Well it depends on the situation. If you're a normal consumer, whatever you sign your contract for is a lot more straightforward. Once you change your plan your actual right to the things that you signed your contract for goes down to about 0.
If you're a corporate individual or EPP customer its a bit different. Say Joe blow is a teacher and works for OPSEU, signs a contract for what you have and then 3 days later gets fired. 9999 times out of 10000 he will keep what he's got and life goes on. What is more interesting is when it comes around time to sign a new contract. Once you're no longer employed there or your corporate contract expires you aren't supposed to be able to keep what you have. Hypothetically however (and I do say hypothetically) if someone in a store simply glossed over those facts or didn't care, one might hypothetically be able to keep what they have. Ymmv.
I see. I'm pretty much not where I was when I got the plan but was told when I upgrade my phone it'll just be an upgrade and re-up on the 3 years and it'll keep going on that way until the contract dies out in some way. So I wanted to double check that.
Anyone have another Revengeance code? I can trade it for BioShock, Tomb Raider, Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto. Revengeance not showing up for me. : /
I see. I'm pretty much not where I was when I got the plan but was told when I upgrade my phone it'll just be an upgrade and re-up on the 3 years and it'll keep going on that way until the contract dies out in some way. So I wanted to double check that.
Yeah I'm not the gospel obviously as things always change, but the OPSEU hasn't changed in ages so I'm not worried. If you've already got the 6gb all of the other things are most likely built into the opseu. I've seen opseu without unltd incoming so I'm not sure about that feature expiring or not. The only thing you might need to do is have LTE provisioning on your account to actually give you the insane data speeds. Some people need it added manually...
Dang. Is that a citywide plan, or one of their new plans? I pay $30 a month but only get 50min, unlim text/mms, voice/callID and data saver with Koodo.
EDIT: Just checked.. Christ. I've been on this stupid plan for a couple of months now since the new one launched and I can change for free. Duhhh.. switching over now. Thanks dude.
Yeah I'm not the gospel obviously as things always change, but the OPSEU hasn't changed in ages so I'm not worried. If you've already got the 6gb all of the other things are most likely built into the opseu. I've seen opseu without unltd incoming so I'm not sure about that feature expiring or not. The only thing you might need to do is have LTE provisioning on your account to actually give you the insane data speeds. Some people need it added manually...
I'm pretty sure my 6GB will work for LTE, they said as much when I added it. And the Unlimited incoming is part of the original 22 bucks or whatever it is minus the 30 for data.
We all use the same metrics. It's primarily based off the feedback surveys but also takes into account popular consumer sentiment, call back percentages and a bunch of other stats. I don't just regurgitate stats because that is pointless like you said. That being said, these are sufficiently comprehensive that I feel confident saying the vast majority of Bell customers are happy, or at the very least not mad lol.
All corporate accounts and corporate consumer care is done in Canada. No company can afford to outsource that kind of stuff. All of the corporate consumer care managers and support staff are insanely well trained for good reason. Can't afford to make a mistake on something like OPSEU or IBM.
Not mad. The new standard. I'll likely be switching when my contract is up. There just isn't enough difference between rogers and bell. High prices for a bad product. Their internet packages are laughable and when people can get unlimited everything at a cheaper price, I'm surprised Bell and Rogers haven't woken up yet.
I'm talking about mobile phones brah. Landline internet is a whole different story. I think Shaw has unlimited internet but it costs like $200 a month. I don't even have home internet, I just use my cell lol.
Koodos customer service actually is rated number one in Canada. It's interesting looking at the internal data and how it relates to performance in all aspects of the telecom business. Bell actually does have the biggest and fastest LTE network, although Telus is very close behind on both speed and size. Rogers operates on a single pipeline for voice and data, hence why their service is both slower and has less quality. That's why their advertising says "the reliable network" lol.
Personally, I admire the marketers at Rogers. they straddle the borderline between being complete geniuses and outright liars. WE HAVE UNLIMITED PLANS FOR $27*
*with 150 minutes
Also I love the Rogers ads with "we were the first with LTE network" garbage. It's like saying I was the first man to run the 100m in 14 seconds and the having Donovan Bailey and usain bolt pull up right behind you in world record times just after you finish the race.
Bell is actually second in customer service satisfaction
Someone actually pointed this out a month back and I can confirm that it works. It seemed like bullshit at the time but they are owned by the same entity so it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility.
Whether you are a firm believer in your company's customer satisfaction metrics or simply towing the company line, I think it's unfair to paint anyone who's had problems with Bell as wrong or only part of a vocal minority. There are very real criticisms about Bell's tendency to overbill and just as many about their lack of prompt response in refunding customers. Though this is anecdotal, all I hear from Bell (and just any Canadian telecom, to be fair), is complaint after complaint about their exorbitant pricing schemes and lackluster customer service. So much so, that I find it very hard to believe that Bell is "rated #2 in customer service satisfaction" ... unless of course we just mean 2nd out of the big 3 telecoms. Is there any public research data that you can link to to support this? A simple, but non-scientific google search for "Bell customer service satisfaction" brings up more results about shoddy service, than anything else.
On a more personal (and just as anecdotal) note, I personally have had a really horrible time with Bell's landline customer service. It may vary from department to department, and hell, things might have even changed since my family was with Bell, but our last experience might as well have been criminal. My parents are old and not really technologically adept--traits I suspect most of Bell's customer base to possess--so they didn't really understand what was wrong with their landline after they had stopped receiving calls for a few months. And yet they were continuing to pay their monthly bills. Again, this was clearly my parents' fault. But it was clear that the mistake was done on Bell's end, where presumably a technician must have crossed our wires with someone else's (we were receiving calls asking for a South Asian man). So after hearing them complain about it, I looked through their bills and realized that they were also being overcharged. Overcharged AND receiving sub-par (non-existent, in this case) service. That's what I tend to hear when on the subject of Bell.
Furious, I called in for them and spoke to some of the most asinine reps I've ever had the displeasure of talking to. They insisted that my parents be charged for a mistake that THEY made (they wouldn't even know where our phone lines would be located, let alone how to tamper with them), and when confronted about their billing errors, proceeded to issue a refund that took several more calls and weeks to receive. We ended up cancelling our service.
This personal experience, along with Bell's history (I will never vouch for them due to their participation/initiative in usage-based billing and network neutrality), leads me to have a very hard time believing that Bell is in anyway satisfying a majority of its customers. Unless those customers are like my parents. Look, I'm not trying to attack you. I hope it doesn't come off that way. And I'm sure Bell does an excellent job providing for its employees. But I sure as hell will be skeptical about any claims to Bell's customer service satisfaction.
On a more personal (and just as anecdotal) note, I personally have had a really horrible time with Bell's landline customer service. It may vary from department to department, and hell, things might have even changed since my family was with Bell, but our last experience might as well have been criminal. My parents are old and not really technologically adept--traits I suspect most of Bell's customer base to possess--so they didn't really understand what was wrong with their landline after they had stopped receiving calls for a few months. And yet they were continuing to pay their monthly bills. Again, this was clearly my parents' fault. But it was clear that the mistake was done on Bell's end, where presumably a technician must have crossed our wires with someone else's (we were receiving calls asking for a South Asian man). So after hearing them complain about it, I looked through their bills and realized that they were also being overcharged. Overcharged AND receiving sub-par (non-existent, in this case) service. That's what I tend to hear when on the subject of Bell.
Furious, I called in for them and spoke to some of the most asinine reps I've ever had the displeasure of talking to. They insisted that my parents be charged for a mistake that THEY made (they wouldn't even know where our phone lines would be located, let alone how to tamper with them), and when confronted about their billing errors, proceeded to issue a refund that took several more calls and weeks to receive. We ended up cancelling our service.
I know this is getting way off-topic, but I can't believe how similar this it to my history with Bell.
They crossed my land line phone with another person and it took them four months to fix it after having more than a dozen service calls to look into it. To make matters worse, they insisted that we were at fault for the cross and charged us for the service visits claiming that we were using cordless phones and that is why the lines were crossed... even after buying a corded phone to prove them wrong. In the end the only way to convince them was by having the other person try to use the phone at the same time as me being on the phone with the tech, then the problem was magically fixed in five minutes.
The fact that they try to get you to agree to pay for the tech visit before they send one out by making you feel like it is your fault is why I will never agree to them having anything but poor customer service.
This personal experience, along with Bell's history (I will never vouch for them due to their participation/initiative in usage-based billing and network neutrality), leads me to have a very hard time believing that Bell is in anyway satisfying a majority of its customers. Unless those customers are like my parents. Look, I'm not trying to attack you. I hope it doesn't come off that way. And I'm sure Bell does an excellent job providing for its employees. But I sure as hell will be skeptical about any claims to Bell's customer service satisfaction.
It's been my experience that people tend to think their carrier is great until they run into a problem which makes them rage and think their carrier is the worst one ever. Personal anecdotes in this sort of thing are very unreliable. You need a big picture to really see the odds. I would trust Onion_Relish when he says that he has access to a recent study that says that Koodo is #1 and Bell is #2. He works in customer service, and they (meaning Bell, as a corporation) would love to figure out what Koodo's doing right and how they can copy them to steal the #1 crown.
I'm currently on Wind and I fully expect to someday get screwed because of it (even though my current experience has been without incident), but it's cheap so I'm okay with it (probably not the words I'll be using when something goes wrong, but you get what I mean).
And my brother is currently on Koodo and he was just the other day raging and telling me that their customer service is terrible. I have no doubt that (on the whole) their customer service averages out as #1.
As for Bell, I believe they were/are trying to scheme domination over the next over the frontier of the Internet by putting forward UBB, trying to kill off Netflix Canada, while buying up space in the growing IPTV biz. I don't doubt that their customer service is #2.
If someone wants a good Internet service provider, I recommend Telus, because they seem to be too lazy/incompetent to be evil. And that's the best kind of evil.
True Cheerilee, I had unlimited download with Telus for a few years because they seemed to just be too incompetent or not care enough to establish a limit system. I think they finally changed it, not sure, I am with Bell now.
Bell wise, I have my own horror story, having been told by at least 5 different person, in the last 6 months "wow this is the first time I see this issue in 2,5, 10 years here". I know that personal stories are not relevant, but I don't know any telecommunication company that has such a bad reputation for customer service and problems handling. Almost everyone I know told me that I should not switch to Bell. However, I have a feeling that by now it might be a case of word of mouth turned bad, like 1 person has a problem and 10 of their friends will bitch at Bell for forever, turning their own friends into the same.
Fake edit: As I wrote this, a senior manager from Bell just called me. My problem should be solved early February. I have been told that many times but my problem never escalated to a senior manager until now. I believe!
It's been my experience that people tend to think their carrier is great until they run into a problem which makes them rage and think their carrier is the worst one ever. Personal anecdotes in this sort of thing are very unreliable. You need a big picture to really see the odds. I would trust Onion_Relish when he says that he has access to a recent study that says that Koodo is #1 and Bell is #2. He works in customer service, and they (meaning Bell, as a corporation) would love to figure out what Koodo's doing right and how they can copy them to steal the #1 crown.
Yeah, I think that's a fair statement to make. That's why I was hoping to see if there were any public records of these surveys. Nevertheless, I have a friend whose family are with Bell mobility (corporate plan I believe) and they have had no problems with them whatsoever. My brother-in-law is also with Bell internet (his area doesn't get TekSavvy) and he's had no problems with Bell either.
Honestly, I don't have much faith in ANY of the telecoms in this country and mostly relegate their claims for customer service supremacy to corporate doublespeak.
I know this is getting way off-topic, but I can't believe how similar this it to my history with Bell.
They crossed my land line phone with another person and it took them four months to fix it after having more than a dozen service calls to look into it. To make matters worse, they insisted that we were at fault for the cross and charged us for the service visits claiming that we were using cordless phones and that is why the lines were crossed... even after buying a corded phone to prove them wrong. In the end the only way to convince them was by having the other person try to use the phone at the same time as me being on the phone with the tech, then the problem was magically fixed in five minutes.
The fact that they try to get you to agree to pay for the tech visit before they send one out by making you feel like it is your fault is why I will never agree to them having anything but poor customer service.
That is exactly the same thing that happened to my parents! It's ridiculous! The bolded part pissed me off so much, I cancelled my service right then and there (everyone in our family owns a cell phone), and then proceeded to make several more calls and wait several more weeks to get a refund.
I'm not here elaborate on who sucks and who is awesome. This is a deals thread, not whose cell provider screwed them over. So I will point out two things before I take my leave of the thread.
1: as was just pointed out anecdotal evidence is worthless. Even if you saw 16000 online complaints, that would still mean that throughly 98% of Bell's customers were not complaining. The reason I pointed out that its ok for people to be "not mad" was simply a reference to a bill mentality. For many people, cell phones are now a bill to simply suffer through like tv, hydro, gas, etc. I won't give any numbers for complaints at Bell but what I will point out is that some of them are valid, many of them are not. I had someone file a complaint about the fact that she had three contracts running in parallel on her own account and she wanted two of them cancelled with no penalty. Her exact words were "i shouldn't be held responsible for the contracts I sign" - this isn't to say every situation is like this or that the ones mentioned in this thread reflect this in any way shape or form, but Rogers had a 21% increase in complaints filed last quarter, and I guarantee you approximately 70% are simply not valid.
2: I don't stand to gain anything by identifying myself as a Bell employee. I don't get sign up bonuses or incentives of any kind. The only reason I identify myself as such is so that people will believe me if I post something like I did on the last page or if there are other things I can help with like getting someone a job or plan advice. Obviously my data is internal so its not like I can show my shiny graphs and what not, but you'll have to take my word on it at this point in time (i'd much rather show you my national phone backorder list so you could have a chuckle at Nokia and HTC's expense).
Once again, let's drop the telecom stuff for now, someone find me a deal on a white vita.
I am using Wind. Reception is really inconsistent:
Stoufville: Officially not a covered area, but 3-4 bars in my friend's home.
Markham: Sometimes great, sometimes 1 bar.
Scarborough: No reception in some mall.
Downtown: generally ok but no reception in one of the high rise condo.
In general I think outside is usually ok, but indoor is a hit and miss.
I think Rogers has better CS than Bell. First of all the contractor that Rogers hire seems to be better - the installer installed everything properly for no fee and show up on time. The Bell one did a no show 3 times, installed it wrong (took 2 years to discover, took nearly 2 months arguing and then they tried to charge me $90 to fix it) and cost $110 for one stupid phone jack.
Bell seems to have better first level support, but if the issue cannot be handled by them then good luck getting it fixed. Rogers first level support seems to be worse, but as long as you get into second level things can be done quickly.
Much like with Paypal, Amazon favours the buyer so there's really no risk outside of rare cases where you don't get the item. But Amazon will refund you without much issue.
I've ordered at least a dozen things via various Amazon marketplace sellers without a problem.
You can look at reviews for the sellers. Most of the big ones are okay. If anything goes wrong, Amazon will usually take care of it for you.
I've sold a few things as a Marketplace Seller before. It was a while ago but Amazon actually holds your money for a month or so. And you must ship out the item in a couple days.
So I'd trust anyone with a decent rating.
I trust it a lot more than I do eBay at least.
A painfully large cut, even. I sold one of my Dark Souls CEs for $90 shortly after they came out - I paid $55 after tax originally, I believe.
Amazon took about $16 of that. $5 was charged to the buyer as default videogame shipping (you cannot change this). Of course, the Dark Souls CE is a ridiculous size box and Canada Post parcel rates are insulting. Where a regular game case would have only cost two bucks to ship I got hit $11.
Ultimately I made less than twenty bucks, and I know Ebay would have been a better bet - I was just curious about the process of selling on Amazon.
I dunno if this is common knowledge, but I saw Sonic Generations is on clearance ($10 brand new) for 360 and ps3 at futureshop... sold out online, but still seems to be in stock at many locations locally for me (edmonton)...
Yeah eBay's definitely better if you're looking for some returns. Just takes a bit more effort.
Listing on Amazon's relatively painless (and free). I also like that they deposit the payment directly into your bank account. I don't mind making payments with Paypal, but receiving them is annoying.
Not sure if this is considered a deal but I pre-ordered Sly-4 (thieves in time) ps3 from best buy today 39.99 (comes with a free vita version) and when I went to pay there was a promotional 5 dollars off so after taxes it came to 36.99 with free shipping.
Anyone know why its not a full price 59.99 dollar game? Its not some mini game collection I hope lol
I complained in the Toronto thread, but I'll do it here too. I hate Canada Post almost as much as UPS now. Our postman rarely attempts an actual delivery, and receiving a slip in our mailbox to notify of us of a pickup is 50/50 over the past year. I went to pick up a package today after 6pm, as the slip said pickup after 5pm, but they said it was still on the truck.
Still, not as bad as a year ago when our Club Nintendo reward came and we received a delivery notice. For a week, the post office told me it wasn't available yet every day I checked and when they finally investigated, they found it was sitting at the post office for too long and was being shipped back to Vancouver.
Although after I complained to Amazon and UPS about our snarky unreliable driver we've been receiving our packages at our door much more consistently. Maybe I should try that with Canada Post.
edit: Swansea, Toronto if anyone in the area has similar experiences.
I did the trade 2 for 60$ gift card at Futureshop but I wanted Fire Emblem at BestBuy for the 5$ off on pre-order. I entered my Futureshop gift card number on the Best Buy order and it worked! I did not know that their gift cards were interchangeable! I know that they are owned by the same company but did not expect it to work.
