Im not even tring climb the chain of command anymore.

After countless calls to their customer service telling them my phone isnt working,and many months after mistakingly agreeing to a one year lock in to internet service,still havent recieved my modem or start up disc!

I did however recieve a fancy letter thanking me for choosing Telus internet!

Going on a year now,and the only response Ive gotten from Telus is a bill for anouther month of non service.

Im in the process of taking them to small claims court now.

The first step is to make sure youre sueing the right people,do a corporation registry search,went to the registry and surprize Telus has at least 20 different possiable entities to choose from!

Looks like the beginning of anouther run around.

If any one on this post has gone through the small claims process,any wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

It has been more than 2 years since you wrote your article, Ron. I literally hung up from Telus customer disservice moments ago, having been informed that my service has been suspended (despite being paid in full). This, of course, after holding for 15 minutes to get a live person.

I was also informed:
…that I will NOT be credited for the charges for services now not rendered.

…that they would NOT be willing to committ any of this information to writing, and therefore I could not possibly receive any written documentation of these illegal charges for services not rendered.

…that my comments to them, however, would be duly (and entirely objectively and accurately, I’m SURE!) recorded in their internal “comments” field in their computer system.

…and that, furthermore, I would NOT be transferred to a manager. Hailey, the oh-so-helpful-and-friendly agent (can you hear the dripping sarcasm?) to whom I spoke, informed me that it is of course NOT Telus’ policy to deny customers the name/contact info of Telus customer service management personnel. But that it “doesnt need to be policy. Because you dont need to know, so I’m not going to tell you.”

Really. How do you argue with reason like that? I’d laugh if my head didn’t hurt from all that bashing it against a brick wall.

I have since moved twice and each time I called to switch my service to a new address, I was simply asked, “are you happy with your services as they are?” I would replay yes in all cases. Even when I received a periodic call about my happiness with my services, I would always say yes, refusing to add any additional cost to my family of 5′s tight budget.

Fast forward to January 25, 2008. My wife, who has the responsibility of managing our finances, was wondering why our bill is so expensive every month, scrutinized the $30 of “other services” on page 1 of our bill and asked me, “do we get Internet service from Telus or Shaw?” I said “Shaw of course. We don’t even have the equipment to get DSL cable. Are we being charged for it?”

Yes we are, it turns out. Since June of 1996, in fact. My wife, feeling foolish for not noticing called customer service to rectify the situation. The first customer service representative explained that they would charge us an additional $140 to cancel the rest of our “contract” and no refund of any kind would be issued since it was noted on our account that we always reported satisfaction with our service. My wife called 3 more times to make sense of this and despite talking with some CSR’s with a less smug attitude, found that they were not willing to help in any way. This is likely due to a note left on the account by the first CSR, since they all sounded more apologetic during at the beginning of the call and would soon change their tune. Not one of them would escalate the call to a floor manager and all the time kept insisting, “you KNEW you had Internet service. There’s no way for us to check if you were using it.” They could check if I was a suspected pedophile and distributing porn, but they clearly weren’t going to go out of their way.

The charge is on the bill on page 2, but for someone who pays their bills on time every month without question, there is no reason to question the nondescript “additional charges” box on the first page.

I called and rationally explained that we didn’t have the equipment to receive this service and the CSR I talked to said, “Yes, I see this. Also it says you never got your iPod that was supposed to be part of the deal.” Exactly! This really was a covert spy operation to get some slick salesperson a commission on my trusting nature.

This time I was transferred to retention because my wife tried to cancel our service in tears with her last call. This gentleman agreed to credit our account for 2 months of high-speed Internet and credit back the cancellation fee for its service discontinuation. I also got $50 credit for upcoming long-distance charges so I stayed with the company (even though the total was closer to $900 of illegal charges.) As soon as VIOP service comes to Mission, I’m switching.

I used to work at a call centre. That job was for Sprint USA mobile customers, and of all companies this one has the worst customer service satisfaction. But I took my job very seriously and honestly tried to help everyone, never assuming fraud and understanding my powers completely. I knew when it was time to escalate a call to a floor manager, or when their was an error on the company’s part and they were due a large sum of money.
Based on my wife’s experience, it sounds like things are worse. This situation could almost be called “slamming” my account, where someone charged the account with a service that was not agreed to. Not only are the policies flawed and their billing confusing, but there is a growing unwillingness to accept responsibility and to pass the buck to the next guy to keep their handle time low. You can’t trust anyone.

We really need a STUDY to try to get a sense of how common these things really are… how many times a year… how many people… how much money… how many companies…

rw

A whistleblower could help, too. I have so far had a couple former employees of companies contact me to say that they too had always been suspicious when they saw so many false bills, but so far no one has come forward to reveal an actual training program of lying or anything like that.