astradele

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!!!