My Bell Canada Sucks Story

I’ve long had issues with Bell Canada customer service.

Experience 1 – 2007

When I first opened my Canadian office in the summer of 2007, we got Bell phone service and DSL for the office. We had a horrendous experience with the Internet not working, phone lines not working and so began my Bell Canada customer service horror experience. I’d give the full details, but this was years ago, so aside from the rudeness and the refusal to allow me to speak with management, I don’t remember the play by play.

Anyway, after a solid month of phone calls (during all of which the off-shore customer service reps repeatedly refused to allow me to speak with a manager) we decided to get rid of the Bell Canada DSL, but were stuck with keeping the phone lines.

Luckily, after the initial phone line issues were fixed (again, after a month of having to call them almost daily until it was fixed) we didn’t have an issue.

And then we moved office locations in the summer of 2010.

Experience 2 – 2010 – Round 1

Bell Canada came out and hooked up our phone lines. We have three lines. One is a fax. One is our main phone line. And one is used by a company that sublets office space from me.

We soon discovered the phone line used by the person who sublets from me had an issue where it was receiving calls for BOTH phone lines. So, if the subletter was on their phone and we got on ours, they would hear BOTH phone conversations. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work. So we called Bell and they sent out a service technician.

The service technician came out, was let inside our office (we are one unit in a larger office building) and he looked at the phone outlet. He tested it, said it worked fine and that he didn’t know what to tell us. Yet, apparently *magically*, when we plugged the phone (a standard Panasonic cordless) back in, it worked and the lines were no longer crossed.

A month later I get my phone bill and see I was charged $199.45 CDN for that service call.

What? Whatever the issue was, it was with your phone line Bell Canada. The phone cannot get calls from two telephone lines when plugged into one jack by some default of the phone. The phone magically worked correctly after your guy tested the outlet. And you are charging ME because YOUR phone line wasn’t working correctly?

So I call Bell Canada, explain to them that I didn’t understand why I was being charged for fixing THEIR phone line. The customer service rep (whose name I didn’t catch – don’t worry though, I got the others) told me the problem was our phone and not the line, so we were being charged.

Um. No. The phone was receiving calls from two lines, while plugged into one jack and this all stopped the second after the repair man had messed with the jack. I asked her if she was telling me the phone magically fixed itself and asked to speak to a manager, to which she said no.

No? (Here we go again I thought… in three years, it seems nothing has changed.)

I asked no less than twelve times during the 18 minute phone call (oh which I spent 13 of those minutes on “hold”) to speak to a manager. She refused to transfer me to one. She said no manager was there. I told her that there was no way there wasn’t someone, somewhere in her building, in charge. So I told her:

“If the person next to you dropped dead right now, who would you tell? THAT is who I want to speak to.”

She asked me to hold. I did. For 13 minutes. And then they hung up on me the phone call was disconnected on me.

So I called back. This time I got “Lydia” whose employee number was “EX66666″ who I also told repeatedly that I wished to speak with a manager. She refused to allow me to speak to one during the entire nine minute call. Then she asked me to hold (after I refused to be transferred to voice mail to “leave a message for a manager”) and I was transferred to a full voice mail box.

So I called back and spoke with “Neville” whose employee number was “68844″ who I again, told repeatedly, I wished to speak with a manager. He kept refusing to allow me to speak with one. I told him I wasn’t hanging up until I spoke to one. And he told me, and I quote (and have the witnesses to verify):

“No manager here will take your call.”

[blinks]

Excuse me? Then he goes, “Thank you for calling Bell Canada, have a nice day.” and mutes his phone. I say “listen buddy, I’m not hanging up – I want to speak to a manager and am not hanging up til I do” (my fiance guesses they may have a rule about hanging up on customers, so he tried the mute trick to make me think he’d done it so I would hang up – didn’t work). The phone muted then unmuted three or four times and then I finally got the “bzzt bzzt bzzt” sound confirming he’d actually hung up the phone after we’d been on the phone for 22 minutes.

I was also tweeting @julieatbell throughout the conversation trying to get help – she has yet to reply. In fairness, she hasn’t tweeted at ALL since I started tweeting her.

Unfortunately, I’ve had all I can take for one day. Round two will have to wait until thursday… I’m traveling to Houston today.

Share Your Story

If you’d like to let people know your own Bell Canada story, you can do so on the Bell Canada complaints page.