The answer to that would be a great, big, fat NO. NO we are NOT.
We’ve joined thousands of people in being treated horribly by Bell Canada to the point where we are trying to CANCEL our internet service with them and they’ve CANCELLED our CANCELLATION. And somehow, we are not allowed to cancel our own service again, because the Bell Executive Office has forbidden this.
Oh, I’m not joking.
We’ve experienced such horrible service by Bell which included being hung up on repeatedly while trying to enforce them to charge us the correct amount of money. Then we’d decided we’d had it so we cancelled our telephone landline service, which they attempted to prevent by insisting we’ve agreed to a 12-month contract last September. NOT TO OUR KNOWLEDGE.
Finally they agreed to waive the cancellation charge of their bogus contract, $75, and our phone line was cancelled that night. BUT THEY TOOK OUR DSL WITH IT. We did not ask to cancel our DSL; apparently when you don’t have a landline Bell must create something called a “dry loop” physically at your property, so that you can continue to receive the DSL signal. This happened late Thursday night. By the time I got ahold of anyone on Friday, the department I needed was closed for the weekend.
My husband telecommutes regularly and sometimes this means working on the weekend, but not this past weekend. Ha ha, except for it being totally not funny.
Speaking to Bell on Monday morning, we wanted someone to fix this right away because it was 1) their mistake, and 2) ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? We were told no one could come out sooner than Wednesday. Ms. Anouska Fabian at the Bell Exec. Offices just could not make that happen sooner. So we CANCELLED our internet service, effective July 21, as we must give them 30 days’ notice.
Last night unbeknownst to us, Bell gave us our dry loop. But they NEVER ONCE announced their presence to us. So, they were skulking around our property after 9pm last night without us knowing about it at all.
Now, because our internet was reconnected, Ms. Anouska Fabian of Bell’s Exec Offices decided then to CANCEL our CANCELLATION, because she presumably assumed we MUST be pleased. Of course we weren’t pleased, and we’d ALREADY made arrangements for a different provider, the other awful company we have access to, and they’re coming out on Friday.
In any case, Ms. Fabian left messages on my cell that she needed to know if we wanted to keep our service or not, so we called back and left a very clear message. I didn’t feel good enough about it, so we also called Bell’s regular service number to make sure and learned that our confirmed, verified, 30-days-in-advance cancellation had been cancelled by Ms. Fabian and that the Bell Exec. Office had left instruction that our account was NOT to be cancelled, so they wouldn’t do it. THEY WOULDN’T DO IT. More phone calls to Ms. Fabian.
Finally, I’ve written her the following letter, which I also forwarded to Ellen Roseman (who has already gotten back to me while Bell has NOT).
Dear Ms Anouska Fabian,
Since you don’t like to answer your own phone, hopefully this email will be helpful to you. We DO INDEED still wish to cancel our internet service. We wish for our request from yesterday, June 21, 2010 to STAND AS IS. This means we expect cancellation, as well as no charge for our final month, promised to us by your employee Lisa #XXXXX under confirmation #XXX-XXX-XXX.
You had no right to attempt to circumvent our cancellation. We are UNHAPPY with your service, help, and treatment. The only reason we are keeping our TV account is because we prefer the Bell interface to Rogers.
Please let us reiterate so there is no confusion: CANCEL OUR INTERNET SERVICE, with the 30 DAYS NOTICE we provided to you YESTERDAY. PLEASE.
Jeremy and Margaret Simser
Now we’ll see. I’m sick and tired of fighting with Bell, but not tired enough yet to stop. And I still have enough energy to go hang with my knitting chicas tonight. Now, what to knit?
EDITED TO ADD: We had additional communication with the Bell Exec Office, which I summed up in an email to Ms. Roseman, along with my thanks.
Ms. Fabian got back to us and left us a message that suddenly ANOTHER 12-month contract, this time pertaining to our internet service, has materialized in their “system,” and are we sure we want to cancel, because if so we’ll be billed for a $100 cancellation fee. We called back and expressed our intention to involve the CCTS and even seek legal council because if things weren’t already incredibly ridiculous and abusive yet, they certainly were now. Appalling.
She then backpedalled and told us she was, “for our trouble,” waiving all fees and charges. The truth is that I got very upset and begged her to stop explaining, to please just take care of it, send me copies of everything via email and post; that we don’t need any apologies…all we want is to get back to our lives and never hear from her again. We also asked that if the Bell Executive Office needs to contact us, it must be via someone else. She agreed to all of this, and promised there would be no charges on our next bill other than our regular and appropriate television charges. Can’t wait to see!
Please, please let this be over.
