Bell Canada Still Sucks!
Bell Canada still sucks, even with a new logo.
I know, I know, everyone knows that Bell Canada still sucks. There’s nothing new about this statement. I’ve bitched about Bell Canada 611 before and I’ve complained about ExpressVu and Mobility also.
Well, after receiving my latest bill from Bell Canada, I was painfully reminded yet again that Bell Canada still sucks.
Background of the Problem
In mid-December I decided that I had paid too much for my Bell Internet for too long. It was time to can their ass and move to Primus. Bell was charging me $47.95/month while Primus was/is offering pretty much the exact same DSL Internet for $34.95/month. Oh, and I would also be able to purchase the modem so I wouldn’t keep paying that damn $2.00/month “modem rental fee” that mysteriously showed up on my bill one month a while back.
The Offer
Yeah, so I didn’t actually dump Bell Internet like I should have. I managed to get to the “retention agent” pretty quickly and that’s where I got conned. I was offered a deal – $36.95/month for 12 months and my home phone would be reduced to $9.95/month for the first 6 months and then go up to $14.95/month for the last 6 months.
Damn, that’s not a half bad deal considering I was just calling to cancel so I could get a better rate for internet with Primus. I figured that staying with Bell would save me the hassle of actually switching and I could put up with one more year of their crap.
The agent even went the extra mile and emailed me a confirmation number with a summary of the offer. Swell.
What Went Wrong?
I wish I knew!
I received my Bell bill today and popped it open to check and see what my new monthly charges would be. Well, when I saw a bill for almost $250 I nearly lost it. I didn’t even have to look at the bill to know they had really screwed it up considering my “normal” bill is less than $150 and with the new offer, it should have been very close to $100.
I immediately grabbed the phone and called 310-India. Oh, no, I mean I called 310-BELL. While swearing like a trucker at automated Emily to get to a real person, I discovered why my bill was so high. For some reason Bell had decided to active the second phone line that goes to my house. I’ve never had that second line active since we bought the house and I have never made a request to activate the line. Now I’m paying for two phone lines and the activation charge to setup that second line. On top of that, they had changed my internet so I was now paying $50.95/month!
Needless to say, the offer I was given by the retention agent didn’t quite show up on my bill.
I spent almost an hour on the phone with three different agents getting dicked around. Even with my confirmation number, they couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. They were able to see when I made the call and everything but apparently they couldn’t figure out how to read the numbers on the screen in front of them.
I did finally manage to get the second line removed and apparently I’m going to get a retroactive credit for it. Unfortunately I have to wait until next month to find out if that actually happened as Bell is apparently unable to generate new bills on any day other than your billing date. In the mean time I’m supposed to over pay due to their screw up this month.
As for the offer I was given, I still don’t have that. I’ve got an “investigation” number though and supposedly I’ll receive a call within 5-7 days to inform me of the results of the “investigation”. I think I already know the response I’m going to receive. Something like:
The offer that you were provide was not properly documented so we are unable to extend that offer to you. Instead, we’ll give you a token $5 off of your bill for a couple months to try and keep you happy. Oh, but we’ll still charge you $52.95/month for internet that you can get elsewhere for $34.95/month, just because we think we can. Oh, and for making us look bad we’re going to say that you agreed to a 3 year contract at some point too.
Here’s hoping they don’t end up canceling both phone lines at my house. That would be just classic Bell Canada.
What’s Next?
Once this is fixed, I’m switching to Primus. Bell Canada still sucks and I don’t want to give them any more of my money.
Before switching to Primus, if you haven’t already done so, I would check out other posts on Primus. My internet rarely works, I spend more time taking to tech support and customer service than I spend on line.
If you are called by Bell`s sales Department trying to sell you a better internet deal,
Never agree to it unless they can send it to you in writing….. It`s a Scam !!!!!!!!!
I`ve been fighting with these Bastards for over a year now, Calls are always re-routed to countries where people have no fucken clue where Canada even is, much less about anything else you are asking them. Bell`s game is that most people will get tired of waiting & being given the run around and passed from 1 agent to another, so they end up paying the Inflated bills.
Every time you take a service from Bell, they will tell you ………this is a Contract.
But along the way they will scam you by Adding hidden or inflated fees to your bill, that is Ok to them when the higher fees are in their favour. I was sold a service at a set price, but never had 2 bills come in with the same amounts on them. U can spend Hours trying to rectify the problems, but the idiots pretend they have no clue about what you are saying, even if you called them the month before, they lost all records of it.
Bell are among the worse fucken crooks there is out there, BEWARE !
Keep all your pass statements, cuz if you don`t they will rip you off even more.
Here’s a novel one: I moved 10 blocks, and my Bell cel phone service stopped working. No service if I’m in my basement, 1 bar in my living room. I have to go out on the front lawn to make a call.
So I call bell, and after wrestling with that goddamn automatic answering service I get through to a rep who says “well, we can’t guarantee service everywhere”
Jeeze Louise! I’m in the middle of fucking Ottawa!
So I say “What can Bell do about this?”
Answer: There is nothing we can do… but next year we’ll be blanketing the country with the best fucking cel service ever. Our assholes are quivering with anticipation! So hang in there, big guy!
But I need the damn thing to work now, not in some glorious future, so I cancel my service and get Rogers (already 3G). Clear as a bell from the depths of my basement.
Bell then decides to charge me *a hundred bucks to cancel my service*. After 2&1/2 years of a 3 year plan (my first mistake, don’t get me started). I ask them to explain how they can charge me for canceling a service that they can’t provide in the middle of Our Nation’s Capital.
Answer: Go fuck yourself. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks, and we want it. We’re too fucking stupid to figure out that the 40 grand lifetime spend you’ll now go make with Rogers when you move your internet and your land line because we’ve pissed you off so bad you can hardly see is many times bigger than the hundred bucks we want right now, and we don’t fucking care. Have a nice fucking day.
Well I just want to say that I also had my fair share of problems with Bell. But nothing compared to what I’m going through with Rogers. ROGERS INTERNET SUCKS. The worst ever for the same price as Bell. Although when I was with Bell, 7Mb, I was throttled about 20%,consistently 400-500kbs. With Rogers 10Mb all I get is 150-250kbs. That is a throttle of 80% WTF. I hate to say it but I will be going back to Bell. If you don’t believe me go to rogerssucks.com to hear more complaints.
Vince! DO NOT GO BACK TO BELL!! ololo
Check around for some private providers, there are ALOT you can choose from, better to choose one near you………
Nobody can match the hate I have for this company. I dumped their internet for a third party provider, but because I’m rural, I had to go with a company using the Bell phone lines. For about $20 per month I was getting the max rate of 2.5Mb/s but I kept having outages. I would call Acanac (third party internet provider), and I could not call Bell becuase they were not my provider. Acanac would put in a trouble ticket, and Bell had 72 hours to repair it. It was always a phone line problem because Bell is not maintaining the lines. Bell would just close the ticket. They never gave any information but just closed it so they met their metric. The problem remained, I had to call Acanac and open another ticket, then same thing three days later.
In one case, I lost service completely. No connection. I called Acanac, they put in the trouble, then after three days I called back. Acanac reported that Bell reported the problem fixed. Still zero connection. This happened three times before I final went postal and demanded a repair. I got a line guy to my house who did some phoning and got someone to finally visit the remote where my line card was……er, where my line card used to be. I heard the discussion on the phone – a tech had taken my dsl line card to give to a new Bell Sympatico customer and just left me high and dry. Because the line card was gone, my profile was gone and the repair group closed the ticket each time. This is just one case of an outage. I eventually had to drop acanac and go back to Bell because the turnaround time to get a repair was a week. For certain types of outages I claimed a clicking on the line to get the phone repair guys to test the line. Anyway, Acanac claimed they were going out of business because Bell was purposely and systematically fucking their customers. They said there was a group of resellers doing a class action because this was the practice.
As far as Bell’s customer service, it is purposely designed as the “Indian Shield”. Much like Dell, the agents in India conveniently have little access to real records, real testing so Bell has designed this group to shield them from annoying contact from customers. All they can do is create a trouble ticket and set up an appointment (80% miss rate).
Now I’m on a Bell package which has base price of twice what third party had and I just got a bunch of overage charges (doubling again) for too much downloads?
When I went back to Bell, after promising approval at 2Mb/s, they set my profile at 1Mb/s and then when I called the Indian Shield their response was “UP to 2Mb/s”. The reseller on Bell lines had higher speed than Bell.
These guys are the worst example of large company incompetance. They litterally steal from me and there is nothing I can do. Terrible reliability, terrible speed, horrible price, maddening customer service.
For all of those having these problems, get a hold of the Executive Customer Care Team at Bell. I had a bigger problem. I was on a Bell HSE Long Distance Plan, I got doubled billed for internet both on sympatico and with the plan, someone took me off my plan then disconnected my internet. I contact Executive Customer Care at Bell, and now I have them by the ****s.
Here is the phone number for them.
Bell Canada Executive Office of Customer Relations at no charge.
1-866-317-3382
This number can be used for unresolved issues with any Bell Canada service.
these leadbrains refused 3 times to send in my faulty internet stick and they were rude and arrogant gave wrong phone numbers and itold them 2 months ago 2 cancel and they still bill me the only reason i went was to c if worse than fellow thieves rogers ang by a longshot they are i saw one person combined accounts and they tried to charge cacel fees rogers weanted 25 bucksto change billing date these bandits get away with far too much
So glad I’m not with bell anymore. They over charged me. Tried to charge me a cancellation fee. They outsource jobs to India. (I don’t have anything against the people in India.) It’s suppose to be bell Canada, is it not? Had to threaten legal action to get my money back. I asked them to remove my name and number off their contact list. They called me at 3 am to try to get me to return to bell. That’s harassment. Called the police and the BBB. bell has an F rating with the BBB.
Bell SUCKS – I HATE BELL – NEVER GO WITH BELL – DO NOT SIGN UP WITH BELL NO MATTER WHAT
They have the worst customer service EVER!
I had been with them, but there service sucked so I left.
They sent me a letter telling me they would fix there mistakes and improve there service, in addition they offered me 20% off 1 year of internet service.
They couldn’t even get my internet to work. They had like 6 technicians at my house, I was on the phone as if it was my full time job, complaining to them, trying to get my internet WORKING!
So we switched away from Bell and went to Rogers.
They have the worst customer service, and there tech’s are (i’m looking for a nice word to use) not very intelligent (that was pretty nice).
NEVER EVER EVER GO WITH BELL
I promise you, you will be sorry!
It’s time to start writing your MP to continue deregulating the industry. They paid a lot for their 3G licence which they have long ago recovered these costs. Now they do everything they can to collude with Rogers in charging Canadians some of the highest telecom rates in the world.
I have two stories. As a 50 year exec. returning from Asia I found my mom gave me her cell phone until I could figure out which service I wanted. That day I received a note from Bell that I could upgrade her phone free of charge. So I went in to upgrade this to a Blackberry. They told me that I had $200 credit and that I could do this. But I would have to sign up for another 3 year plan. I said I just wanted the same plan with the Blackberry and they said no way. A bait and switch.
Then I went to the Apple iPhone on Saturday, June 5th. I paid by credit card for a new notebook and a phone. When it came time to buy the phone, the people at Apple started to connect me with Bell. They said that I had to give them a $200 deposit because of a new customer – never mind that my family has used the same telephone number from Bell for over 50 years! This was a first for the people at Apple.
That wouldn’t have been so bad except for the call I got yesterday that asked for more money. I had used about 40MB of 2GB time and I received a text that I had already spend $154 of time.
When I finally got through to their call centre all they did was justify their expenses and they said if I reached $200 then they would cut me off. I asked to cut the service so they said I would have to pay for the full year contract.
The customer service representative rep then put on her supervisor – Mr. Sheldon Soriano, Bell Employee 6031106 said he could hold on for three hours but that would not change things.
So where does this leave us. A fat company happy to get fatter from unhappy customers like myself.
It’s time to put them out of business. Call your Member of Parliament. Get deregulation so we can more choice. And please add your thoughts to this.
Bell Canada Marketing to my DEAD HUSBAND! He died 2 years ago and we had problems closing the account as well as additional fees- that pissed me off! BUt when My children picked up the mail ( summer break ) on the exact date that we had his funeral service 2 years ago and it was a promotional letter addressed to MY HUSBAND and burst into tears I can’t take it – I don’t care about me , but WTF are they doing direct marketing to a DEAD person – he didn’t even live with us the last year before he died! What this means is that their marketing guy SR VP Residential sales Steve Bickley has used my contact information from after I reported his death!
I am struggling of course getting through to Bell in the rat maze they call customer service to tell them about their rather large FAUX PAS and to let them know that ,I will mak every effort to countermarket in all of my many circles -Have 3 kids , all play 3 sports a peice and I play as well as professional and educational connections-I will ask that they all support my countermarketing initiative as well ….
I was with Bell for over 3 years, I had the Bell Expressvu satellite tv, the bill was over $81.44 a month with a 2 year contract which I only found out about the contract only after they installled everything. We don’t watch tv anymore so I decided to cancel their services. When I was doing so they asked me why I was cancelling and was basically harassing me to stay with them for over 20 minutes. I have had previous problems with the service and wasn’t getting some channels, when I called them they told me I had to pay for someone to come out and take a look.
So anyhow, I cancelled the service on April 7 2010. I was told that they had to bill me until May 7, it would be my last bill and to pay the amount of around $51.33 because the billing date is April 19, so I had to pay from April 19-May 7. So I received the bill and paid $51.33. After that I kept receiving bills for the service for the next two months along with late payment fees. They cut off the service on May 7, but yet I receive bills for next 2 months?
They sent me a letter stating they disconnected my services following my request, but they haven’t received the payment of my last invoice, and they wanted to remind me that their invoices are payable upon receipt. I paid the last bill of $51.33. When I called, lady told me the billing cycle will eventually fix itself, lol. When I called second time they supposidly fixed the problem. I received another bill for $1.44 which makes no sense, I paid it hoping it was the last, (showed on the bill that I paid the $51.33, they finally got the payment)!
Now, they sent me 2 empty boxes with instructions on how to send back the receivers/boxes/cards/remotes etc. I sent back the 2 receivers along with remote controls and the cards as they requested. Sent them on May 11, same day I received the boxes, sent with Canada Post, still have the tracking numbers and paper from Bell that is stamped by Canada Post as proof of shipment (as requested to be done by Bell Canada). I have checked the tracking numbers on canadapost.ca and it states that both packages were received on May 17, there’s a signature and everything. So, I just received couple days ago after months later, a letter and bill from Bell stating I haven’t return the receivers, the bill is around $98.23 (not sure if that is for one receiver or two, won’t be surprised if I can another bill lol). I called Bell and told them the problem and told them I have proof the packages were shipped and received, she put me on hold for 10 minutes, then told me that another department was going to fix it and she gave me a confirmation number.
So now I’m waiting to see what else they’re going to pull out of their sleeve. I have been a more than perfect customer to them for the over 3 years I have been with them, never a late payment, never a problem, and this is what I get! I know this isn’t over, I can feel it!
Bell Sucks! I still have Bell Aliant internet which also sucks, I will be switching to another provider when one comes available where I live. Thanks for listening!