Yesterday, I had the very unpleasant experience of being yelled at, told repeatedly 'you are a
grown up', interrupted, asked if I always see the glass half empty, asked if when it rains if I
ask the radio station for a refund on the forecast, told I should be very grateful that Telus had
already reversed $170 worth of the bill in question, and that I had no reason at all to be angry
because Telus is a private business in the business of making money.
Amid everything else, she insisted on comparing calls from Montreal with calls from China, because 'the principle is the same' and, dripping with sarcasm, said 'ooh, we're getting personal now' after asking me where I thought my responsibilities lay. After repeatedly explaining what my complaint was, she continued to talk about the part that was my fault and how it was entirely my responsibility while ignoring the core of my complaint. She explained repeatedly that Telus policy was this or that, and that all the information is readily available on the website. For nearly an hour.
A charming experience, I promise you.
Until yesterday, I had several reasons not to conclude my business with Telus, or Telus
Mobility and many reasons to stay, and today I have very many reasons to leave and none to
stay. Until that conversation, with a very sarcastic Customer Care Associate, or whatever her
title is, I actually felt it was reasonably important to me to keep my email address of more
than a decade. I do not feel that way anymore.
The core of my complaint is that when I called to find out the details of a long distance charge on my cellphone bill, I found out that instead of excellent customer care that I thought I had received regarding a long distance issue with my daughter's phone a week earlier, I had actually been given a mere increment of 500% of what it could have cost. Better, true, than the 1000% it had been... but of all the weasely and obnoxious manoeuvres I have encountered after the fact, this one wins.
My daughter was in Montreal, and based on what turned out to be outdated information (me calling her as one of My5 was billed to her number as long distance, as well as her calls back to her local area. I agree, I was confused when I expected the long distance billing to be the same as it used to be: call a local-to-your-area-code number and you don't pay, call a long-distance-to-you area code and you do. The last time I was out of my area and calling, this was the information I received, and I was billed to talk to the woman at the home I was standing in, and not when I called my house –but since my house is one of My5, and the number I was calling was certainly long distance to my phone, you can see where the confusion arises...) my daughter's account had 50% of the long-distance billed reversed.
Which, at the time, I thought was generous and beyond what was necessary.
Imagine my surprise, then, when the rep I spoke to about how to find the Airtime Details (no,
it's not under Airtime Details on either of the two 'View eBill screens', it's under View PDF,
which every normal human would obviously expect), he said 'next time she goes she should
get the $40 unlimited long-distance plan.
Pardon?
You mean that at $40, she could have phoned everyone she knows in Canada for her entire
minute allotment that month, at no additional cost? You mean that the 982 minutes billed at
35 cents a minute is nothing more than making sure Telus squeezes 100% of whatever possible out of every single customer. And I should, according to Georgia your sarcastic customer service rep, feel grateful for only having to pay five times the package amount?
Having spent a number of frustrating hours trying to navigate the website, and not ever having called *611 for less than 10 minutes, no matter how simple the question might be (it took nearly 12 minutes just to get the corporate mailing address), I can't tell you how surprised I was this
morning to find out that it just gets worse.
I finally managed to find the add-on long-distance packages on the website (add-on might
make sense to someone, but I expect to be able to find 'long distance' under 'service' because,
it's a long distance service... or perhaps 'packages' because it's a package) and I find that the
company makes a profit doing business at $15 for unlimited Telus-to-Telus calling within
Canada. So, even the $40 is nearly three times what is, according to their business plan and
service pricing they offer, necessary for for them to make a profit.
Both cellphones are under ongoing contracts, and I will not be paying ten cents to cancel either before they expire, but they will not be renewed with Telus Mobility and as a direct result of their crap service, I will no longer be dealing with Telus in any way --not Koodo, home phone, or the new Telus TV I was looking forward to getting this fall.
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