Last month I wrote about why I canceled my Bell ADSL and moved over to Teksavvy. I ended the post with a question:

Who thinks Bell will pull my Teksavvy service when they cancel my Sympatico service?

Well I’ve decided to apologize publicly for my lack of faith in Bell. As a former shareholder I should have known that you would come through. So here I go:

The Apology

I’m sorry Bell for thinking that you were going to cancel my Teksavvy service when you went to cancel Bell ADSL. You did a fine job in making sure my internet service was up the entire time. Its my fault,  I should of realized that you were going to cancel my phone line instead!!!

The Aftermath

Apparently when I called up and said “I’d like to cancel my ADSL service because I’m moving to another provider” it was code for “I want to cancel my ADSL and phone line and move over to a dry loop”. When my fiance noticed that the phone was out she let me know and I called Bell right away. The woman told me that I was lucky that I called when I did because they hadn’t completed the cancellation process. Had it been completely canceled I would have had to wait 3-5 business days to get it fixed. Lucky me. All in all it took them something in the range of 6-15 hours to fix their own mistake.

It gets interesting when I called Bell the next day to get a credit since my fiance had to use cell phone minutes. She wanted 3 months credit and by god I was going to try and get it. At first the Bell rep offered to credit me 1 day for when the service was down. That was nice of her but I wanted more. My subconscious wanted to be reimbursed for 11 years ADSL outages that I never called to get a credit on. She than offered me a one month’s credit I said thanks but no thanks. Time to talk to the manager.

The manager quoted me some text from the customers guide and pretty much said I was lucky for even get 1 months credit. Now I was at an impasse. I want a hard phone line and there is no where else to get it but Bell, so I have no legs to stand. If there was an alternative provider I would have canceled right there and then. I did the only thing I could do, I thanked her for the credit, told her she was quite lovely to talk to and then proceeded to state that the only thing reliable about Bells customer service is its inability to be reliable. Ya I was calm the entire time I was speaking and was never “rude” so hopefully she doesn’t take it personally. It did make me feel better though. I guess I should be thankful that Bell allows me to continue to be a customer because they are doing me a favor.

What does it say when a company makes you feel they are doing you a favour by letting you be a customer?

-mfd-

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Yesterday I wrote an article about “Saving on Internet Service“. Many of the points ended with a similar message which is a segue into this article. People seem to be willing to over pay for various services such as internet, phone, and cable, just to name a few. They are unwilling to pick up that phone and make the call that will save them at least $10 a month for a year on a service they subscribe to. This is money saved with no change in the service that they receive. Now people don’t want to make that call for various reasons:

1: Time (aka lazy) - People think the savings isn’t worth their time to make that 5 minute phone call. My brother is a classic example “Pfft. I don’t care and it’s not worth my time”. I usually follow up that statement by asking him for $10 since money doesn’t seem to matter to him.

2: Fear - People lack confidence so they have a fear of rejection or that the service person on the phone will think they’re cheap so they put off making the call.

3: Lack of Knowledge - Companies are out to make money and if there is room to make money then there is room to bring down the price. People don’t seem to know this and just accept the listed price.

How can I start saving money?

The process consists of 4 easy steps and will probably take less then an hour to run all of your service providers through it:

Step 1 - Call your service provider and ask to speak to someone in billing or retentions.

Step 2 - Say the following “Hello, I’ve been looking over my bill and I don’t know if I can continue paying this much. Are there any promotions or discounts you can apply to help bring down the price?”.

Step 3 - The person can usually give you several options to help save. Choose one and save,

Step 4 - Rinse and Repeat yearly. Many of the savings you receive are promotional offers that will expire so once a year repeat the process.

So what is the value of a phone call?

If you are using a major provider and currently have no promotions applied to your account, you can save at least $10/month on each of services I listed (internet, phone, cable). So the value of a phone call is $120/year or $360 in total. But this is only the beginning. You may be able to save even more if you try and apply this process to your other services. Give it a try and let me know.

What type of services have you been able to save on and how much?

-mfd-

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I’ve worked in the Internet service industry for almost 10 year and along with my recent change in internet service providers I’ve put together a list of ways to save on internet service. Here is what my experience has taught me:

1: Understand your Usage Patterns – this is probably one of the most important ones. People don’t understand how they utilize their internet service. If you just check your email and read blogs then you should look at your providers cheaper plans. If you download a lot movies and music then you might want to look at your providers pricier plans. What you want to accomplish here is to pay for only as much internet service as you need and not incur any sort of over usage charges.

2: Promotional Offers - a lot of people seem to sign up for internet service and then never think about it again. If you call your provider and ask for any current promotions to be applied to your account they’ll do it lickdy split. You could save $10-$20 every month with a simple call and nearly no fuss or hassle.

3: Speak to Retentions - Try speaking to the retentions department. If you threaten to cancel your service or let them know you’ve found a cheaper service provider they’ll offer you discounts to keep you as a customer. Remember it’s their job to retain you as a customer. People may feel apprehensive about this but the hardest part will be finding the time to actually make the call.

4: Check for a Referral Program - If you like your service provider you might consider recommending them to friends and family. If you’re going to refer people to the provider you might as well check to see if they offer some additional incentives. Providers that have a referral program will either give you a one time credit or if you’re lucky an ongoing monthly discount. Call and find out.

5: Ask if they have Group Plans - Maybe your employers have a group plan with a provider at a discounted rate. Some providers will even allow you and a group of friends/co-workers to form a group. This way everyone gets a discount and the provider encourages customer loyalty. It doesn’t hurt to call and ask.

The X Factor

At the end of the day price takes a back seat to customer service. Murphy’s Law says that your internet service will go down at the worse possible time. The last thing you want is to be struggling with your ISP to get your service up and going so you can complete that critical project for work. A few bucks is no substitute for the time and aggravation that you’ll spend talking with bad support as they stumble to find their way through their flow charts. Find the provider with the best support and then chip away at their price to get to something you’re happy with.

Would you sacrifice good support for a cheaper price ?

-mfd-

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Well I finally did it. After being a customer for at least 9 years (it’s probably been more than 10) I’ve canceled my ADSL service with Bell. I had been contemplating it for at least 3 years and finally decided to move to Teksavvy last week. Though the service at Teksavvy is cheaper (I save about $10 dollars a month), it was the customer service at Bell that was the real motivator. Dealing with Bell support was doubly frustrating for me due to my technical background.

I wasn’t just calling up and saying that my internet was broken. I usually had the issue diagnosed and isolated to something outside of my network. I wanted customer support that understands the issue when I say “I did a packet capture and I see pppoe authenication packets leaving and I’m not getting any response back”. Bell’s support would just blindly try to troubleshoot my windows laptop until the ADSL issue resolved itself 3 days later. I’ve dealt with Bell’s support on serveral levels ( ADSL customer, ADSL reseller, 100 Mbps data circuits) and its all the same.

Canceling the service was an interesting process. I called up and told the support person that I wanted to cancel my service. He then transfers me to the retentions department.

The retention guy asks “What can I do for you today?”

mfd says “I’d like to cancel my adsl service”.

“May I ask why you’re canceling?” says the retention guy.

“Well I’m going with a cheaper provider but the customer service is the main reason” says mfd in as much a professional tone as he can muster.

“Would you be interested if I offer you a discounted price….” says the retention guy before he gets cut off with a stern “No!” from mfd

mfd goes on to say “At the end of the day the customer service is the issue and not the price.”

“Alright sir your service will be disconnected in 30 days” says retentions guy in a defeated voice.

The part that I find interesting is that he never asked about my experience with Bell’s customer service. Michael James has posted article after article about his experience and he’s certainly not alone (see Ellen Roseman’s Post). You would think at this point they would want to poll disgruntle customers for their experience to help improve their customer service. Its seems as though this retentions person and Bell in general continues to accept that they have bad customer service and are not looking to improve it. This is fine by me because all I have left is Bell’s telephone line which I will probably never get rid of.

Hopefully Bell will end the ADSL part of our relationship on a high note and won’t pull my Teksavvy service when they go to pull my Sympatico service. I’m not holding my breathe…

Quick Poll: Who thinks Bell will pull my Teksavvy service when they cancel my Sympatico service?

-mfd-

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