My complaint:
This afternoon (Sunday Dec 12) I tried to use my home (fixed line) phone and there was no dial tone, on any of three handsets. I unplugged them all and plugged them in one at a time. Nothing. I am out on Presqu’ile Point and there is a long history of outages and repair jobs, the problem never my fault. I used my cell phone to call (866)310-2355 and after a bit of a wait a lovely Bell Canada lady spoke with me. I told her the problem and mentioned last night’s windstorm which caused brief power outages. I told her what I had done just before calling Bell, and she complimented me for knowing what to do, and without me saying anything more she said a Bell Canada technician would come by tomorrow (Mon 13th) in the afternoon. She knew I had done all I could do on my own. I thanked her. Then 10 minutes after we hung up my power went out and my backup generator came on – an odd coincidence given that the windstorm was the night before. (Several hours later the power came back on.) Then I received a text (SMS) saying to call an 800 number to be instructed in debugging and to that I wanted the technician to come tomorrow. I was annoyed but I called and was put on hold. I hung up and texted back, got a reply that the employee I was trying to contact was no longer available. Now I’m furious. The technician had better show up tomorrow or I will REALLY complain!
Suggested solution:
They shouldn't have a customer support system where a customer reports a non-working home phone and there is agreement on how to deal with it, and then the customer is sent a text message asking him to phone Bell Canada so that he can be told how to debug the problem, and then when he calls he is put on hold. And then when he texts a reply to the text he is told that the employee is is trying to text is no longer available. Taken all together, this is poor customer service. The first Bell Canada person I dealt with was very competent and it should have been left like that until the technician came tomorrow. And if he doesn't come, I will be really furious and Bell Canada will regret it.
