Bell made my life miserable
(Letter written to Bell Canada December 5, 2006, but never sent – as I did not find any address to send it to)
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this letter to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the Bell services that I received. I am a long-time customer of Bell Canada and had the following services: Bell Home Telephone, Bell ExpressVu Satellite, two Bell Mobility cell phones on a family plan as well as Sympatico High Speed internet.
I have had many minor problems in the past with my billing which used to be easily resolved by a phone call directly to the service provider in question. However, when advertisements came out for the One Bill service (having all bills joined together on one bill), I took advantage of the program with convenience in mind, but it has been a disaster ever since.
Since I have registered for the One Bill in the summer of 2006, I noticed that many overcharges were occurring on my bills. The result would be ridiculously high monthly totals in the range of about $400.00 to $600.00. One incident was when I had my satellite installed. At the time the system was installed, I was told that I was renting the three receivers and that a promotion would lead them to being free for one year. However, once I received my bill, I had been charged $99 per receiver among other things which resulted in a satellite bill in excess of $400.00. The problem was not easily solved. When I called to notify Bell ExpressVu, they did not believe that I had only rented the receivers, and told me that I had purchased them. It took over two working days of arguing with them for me to finally resolve this issue. I had to fax them the contract that I had signed that clearly indicated that I had in fact rented the receivers, and then it took over a month for the charges to be removed from my account.
Then there are the never ending problems with my cell phone bills – Bell Mobility. In September 2006, my husband and I decided it was time to get new cell phones for our family plan and switch to a plan at a lower cost. Because I had been a customer for over 3 years, I was offered a plan for $50/month which included 100 free daytime minutes, free calling to each other, free incoming calls, free voicemail, caller id and call waiting. I was pleased with this offer, took it and signed the three-year contract. Then I received my first bill which totaled over $400. There was a $299 cancellation fee for my husband’s phone that we did not cancel (it was working) plus the phone charges which were in excess of $180 (which was double what we were paying on the old plan). When I called to have this $299 cancellation charge removed, it took almost 4 hours of trying to get in touch with someone who knew what was going on. Finally, with much arguing and being transferred and hung up on, someone credited our account for the $299 cancellation fee.
Two months later (November 2006), I realized that I was still being charged ridiculous amounts for my cell phones. The bills for the last three months since September – the time that we had switched to a lower cost monthly plan were consistently over $180 per month. Finally, I called again to have this issue resolved, again with much arguing and being put on hold and transferred to different departments, until finally speaking to someone who figured out that the person who had switched our monthly plan at the Bell World store had not made the changes on my husband’s phone and that we were being charged for every single minute on his account. This person informed me that he would make all necessary credits and get back to me (which never happened).
Now, as a result of all this hassle and arguing around different departments for overcharges, my One Bill account has been spiraling out of control. Since September, I have had extremely high monthly bills that I simply could not afford. The One Bill has consistently been well over $350.00 and up to $600 per month. If I could not pay within the bill date, the next bill would appear as double this amount – over $1200 (plus I was not willing to pay the overcharges and supposedly get credited the month) because I do not trust anyone at Bell to be careful enough to give me my hard earned money back, so everything has gone out of control.
Because of the fact that everything was on One Bill, and the fact that as of November my One Bill now totaled over $1200, they decided to cancel ALL of my services, including my telephone and my internet. This opened a new problem . I work as a contractor from home and need access to the internet in order to do my job so my internet is very important to me. When my internet service was disconnected, I noticed that all offices were closed and that I could get in touch with absolutely no one to assist me. I made a $380 payment to One Bill and requested that they send it to Sympatico so that they could reconnect my service as soon as possible. I was unable to work for a few days because of this. I spent entire days at work calling and being put on hold for over 45 minutes to end up speaking to people who did not care less about my problem and who lied to me telling me that my service would be reconnected by midnight. I was lied to by at least 6 or 7 different individuals who barely spoke any English.
I spent more than two hours in a boardroom at my day job in order to have privacy at work trying to resolve this issue. The first time I called, it took about 20 minutes to get connected to a person who told me that they would not reconnect my service until the full $1200 was paid (which is ridiculous because my internet service totals were not over $240). When I asked to speak to a manager, I was put on hold and hung up on. The second time I called at around 10:00 AM, I waited at least 30 minutes to be told that the amount was transferred to Sympatico and that my internet services should be connected within the next 24 hours. I told them that I absolutely had to have it connected by at least midnight since I work from home at 5:00 AM, I was lied to and assured that everything was done and it should work. I had doubts that anything was done so I called back in the afternoon and finally spoke to someone who spoke proper English. He told me that the account still did not show as being paid!!! He put my Sympatico account balance to zero and told me that my service should be reconnected sometime in the evening around 5:00 PM. I was thankful to him and told him that I appreciated his help and we ended our call.
I got home in the evening and tested my internet and it did not work. I called Sympatico only to find out that the customer service office closed at 5:30. I could not even get access to technical support since the machine would only tell me that “customer service is now closed”. I found another Sympatico number in my phonebook 310-4411, there I was able to reach some kind of support, but found it rather strange that each person I spoke to there was from India. I have nothing against people from India, but wonder if Bell Canada has now outsourced its services to India in order to save on labour? Anyhow, I was repeatedly told that the account has not been activated and sometimes I was given the ‘it will take 24 hours to restore your connection’ or ‘your internet service should be reconnected by midnight’. So of course, I was under the stress of potentially losing my job over this, so I stayed up until midnight to try my internet. It did not work and I kept trying till 1:00AM without any success. I was up at 5:00 AM to try it again, nothing worked.
Tuesday Morning, I telephoned Bell Sympatico and explained my situation, I was told to hold while they transferred me to the credit department. At the credit department, I was told that they would not reconnect my service until full payment for the OneBill was received!!! Therefore I was lied to all day Monday, by numerous individuals. My balance at Sympatico was supposed to be zero and everything was supposed to be fine but in was in fact not.
I am extremely insulted by everything that has happened to me with Bell. I have been unable to work, I have been lied to and insulted and cannot understand why at least my internet should not be connected if I paid it in full.
I am extremely fed up with the service at Bell Canada and have decided to cancel all of my services. I feel as though Bell Canada has beaten and tortured me as well as request payment for this treatment. In order to keep my sanity, I must avoid as much as possible Bell Canada.
My point in all this is the fact that Bell Canada really has no intention of actually serving its customers. Bell Canada is a huge corporation that has monopoly over the telecommunication market and takes advantage of this to charge ridiculous amounts to their customers knowing full well that there are no other options for consumers and therefore provide extremely poor customer service.
Therefore, from now on, as much as possible, I will avoid Bell products and will encourage others to do the same.
If anyone knows how to go about a class-action lawsuit or file a petition for the lousy service - please count me in!!!
