Neurotech - the weblog of Luke Reeves

I think this chapter is closed in Bell. I called them, talked for 10 or 15 minutes, and I was really polite. I didn’t even swear once! I called Bell Mobility, not the collection company, and I found out that Bell Mobility doesn’t sell the account to the collection agencies anymore. They actually just outsource the collection process. Guess what that means?

That they’re not responsible for anything the collection people do or say!

Does that sound familiar? Anyways, I freaked out and explained about the collection agent wanting fifty bucks and gave him basically a smaller version of my entry from last night (minus the FONT tags). He told me that the account is still with Bell Mobility and as I said, the don’t outright sell it to the agencies anymore. He then verified that they received the money and “called off the dogs” so to speak. And then he asked for the name and extension of the collection agent that contacted me and assured me he was going to e-mail their manager about this. Riiiiiight, we’ll see.

Anyways, he says it’s all cool and that this won’t affect my credit rating. In a about three months I’m going to pull my record from Equifax and make sure.

Alright, I’m going to try to type this as I’m like livid with anger. You all remember when I cancelled my Bell Mobility account and bitched about how fucked their billing department was? Things just got even crazier. First though, look at what I’ve paid Bell Mobility. This is what I get for marrying a woman in Japan :-)

• March 23 2005 - $418.49
• April 18 2005 - $363.29 (a slow month)
• May 29 2005 - $634.72
• July 15 2005 - $505.00

That July was my last Bell Mobility bill, and my first Telus Mobility bill. Chie was also here by then so the cost went significantly down and we’re paying about $80 a month for two mobile phones.

Last week I get a letter from Bell to my parents address (which was my main billing address with them) about owing $51.78 to Bell Mobility. The letter from Bell was received on September 16, 2005 and paid in full the Monday after receiving it (two days ago).

After that - today - my parents get two more letters. The first is from Bell and is dated August 26, 2005. It says that I must pay this bill within five days or it’ll go to a collection agency. The other letter is - can you guess? From the collection agency! A “Nor Don Collection Network” to be specific, demanding the fifty bucks! So Bell actually passed a fifty dollar outstanding fee to a collection agency before fucking notifying me! I’m a goddamned Bell home phoneline customer - and I have a pristine payment record with them. Let me summarise the table above - in four months time I paid $1921.50 to Bell Mobility. Let me repeat that:

$1921.50

Did you get that?

$1921.50 in 4 months

And then, without calling me (at my Bell home phone) or my parents (which was registered as the phone number for my billing address) these morons transfer $50 to a collection agent. Not to mention that nobody can figure out why I suddenly owe them fifty dollars after paying my final bill in total.

So the trail so far is:

• Bell fucking me in October of 2004
• Bell still fucking me in November of 2004
• And finally this post!

So now what? I call Bell tomorrow I guess, and hope that they can actually repeal the charge from the collection agent. The last thing I want to do is call the collection agent themselves - I mean, what percentage of people call them saying that they don’t owe them money? 90%? Shit.

That’s it I guess. I’m gonna uh, I don’t know, take a bunch of Tylenol Flu Nighttime medication and knock myself out until their office is open tomorrow morning. I will solve this though. On one hand I hope they can’t correct it and that I take it to a lawyer. I’m stunned and shocked that they can do this to this many customers and still operate a business. I’m stunned that the CRTC will have nothing to do with the people being screwed by Bell Mobility. And I’m stunned that I’ve only ever seen their billing fuckup referenced in one newspaper, and that was so long ago that I can’t even find the link! Anyways, I’ll post more if anything changes. Jesus jumped-up Christ.

The nightmare with Bell Mobility continues. Jesus Christ. So after using my phone for about a month in Toronto, I still get no invoices or bills - either in the mail or electronically through the Royal Bank billing service. So I’ve been calling my wife, who lives in Japan, from my cell phone to hers quite a bit. I was a little scared about the bill and rates, so I call the Bell Mobility customer care center. Apparently, my current bill - even with lots of calls to a Japan mobile phone - is only $68. That’s a little strange, right? Oh, and the call center hung up three times on me in the middle of speaking with reps. Very nice. The best part was the introduction “voice message from the President” explaining how the problems are now resolved.

So now the second nightmare begins. I originally got this phone from work, from a guy there that used it first. I started paying the bills, replaced the handset itself, and transferred the ownership to myself. So I’ve been paying for this account for about four years now, and it probably amounts to on average about $200 a month.

Anyways…. The customer care dude says to me oh - there’s something wrong here. This phone is not registered to you - and then proceeds to read me the information about the first owner of the phone. What. The. Fuck. So then he says he can’t change that - and since they’re having problems, don’t pay anything and call back in a few weeks.

That was last week. Today, my phone stopped working - probably a network issue - when I happened to be in front of the Bell store at Yonge and Eglinton. I freak out and walk into the store, and freak out on the staff there. I pointed out several times that I knew they were not responsible for these horrible problems, but that this was the last straw and I wanted to cancel my account after not having an invoice for almost half a year, and not being considered the “owner” of the phone - even though I’m obligated to pay the bills.

So what do these jerks tell me? Well, because I’m not the registered owner of the phone, I can’t cancel the account. I’m not even kidding. And my parents have been trying to cancel their account for months.

The best part of the whole affair is the Bell Mobility advertisements on the TTC. The byline is something like, “Come to where the happiest mobile customers are.” That’s just great.

I did manage to get a supposed “back door” number to customer service - 1(888) 457-7308. No idea if it works, since nobody anywhere at Bell will talk to me since I’m not the “owner” of my phone. Now I don’t really know what to do; I’m obviously not technically responsible for anything that happens on or to the phone, and they obviously can’t even track my usage. Usually I’m a fairly moral person and would not screw Bell Mobility out of their money - but what the hell do I do? I can’t cancel it, even though they can fuck my credit rating for not paying. Very nice.

Update: The CBC has an article about the problems.

Update Number 2: See my latest tale of being screwed here.

Bell Mobility has - I guess - revamped their billing system. I know this because I haven’t received a bill for three months now, and my parents aren’t able to get anyone to cancel their cell phone. I would like to use my phone when I get to Toronto, and I always pay my bills on time, but judging from the clusterfuck that’s going on there I have no idea whether or not it will work. And I’m not alone; other people are having the same problems. Maybe I’ll switch to Rogers (since I like the whole SIM card thing).