The first thing I asked was if there was a known problem in my area, this frustrated the dude on the other end who was trying to get through his script. I repeatedly asked him to elevate me to a higher tech support tier but he wouldn’t do it. I had to go through all the crap they make you do like rebooting my computer even though I told him it was a problem that was even affecting my VOIP. After about 2.5 hours on the phone with this dude he finally elevated me. The next tier guy called me a liar when I was explaining that I had a connection but around 95% packet loss. After speaking with that dude for a while, he finally said that there was a problem in the area and that it should be cleared in a couple of hours but still insisted on booking a dude to come look at the problem.
The problem cleared by the next morning, and luckily the bell dude called me so I canceled him.

A couple of years ago when Rogers was still Rogers@home, I had a similar problem. I spoke to a tech support dude in Toronto who told me there was a problem in the area right away. The phone call was about a minute long and he credited my bill for the downtime.

The question in my mind is, was it really cost-effective to outsource the support? And if you are going to outsource, wouldn’t it make sense to let the people on the other end think and end the call in 5 minutes instead of approaching three hours?

My former employers had a franchised BellWorld store and had been in the business since 1979 and even they admit that Ma Bell is a Whore.

Also, both my parents, my sister, and Meghan’s mom have had billing issues with them recently. As soon as my dad got that bill, and I recommended several alternatives, he said he was switching first thing the next day. Meghan’s mum is waiting to see how our current provider is in the long run before deciding. My sister long ago dropped them, but they keep charging her credit card — for someone else’s account!! Fun!

Won’t be long before I have everyone I know sworn off Bell for good.

electrons are the source of all the hate i feel in this life.

I agree about the issues with the cap, but I consistently go over it and I haven’t been charged extra. I also told them to end all sales calls a long time ago and they haven’t called back since. I had one issue with them trying to contact April about her cellphone (and being pretty rude about it) and they gave us a discount on the monthly bill because of the complaint.

If I noticed any throttling on BT traffic, I’d be just as pissed. For some reason though, I seem to be exempt from both the monthly cap and packet shaping. Hope they don’t notice. ;)

I’ll drop you an email tomorrow.

Also, I find fault with Rogers having sales people call me and offer me unlimited high speed Internet connections, and then hang up when I point out on their web page where it outlines the download limits. Oh, and of course the sales people are “free agents” and “off site”, so there’s no records of which employee called who.