astradele

As it turned out, Fido reacted promptly to my vitriol-filled letters of complaint.  Just kidding, they weren’t hostile, the letters were actually quite polite and concise; the relevant blog post was more impassioned (though I included copies of that post with my letters).

I would wager that neither Rogers’ CEO nor SVP actually read the letters directed to them, but someone from head office did and promptly contacted me by email. asking for an opportunity to “make things right”.

The email conversations, in very short and exaggerated form,  went something like this:

• Please call me, we want to kiss and make up.
• I’m sick of calling you people; I’ll call you when something good is on the table.  How about the iPhone you promised me 6 weeks ago – for free, to make up for wasting my time and shortening my lifespan through stress?
• Sorry, Apple says we can’t do that.  How about a discount of $10/month for your 3 year contract?
• How about I go with Telus instead?

Yes, in theory they were offering me $360 in “value”.  However, “time value of money” and all that; I firmly believe that $10 in 2012 is not worth $10 in 2009.  Besides, I suffered in 2009, I want my recompense to be fully paid out in 2009, too!  Not to mention that the Rogers/Fido data plan is more expensive than most anyway…

I have no bad experience with either Telus or Bell (the only other two major cell phone players in Canada), nor their respective subsidiaries, Koodo and Virgin.  Compared to the nightmares of Rogers’ customer service for cable and internet, Bell was actually very polished for the couple times I used their DSL internet.  But my fondest memories go to Clearnet, the spectacularly customer-oriented cellphone service provider that was gobbled up by Telus, but still manifests to this day in Telus’ animals and slogan, “The future is friendly”.

So I went with Telus (Koodo has no data plan nor smartphones), and I have to applaud the new subscription process.  Completely automated, totally transparent, no conversation with a customer rep required: the owner can do everything over the Internet.  My steps were basically:

• Open box of new Blackberry 8330.
• Visit Telus’ website, punch in ESN code on the side of box.
• Fill in all the relevant personal information.
• Pick a phone number.
• Pick a plan.
• Watch my cellphone start chatting with the Telus HQ computer as it is remotely activated.

The steps might be too technical for impatient people that just wants it to work right away, or can’t be bothered to follow instructions, but Telus has clearly given serious consideration to the new customer experience.  Compared to my Fido experience of asking the customer rep repeatedly for various phone number combinations, Telus empowers the customer to choose:

Clearly, Telus undertands the importance of having a good phone number.  Equally clear, Telus understands how important numerology is to the Asian segment of their customer base.  BTW, the drop down menu filled with asterisks actually has about ten area+prefix combinations one can choose from, if auto-assignment is not desirable.

As for transparency, well, if one wants to build the perfect plan for oneself, why not just list all the possible choices with prices:

I guess it’s true what I heard from a Telus manager: when Clearnet got absorbed, the Clearnet management went on to seriously dominate Telus management.  It shows and I’m grateful for it.  I’m not against talking to customer reps (VISA‘s are wonderful), but I want the route that gets me results faster with minimal frustration, and communicating with Rogers/Fido customer service a dozen times is obviously not the way.

Telus, it looks like we will indeed have a friendly future together.  ^_^

This tirade is about cell phone companies, a very common story around the world. This particular tirade is particularly about Fido, a Canadian cell phone company that features cute dog mascots and a company that I previously had some fondness for (via marketing and hearsay).

Here’s the rough breakdown:

• Day 1, Week 1: order an iPhone over the telephone, get a UPS tracking number in email a couple days later.  What convenience to avoid queuing at a store, I think!  What irony.
• Week 2: UPS tracking number shows the package hasn’t moved in a week.
  • Call Fido about this.  Fido insists this is normal, and it can take up to two weeks (or was it four weeks?) for a phone to arrive.  Fido’s explanation doesn’t make sense, since the UPS tracking shows a package was received for shipment.
  • Call UPS.  UPS says I should have received it two days after the package was received by UPS.  However, my rep can’t do anything, I need to call Fido, as the sender needs to request a “trace”, whatever that is.
  • Call Fido.  Fido says that since UPS lost the package, UPS needs to find it.  They don’t know anything about how to ask for a “trace”.
  • Call UPS.  UPS insists there’s a “special department” in Fido that they deal exclusively with to resolve lost packages.  Rep doesn’t know the phone number for this “special department”.  Rep tells me there’s some special number the sender gets (I forget the name of it), and that I need to ask for that if Fido won’t “issue a trace”, but Fido really should be able to do that.
  • Call Fido.  Get the same response that “it can take up to 2/4 weeks for an iPhone to be delivered”.  Tell them what UPS said.  Insist that Fido do something about it, as they’re responsible for their choice of delivery service as well  Finally get an investigation case # with Fido to look into this, but they caution me it can take up to two weeks to find anything out, and that I really should talk to UPS.
• Week 3/4: vacation without a cell phone.  Not as inconvenient as I feared, but annoying.  Thank Kazaa for Skype.
• Week 5: call Fido.  They know nothing about what’s going on with the “investigation”.  A rep by the name of “Chris” eventually says they’ll send me another phone.  I tell them my business address to ship it to, so there’s someone to receive it while I’m out next week.
• Week 6: business trip.  Maybe one day we can all just use Skype?
• Week 7: no phone received.  Call Fido.  Get informed they can’t send me a second phone while they haven’t figured out what happened to the first one.  I have to wait until the dispute with UPS is involved.  Check back next week.
• Today: received invoice for the last two months of cell phone “service”.
  • Call Fido.  Inform them of the situation, and that I want the charges canceled.  Wait ten minutes on the line while a supervisor is consulted.
  • Rep returns to offer me a $50 credit.  I actually raise my voice for the first time in this whole ordeal, to tell them it’s totally unacceptable, I don’t even have a phone!
  • Put on hold for twenty minutes. Rep comes back, “just waiting for a supervisor…”  I start explaining why I think this is ridiculous that I have to negotiate for such an obviously insane situation… <click>  I was hung up on!

I think this is the first time in my long life as a prolific consumer I’ve ever reversed a credit card charge, but this was just too much.  Called VISA, explained the situation, *much* more pleasant experience than waiting in the calling queue (repeatedly!) for Fido.  Told me the charge reversal would take up to 4-6 weeks, but might be sooner if Fido can’t prove I received the phone (or service).

Going to write a lot of emails and letters to Fido, now.  I’m usually patient in queues of all sorts, and I understand the difficulty of managing a large customer facing service company, but I really don’t like the feeling of being incensed and this situation has clearly progressed to the realm of ludicrous and beyond!

Oh, and they got my requested display name wrong for Caller ID.

When-oh-when will we finally be able to do away with these private oligopolies on our vital communication infrastructure?  Urghh!!!