Bell offers a notoriously bad service to its customers. In fact, as I mentioned recently, the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services  tells us that 32% of all complaints from Canadian consumers are related to Bell! I experienced this personally numerous times (I once had five services with them [phone, cellphone, internet, web hosting and satellite TV] and cancelled it all because of a really bad customer service!). Recently, after switching internet & TV service from Videotron to Bell, my VoIP phone from a third party stopped working properly and, when I called Bell technical service, I was told that they didn’t support VoIP phone and that if I wanted a good phone service I should use theirs! Also, as soon as I started using their wi-fi, half my numerous devices using internet (computers, iPhone, iPad, VoIP phone, thermostat, WeMo Insight & Switch, Philips Hue lights, printer, garage door opener, security cameras, etc. — I have over twenty different devices requiring wi-fi!) wouldn’t connect properly through their WPS and it took me a long time to figure a way to have everything working in a decent and almost stable way (using a combination of DMZ and MAC filtering — as well as using my sister’s Videotron‘s wi-fi!). Clearly, this bad service thing is not a myth… At least it has a ring of truth, but I am sure many other people can confirm that.

I always wondered how come that a company with such a bad reputation would, first, manage to stay in business and, second, never make any attempt to improve either their service or reputation. This week, I just figured it all: why improve your crappy service when you can just charge your customers for an improved premium service ?!

For instance, if you are not satisfied with the crappy-almost-inexistant technical service, you can simply subscribe to their “Bell Tech Expert” service for only $6.00 per month! There’s no incentive for them to offer a good service if they are making money with the premium service option!

Or, if you find their crappy, unstable wi-fi service unbearable, you can simply subscribe to their “Whole Home Wi-Fi” service that uses a network of pods plugins that works with the Home Hub 3000 to strengthen and optimize the wi-fi! Only for $5.00 per month extra!

Some people will put up with the crappy service and some will pay up for the extra (real) service. You subscribe to Bell because (you think) they offer more than the competitor for a much cheaper price, but you end up paying more anyway for what should be standard service…

Quite annoying!

Unfortunately, I could never go back to Videotron’s TV service because Bell’s system is really amazing. It’s only their wi-fi (and customer service) that’s totally crap. Unfortunately, this makes their offers of Wi-Fi pods very tempting…

But at least, now, the Bell’s secret is out of the bag!

[ Traduire ]