Telephone tag

DATE: Mar 8

TITLE: Telephone tag

I started writing this piece on Monday March 6, but as you will read, couldn’t post it until today.

If you read my last posting “I don’t think so” of February 26, you are aware I cancelled my services with Rogers Communications. I still felt I should have a house phone (i.e. “landline”) so contacted Bell Canada. Ma Bell was more than willing to accommodate me.

I arranged an appointment to have a Bell phone installed on Friday March 3. The appointment was for the indefinite “sometime between 8 and noon Friday morning”. One o’clock in the afternoon comes along and still no service call. On the phone to Bell: “What happened to my morning installation appointment?”

As it turned out, because Rogers had terminated my service late on the evening of February 28, it wasn’t possible for Bell to transport the number to their service. As the original work order had that Rogers number on it, which was now invalid, nothing was done. After some time on the phone, I was eventually given a new telephone number and an appointed time slot of 8 to noon on March 6. What I didn’t realise at the time was that the man I spoke with had downgraded my order.

I’m retired and don’t usually get up before 8:15 in the morning, but I set my alarm early enough that if Bell did show up at 8, I’d have had coffee and would be civil.

The service tech showed up about half-ten. He messed around with the service entry in my apartment before making his was to the telephone room off the lobby. After performing his rituals there, he returned to my apartment and buttoned things up. He tried calling my new number and yes it did indeed ring and there were no unusual noises on the line. He packed up and left.

After he was gone (and this is why I’m only posting this now) I discovered that in his machinations in the service room, he disconnected my internet and as I later also learned, my lobby intercom wasn’t working. Back on the phone to Bell, where I was informed I’d need to contact my internet provider to sort out that problem. Virgin, my internet provider uses Bell bandwidth and on the rare occasions I’ve had to contact them, I frequently get a Bell technician coming in. So even though I called Virgin, there is a possibility I could see the same technician.

Virgin listened to my problem and arranged a service appointment for me for tomorrow. If you guessed it’s between 8 and noon, you’re right. So once again, I’m up at the unpleasant hour of 7 in the morning.

As for the intercom, a rather snippy lady at Bell told me I’d have to have the superintendent of the building call to arrange for someone to correct that problem. Bit of a detour here: my son previously worked in the telecommunications industry and he explained that with the system in use here, when you enter the code for the apartment, some mysterious piece of equipment dials your telephone number. With the change in telephone numbers, this thing will need to be reprogrammed.

Between the instruction from Bell and the information from my son, I located the superintendent and explained the problem to him. According to him all I have to do is give the office my new number and they can reprogram the dialler from the office. The office is closed until Wednesday morning so I have to wait. And until I’ve had a chance to see if the intercom is really working, I’m not going to consider this matter closed. (Wednesday): Well, the lady who runs the office is off sick today, so I won’t know if I have intercom now until Friday. Oh well.

Monday night I called Bell because I had thought I should have had a couple of features such as call display and call answer yet they weren’t available to me. That was when it dawned on me my order had been downgraded. But without access to the internet and emails from Bell, I was unable to access both the original order and the revised order. So, once again, I have to wait.

Tuesday morning, the technician from Virgin arrived to fix my internet. After looking at the phone installation he called for reinforcements, which arrived in the form of a more experienced technician. I left them to their own devices and it wasn’t too long before they both arrived at my door. A bit of work at the site of the modem along with what I swear were magical incantations but could have been technical jargon I had my internet back. They took the time to explain what had happened and what they did and, while I don’t have a background in telecommunications, I do retain enough of my shop classes to understand that the first job was just plain sloppy work.

Even though the Bell technician on Monday was aware my internet wasn’t through Bell, he in essence hijacked the internet line to use for the telephone. As I wrote somewhere above, Bell and Virgin share equipment so that was relatively easy. The two hours the two Virgin men spent here were first figuring out what he’d done, then fishing another line from the service entrance to my modem outlet.

So what should have been a simple installation last Friday has instead turned into a mini-series. I really, really hope this is the last of my problems.

Oh yes, this morning I contacted Bell and got the order straightened out, so I now have the features I wanted and a $10 credit each month for the next year.

Cat.

I don’t think so

It’s been a while since I last wrote anything. Nothing on the news has irked me to the point I wanted to rant about it and there is no confirmed new information on the “Bring him to justice” file. And I just couldn’t see writing something just for the sake of writing something. So, that explains the long silence. But something has happened that I feel I can use to give vent to my views.

If you live in Canada, mainly east of the Manitoba/Ontario border, you know the name Rogers Communications and have probably been affected by them in some manner. If you don’t think so, I remind you of the events of July 8, 2022 where a problem somewhere in the Rogers system affected most of the country. You remember when the ATM wouldn’t work and there was no internet, cell service or cable for many people? Yeah, that Rogers.

A couple of months ago, after looking at my bill, I called Rogers to see if I could cut my cable back to basic cable. I knew I’d lose some channels I enjoyed but the cost was getting out of hand since my sole income is a government pension. That was when I learned that the service I have is now considered a “legacy” service, meaning they don’t offer it to new customers and if I wanted to reduce my service I’d have to switch over to their current, cloud based service. That’s the one that wouldn’t work last July. But in order to get that, I’d also have to get their internet service. I switched from Rogers internet years ago for two reasons: the cost and the fact that I was constantly having to reboot my modem. That left me with cable and home phone service through Rogers. As an aside, I think that over the past five years, I’ve had to reboot the modem maybe three times, as opposed to three times a month on occasion with Rogers. So already I have a sour taste over Rogers.

This story starts about two weeks ago. I had a question regarding my bill. The last three bills had each been higher than the last with no changes in my service or viewing habits, such as rented movies (I don’t rent movies). I know Rogers is in the process of buying their biggest competitor in western Canada but if they have to nickel-and-dime their customers to afford the billions the acquisition will cost, maybe they should reconsider. I called Rogers and spoke to perhaps the most unco-operative customer service rep in the company. For some reason he seemed to feel I wanted to change my billing from online to paper billing and kept pushing that option. He was being so obtuse that after going around in circles over the billing – NO, I DON’T WANT A PAPER BILL! – I eventually reached the point I was ready to go full “Karen” on him, but instead chose to just hang up.

February 21, after still being unable to get a satisfactory answer to my billing question, I decided to cancel my cable service effective February 28. I have Apple TV so won’t miss much and I have news outlets on my phone, so there is no problem there. Important point here that comes into play in the next paragraph is that with Rogers, phone service also uses the cable.

I presume that like most people, when I think of cable it I think of it as separate from the telephone. I’d forgotten that Rogers uses the cable for the phone as well. When I phoned in to cancel my cable, I thought that while I’d no longer have television service I’d still have the telephone and nobody told me otherwise until yesterday.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was looking at my bill and noticed that the billing period was from February 10 to March 9. Well, as of March 1, I will no longer have any services with Rogers. I couldn’t see why I should have to pay for my cable and telephone services for the period of March 1 through 9 since they will be unable to provide those services. Phoned Rogers and got someone in the accounts department.

I explained this to the lady on the other end of the phone and she explained, in a rather haughty manner (what’s with Rogers, do they intentionally hire people with zero customer service skills?) that I have to pay the full amount and they’ll issue me a credit. I explain that I’ll no longer be a customer so a credit on my account wouldn’t do me much good. She again told me I’d have to pay the full amount. I asked her if she’d pay for a service she isn’t going to get and again her response was “you have to pay the full amount.” She did tell me she’d put through a credit for approximately $38 for the overpayment but it would take two months to issue a cheque. So let me see if I have this right: you’ll issue a credit for less than half the overcharge, take two months to reimburse me and not pay interest of having my money for two months? Got it, and I don’t think so.

I have a background in business, mainly transport and import/export, and am fully capable of calculating such things as discounts. I’d already looked at the bill and determined that a proper discount for nine days would be in the area of $83. That was based upon the billing period of 28 days and the amount of the invoice. Something else I learned in business, more years ago than I really care to think about, is that it’s much easier to dispute a charge before you pay the bill. Knowing that I still hadn’t paid Rogers at that point, I unilaterally decided that I’m only going to pay them the revised amount using my figures.

After my telephone conversation with Rogers and coming away dissatisfied with the result, I went onto their website and used the live chat feature to plead my case once more. Same result. This time I gave them my calculations so they could see how I arrived at my figures. I also made sure to copy the entire live chat and save it.

In the end, I paid Rogers what I calculated what my service from February 10, starting date of the billing period to February 28 would be and paid them that. So, now I wait for the next bill from them to see what, if anything they’ve decided to do about this matter.

Cat.