Keep complaining to telecom providers
Many companies ignore customer issues until the media is asked to step in and help
Large telecom providers do a lousy job of resolving complaints. Customers constantly ask me for help to reach higher-level employees with the authority to make decisions.
Take the case of Marty Tyre, a retired Bell Canada manager who struck out when trying to remedy his wife Donna’s mistake.
“Quite unwittingly, accidentally and without my knowledge, she ordered an NBA Sports package from Bell Fibe, using the TV remote control. This occurred on U.S. election night, Nov. 6, around 9:30 p.m.,” he said.
He found an email confirmation of the order early the next day and called to cancel. A Bell rep said the service had not been billed and would be cancelled.
But on Nov. 8, Bell’s executive office wrote to say that even though his order was cancelled, he was still on the hook for four payments of $37.49 — just shy of $170, after taxes.
“I know this is a small amount for some people, but as a Bell pensioner with a fixed income, I find it an unfair cash grab for an honest error and a service I will never use,” he said. “Having made several attempts by email and phone to have this reversed, I became more disillusioned with Bell and their terms of service, which were quoted to me as justification for these charges.”
How many times did he try to resolve the mistake? He listed seven frustrating efforts, without a call back.
According to the terms of service, which can be found online in a 16-page document, premium sports is subject to specific billing and cancellation rules.
“If you cancel after the applicable pre-season cancellation deadline, you must pay the full amount (or any remaining installments) for the season. No credit or refund will be provided after the pre-season cancellation deadline,” the terms state.
That makes sense, I guess, for customers who love sports and knowingly subscribe to programming that goes on for many months.
But Tyre was cancelling a premium sports service he didn’t want within 24 hours of his wife pushing the wrong button.
Shouldn’t Bell have a short grace period for mistakes?
Other companies, such as Air Canada, give you up to 24 hours to correct an error in an online booking without having to pay a penalty.
“Having been a front-line manager, we were always available for escalations,” Tyre said about his career with Bell. “But in this day and age, some of these people are working in their den or basement and the nearest manager is in an office somewhere in the suburbs.
“Most of the customer service reps are very professional, but being given no authority for writeoffs is rather limiting. If one rep takes the initiative to save a customer, without a manager’s blessing, it could be disastrous.”
As I said, big telecom providers aren’t good at resolving complaints. Many customers simply give up.
But the companies do fix problems quickly, often at lightning speed, once a customer asks the media for help. When Tyre wrote to me at 3 p.m., I forwarded his email to Bell media contact Nathan Gibson. Within 15 minutes, Gibson told me, “I am on it.”
A few hours later that day, Tyre got a call from Bell’s executive office.
“The representative was very understanding, showed a personal concern for my situation and apologetically confirmed there would be no charges applied to my account,” he said, adding that a donation to the Star’s Santa Claus Fund was on its way.
Gibson explained that the special rules for the “no inseason cancellations,” found in the terms of service, is to deter people from ordering a premium sports package just to watch a single game and then cancelling to avoid paying for the subscription.
“While our representative was following the proper procedure, we do recognize that customers can make a pur- chase in error,” he added.
In another case I helped resolve, Telus was billing a Toronto company for a move of its phone lines that was never completed.
“They are charging us $726, plus HST, for this service they never delivered,” said RJ Juneau, of Maxxian. “They promised a credit (we have email confirmation), yet they are now sending us overdue account letters and giving flimsy excuses about the credit not being applied.”
Telus spokesperson Jill Yetman set things in motion, resulting in a refund a few weeks later.
“Your intervention finally got us through to someone who had the power to get everything corrected,” said Juneau, chief technology officer at Maxxian, which taps into telecom networks to find cable boxes and modems not paid for or set up properly.
His company donated the $726 refund for the botched line move to the Santa Claus fund — a generous gesture, indeed.
My view: Canada’s big telecoms lead with innovation, but skimp on customer service. Even people with an inside edge often can’t correct their billing problems, as these stories show.
Let’s hope the CRTC, which held public hearings on aggressive sales practices in October, takes action to protect some customers from being ignored and exploited.