Review by matt23 - Location: Barrie, ON, Canada
- Cost: $35 per month (12 month contract)
Decent service in the past p2p throttling, download caps, lying, billing errors Avoid at all costs
| Pre Sales information: Install Co-ordination: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:
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The actions Bell’s chosen to take over the last few months are absolutely despicable. Between billing errors, p2p throttling and downright lying, I've ended up canceling my service in sheer frustration and disgust. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I will never willingly use *any* Bell services again, and I’m going to actively deter friends and family from doing the same.
Some of my more recent experiences with Bell are as follows.
-Billing errors. I was on an unlimited contract, and despite this, I suddenly started to be billed for bandwidth. Calling to get this corrected was not the trivial affair one might of expected considering my contract was listed right there for the rep to see. I ended up having to have my call escalated multiple times, and in the end, while the supervisor modified my bill, I was told that if I was charged for bandwidth again, I’d have to just keep calling back as they could not manually change my account back to unlimited.
-p2p throttling. I’m not a huge downloader (I’ve very slightly exceeded the 60GB cap 2x during multiple years of service), but having my internet access restricted, especially without being informed first, really annoyed me. To top it off, when I mentioned the throttling as one of my reasons for cancellation, I was told I’d have to pay a $100 fee for early termination of my service contract. In my view, and the view of many others, the sudden p2p throttling constituted a reduction in service, so the cancellation fee should have been waved. Bell vehemently denied that this was the case. In the end, I had to go through multiple tiers of very unpleasant customer service reps in order to avoid paying $100 fee, and even then it was waved only on a technicality.
Of course, they could not manually prevent the $100 charge from automatically being applied to my next bill (similar to the bandwidth charges mentioned above) so I was given a reference number and told I'd have to once again call back once the next bill is issued to have it adjusted. Fun!
As far as the p2p throttling itself goes, in all honesty, I recognize that it's Bell's right to impose such traffic management on their network (though I certainly don't agree with it). It's the fact that Bell broke their end of the contract without even informing me, and then expected me to pony up $100 to cancel my service, that really pissed me off.
-Lying. Certain Bell reps seem to have a penchant for blatantly lying (maybe they’re just very misinformed? Maybe they're just repeating company policy?) to their customers. As an example of this, I was recently informed by a Bell rep that all p2p traffic is illegal in Canada and that ALL ISPs now throttle it. Both statements are of course false. I’m sure the vast majority of Bell employees are good, decent people, but I definitely had a string of bad luck in my dealings with them (despite my always trying to be polite), especially during my cancellation experience.
To conclude, I advise anyone considering Bell to look elsewhere. They offered decent service in the past and may offer decent service again in the future, but for the present, it’s just about as bad as it gets.
Update: I’ve received what I hope to be my last bill. There were a few strange charges on it that I needed clarified, so I posted in the Sympatico Direct Forum here at broadbandreports.com explaining my situation. The fellow I ended up speaking to was extremely knowledgeable, helpful and courteous. In fact, everything was clarified and resolved to my satisfaction in a matter of minutes. I’ve thusly increased the tech support rating slightly, just to reflect the fact that there are still decent people working at Bell.
Update April/1/2008: Bell is now throttling the p2p traffic of its wholesalers, so even though I'm no longer a direct customer, the company is still managing to screw me.
member for 16.4 years, 25 visits, last login: 12.4 years ago
updated 16 years ago
root9 join:2005-04-08 Kitchener, ON 2 edits |
root9
Member
2007-Dec-5 2:39 am
Hints for you and everyone ...If you see a business lying or cheating the best way is to treat them is on a business level. This way you have same powers as they do. 1 You just became a small business. 2 record all conversations, statistics, bills, etc. and keep detailed records. 3 make an invoice of services not fully provided, lost due to them and time in dealing with their manipulation, lies etc. Whatever it has cost you at your supposed business rate. [usual small business rate is between 20 and 80 per hour] 4 send it to them 5 wait for their call [if they don't call within 10 business days they are liable] 6 tell them you will be charging them in court or small claims court if they don't comply with your invoice, it only costs 70 to 90 dollars to take them to small claims court. That's still cheaper than paying disconnection fees. This is also your chance to deal with them about who pays what or doesn't pay. For Bell Sympatico you want to send your complaints and invoices straight to persident of internet services, Kevin W. Crull. His direct email: kevin.crull@bell.ca Related article and contact info here [under first reply]: » www.ellenroseman.com/?p=21Your other option is to charge them for Fraud. You will be much happier with results if you do it right Also complain to CRTC » www.crtc.gc.ca/ and The Competition Bureau » www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/c ··· Document and don't stop till they answer you. I bug them once a week Next option is class action suit. And it's getting very close to that time. | |
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Stevenson
Anon
2007-Dec-19 4:26 pm
I am just another unhappy BELL customerThis message is my outcry for the way I was and I am treated as a former BELL customer. So far I exhausted all my options to solve my problem by calling the BELL support numbers. I am sending you all this message hoping that someone will be able to help me.
The whole story started in September when I was called by a solicitor on behalf of BELL Canada as part of the "WIN BACK" campaign.
The agent after asking many questions about our existing internet/phone/cable services offered us a better deal. We happily accepted it, but later on reading the documents we realized that some of the information presented by the agent was misleading.
We were also experiencing technical difficulties with the phone line from day one. In the first two weeks of the contract we canceled the ExpreeVU service, placed many complains about the phone line not working properly and also called Bell Sympatico with the intent of canceling this service too, explaining the whole situation. The customer representative patronizingly assured us that everything will be fixed and we will not be liable for any penalties later on if we decide to cancel our Bell Sympatico service.
At the end of October with the phone still not working properly we canceled the remaining phone and internet service. After the cancellation we received a couple bills with charges not too clear to us. We called into the call center many time trying to solve our problem without success.
I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the reference# or employee# given to us in a previous call was not logged into your system or in our case the current representative was not aware of the agreement reached with the previous representative from an earlier call. A good example of one of these cases is the one from December 7, 2007 1:45PM when I called BELL call center. At this time I spoke to a customer representative and later to her supervisor. The supervisor didn'tt show too much understanding. She gave me a reference number and told me that in 5 business days we will be contacted by someone who would be able to help me. Today is December 19, 2007 and I still did not get a call from BELL. | |
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