Primus and love thier service...my interweb is always super fast!

[phishtaper]

phones are for losers ... telepathy is where its at, man!

[Hal Johnson]

I finally got it all sorted out. Thanks everbody for yer support.

All it took, and Im an idiot for not thinking of this sooner, was a call to the cancellations department - or as they like to call it, the loyalty department. They apologized profusely, met me half way on the bill and even gave me some credit for my problems. I still hate the bastards and am going to quite them as soon as I finish up paying of the stupid bill, but remember folks, threatening to quit seems to be the only way to get anything done.

Edited April 26, 2007 by Guest

[popo weenie]

Fuck Bell. I hate them.

I suggest you cut all services, then if they have credit card payment info on you, simply tell you credit card company you lost your card. They will issue you a new one and Bell will have no access to the number.

As for your credit being hurt. It is not as easy to do as Bell makes it out.

feel bad for you but if you ask for past statements etc tehy charge you and if it is over a year they tell you it,s in a box somewhere, had that same shit with NB Power, and aliant all full of shit

Simply tell bell you want an itemized statement of all charges and fees and that you are going to take it to your lawyer to review as you feel the charges and treatment is unjust.

this will buy you months and they cannot deny your request to see your charges...

make those bitches work for it.....

[FairySari]

I recently cancelled all my Bell services - phone, TV, and internet. It is actually part of their procedure to make you an "offer" to stay when you call to cancel. They offered to match whatever price I was getting from another provider.

The worst part is that even though your services are all bundled together and you get one bill, you still have to call each department that you want to cancel. You can't just tell one person to cancel evrything. And they don't seem to be capable of transferring you to the right person - I kept getting hung up on and transferred back and forth between the same departments.

Apparently, according to the Cogeco installers, you shouldn't cancel with Bell before switching if you want to keep your number, though, or they will give you problems.

[AD]

numbers are now portable in canada though.. this happened in the last month i am 100% sure.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I recently cancelled all my Bell services - phone, TV, and internet. It is actually part of their procedure to make you an "offer" to stay when you call to cancel. They offered to match whatever price I was getting from another provider.

The worst part is that even though your services are all bundled together and you get one bill, you still have to call each department that you want to cancel. You can't just tell one person to cancel evrything. And they don't seem to be capable of transferring you to the right person - I kept getting hung up on and transferred back and forth between the same departments.

Apparently, according to the Cogeco installers, you shouldn't cancel with Bell before switching if you want to keep your number, though, or they will give you problems.

So did each department offer you a deal then? I'd love to reduce my bill a bit a few months before I finally cut them loose...

[guigsy]

The worst part is that even though your services are all bundled together and you get one bill, you still have to call each department that you want to cancel. You can't just tell one person to cancel evrything. And they don't seem to be capable of transferring you to the right person - I kept getting hung up on and transferred back and forth between the same departments.

Apparently, according to the Cogeco installers, you shouldn't cancel with Bell before switching if you want to keep your number, though, or they will give you problems.

almost exactly what i went through.

i went through a period where i switched to primus, and they were even worse - i STILL get bills from them.

there was even a period of a few days where neither bell, primus, or anyone, knew who owned my phone number - apparently it was bought from primus by some other company - luckily i was in the middle of all this shit before anyone else could activate it and it took a lot of demanding of names and numbers and higher-ups to get anything sorted out.

i got to point where i was just so defeated and tired of being on the phone that i gave up and hoped nothing else would go wrong so i wouldnt have to call them and start this shit all over again. so far so good.

what a terrible company where customers fear having to call them for "service" because of the chance of more fuckery. they ALWAYS fuck it up somehow, and then it's your issue to sort it out and deal with 3 weeks of headaches and stress.

fuck 'em right in the eye.

[PalacePrincess]

you know what sari, all the problems you had cancelling (as far as getting hung up on or having to hold forever) were possibly intentional. apparently the customer service people at bell have some incentive program thing in place, and they get a penalty or something every time someone calls to cancel, if the rep can't talk them out of it. so what they do to avoid losing points or whatever is purposely hang up on people or keep them on hold & never go back to them, etc.

a tip someone gave me a long time ago in regard to dealing with bell, is if you have a problem and aren't satisfied with the solution the bell person offers you, just hang up and call back and talk to someone else. you should eventually find a rep that will offer you something better.

of course, i don't even know that the amount of time spent doing that would be worth it these days, they have really hired a LOT of incredibly stuipd people and none of have the same answer to even the easiest questions. bell has really gotten terrible over the last few years. i'm starting to get a stress headache even THINKING about the shit we went through with them when we moved our office (no internet for a week, effed up phone lines, people waiting here until 7pm for service techs to not show up at all, it was just horrible).

i hate bell. i especialy hate how inconsistent they are. different prices for different neighbourhoods, different deals "secretly" offered to different people. the fact they change things all the time and either don't announce that they are or are very sneaky about the way they do so. hell, the fact that every person you talk to there tells you something COMPLETELY different for the same question is frustrating. and on top of that, if you complain enough or if you happen to be speaking to the right rep, you can just about ANY charge taken off, easy as pie.

and if you do manage to cancel, they will keep contacting you, offering you "welcome back!" packages that are like 1/2 price for a year or something.

ugh, and even with the very limited amount i've had to deal with them, i hate rogers just as much and possibly even more.

what are we to do? how can companies get away with this shit???

[bradm]

what are we to do? how can companies get away with this shit???

They get away with it largely because most consumers won't complain to an appropriate agency, such as the CRTC. If there's enough hue and cry, the government will do something; you've seen this recently in the USA, where there have been proposals for a "bill of rights" for airline passengers*.

Aloha,

Brad

* Some of the bills are ill-conceived and could easily make things worse, but at least they've been proposed.

[bradm]

As a follow-up to what we can do to make companies service customers better, check out what happened to Telus:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/services/telus/

Aloha,

Brad

[badams]

you know what sari, all the problems you had cancelling (as far as getting hung up on or having to hold forever) were possibly intentional. apparently the customer service people at bell have some incentive program thing in place, and they get a penalty or something every time someone calls to cancel, if the rep can't talk them out of it. so what they do to avoid losing points or whatever is purposely hang up on people or keep them on hold & never go back to them, etc.

I hate admitting it but I actually helped create that queue a few years back. In 2001 I believe. It was called Save The Sale. We trained 30 special reps to basically convince the customer to keep the product or at the very least replace it with a cheaper product. At the time when a customer wanted to remove something the rep would say they were being transfered to another department to have it removed. In reality any rep could remove it. They just wanted to try and save it.

[badams]

what are we to do? how can companies get away with this shit???

They get away with it largely because most consumers won't complain to an appropriate agency' date=' such as the CRTC. If there's enough hue and cry, the government will do something; you've seen this recently in the USA, where there have been proposals for a "bill of rights" for airline passengers*.

Aloha,

Brad

* Some of the bills are ill-conceived and could easily make things worse, but at least they've been proposed.[/quote']

I worked at Bell for many years and I would never argue that they sometimes... ok a lot of the time drop the ball. However they have MANY more happy customers than sad or mad.

[bouche]

Exposé! I love it!