You would think that once in a while Bell would blame their failures on their own incompetence. This is a company that bought CTV thinking it was just another way to make money. Their failures in this enterprise have been loud and often. The Bell Board neither understands the complexity nor the fast-moving nature of sports broadcasting, television show production, news gathering and news distribution. It was not realistic to expect a company deeply involved in telephone, Internet and television signal distribution to be that versatile or expert.
And lately, I would question their competence in their core business. For a company that has more than a hundred years of signal transmission knowledge, my personal experience is that they are more incompetent every day. Let me tell you of my personal Odessey with Bell Canada over the past year:
Bell is a company that I have always liked. I have had friends who worked for the company and I also worked for Bell for a while when I needed to get away from public relations before retiring. I sold Internet services and telephone services to business.
When I retired to Barrie, Ontario, I found that I could get Bell telephone service in the condo but had to accept Rogers for television service. When I decided to move out of the condo into our present place, Rogers had the key to the cable connections and offered me their complete suite of services for just $195 per month. I went back to Bell, who had just installed fiber-optic connections on the street.
I liked Bell’s Fibe for television and Internet and despite their raising the Internet rates every chance they got, we settled down to peace, harmony and only a few glitches in the Fibe service. That was until the middle of last year, and a series of problems arose. What happened was that I got my usual monthly bill and there would be charges on it for sports channels, news channels and other options that I had never ordered and in which, neither my wife or I were interested. I would call Bell and politely ask that the charges be removed from my bill. And Bell cooperated, graciously, at first. Another problem that puzzled me was that the recording feature of Bell Fibe was acting strange. It would record some of the shows I wanted but would record some things I would never bother to record.
After more than six months of calls to Bell about this, they started to be less friendly. I was accused of a few things that I had not even considered. I was told I was a liar, a troublemaker and that I would be happier with a different supplier. I decided to turn the problem over to the Commission for Complaints for Telecom Service.
If you ever consider using this federal agency, you might be surprised to hear that I don’t think they read my complaint. They just sent it to Bell Canada and nothing has been heard of the complaint after three months.
As a last resort, I complained to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, pointing out that Bell Canada is harassing me over their technical problem. I would take the advice from one Bell manager, that I take my business elsewhere but I found all the resellers of Fibe service go to the same rates as Bell, or higher, after they have you in their clutches. I even said to Rogers that they could have me but they informed me that the cable in my older apartment building had deteriorated to the point that there was no way to deliver cable to me without rewiring the apartment building.
I am learning to enjoy reading, all over again.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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