Comments on: Blogosphere PR is a waste of money

By: sally

sally — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:56:39 +0000

Hi I spent 4 hours of my day today dealing with bell…………to say they are a nightmare is an understatement. THEY ARE THE WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER DELT WITH…………..I can’t even get into it all because it has comsumed soo much of my day, I have a 3 week old baby and a 4 year old who were negglected while i was transferred to this person that person….and basically put on hold…for a total of almost 4 hours…..in the end they made the mistake about my phone, and told me to let the money run out on it and never use it again….it was pay as you go…i bought it in canada to use in the US….it doesn’t work in the states…they neglected to tell me that i needed some sort of roaming package……now my boyfreind who is in the states has a non working phone….HE IS A TRUCK DRIVER!!!! hopefully he doesn’t get into a accident or anything because he is phoneless………so bells big problem solving is……they didn’t offer a refund….they just basicall said…well too bad your screwed thanks for the 100 dollars….well i am not going to settle that easy…..i work in customer service…..if i sell a face cream to someone and it burns there face of am i supposed to say oh well………at least it didn’t burn your body too????? not even say sorry or try to help her….i don’t think soooooo………
THEY ARE SO BRUTAL>…….i am going to write everthing bad everywhere i can about them…..as well as cancelling my TV, Phone, internet and home phone that i have through them…i thought being in business was about keeping and making customers, not pissing them of and loosing them ……..

By: Teekay

Teekay — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:02:49 +0000

@Alex
Technically, no, not unless you have some sort of proof you can exhibit in court, but ultimately, if you threaten them with a lawsuit over it, especially the contract bit, they would sooner find a way to settle things with you outside of court than proceed to a trial, as trials are extremely costly.

So threaten away. The big guys fear the ones like you who make a stink about things. Stink-making equals bad press, which equals lost money (ohnos) so they’ll do whatever they can to find a solution that works for you. Push the envelope on this one.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Thu, 08 May 2008 03:17:41 +0000

I’ve recently discovered that the Bell modem has been stealing my bandwidth, now naturally this wouldn’t be a problem seeing as I have highspeed and I wouldn’t even know the difference. But now Bell has what’s called a “bit-cap” where they track all internet usage (Uploads/Downloads) and through many different complicated mathematical procedures they add them together to make a total. The total I am “allowed” (for lack of a better word) is 60GB per month. I have 3 computers on the network. My first computer is a laptop running windows vista. Every night I turn off the wireless lan before I go to bed. I also have two computers connected to the lan, which I unplug before I go to bed. I’ll check my usage before doing so. When I wake up in the morning I’ve realized that… WOW…. 0.5GB has been used on my internet during the time when I’ve been asleep. Now Bell says that there may be up to a 3 day period where the usage may not be calculated correctly. So I left all my computers off, unplugged from the modem and everything for 5 days. To my dismay I’ve used another 12GB during this 5 day period. So I had to make sure that the modem wasn’t projecting an unencrypted wireless signal, so I called up bell and they talked me through setting up a secure wireless network (just for my lovely laptop). Again, I turned off the computers for 5 days… Low and behold I am still getting crazy usages… So I called up bell and asked them if they could see if someone is tapping into my DSL line. “Oh no, this is not possible sir. The modems bell gives you are 100% safe sir, even if they were into your DSL line sir, they would need the username and password to use it sir.” (Some woman from india or something… I couldn’t understand what she said sometimes so I think I made her angry.) Well I’ve never given my password to anyone… So I went and bought a network sniffer program… It seems something is sending a packet to my modem and the modem is sending it back and forth like a ping pong ball… Even more suspicious, I recalled the IP address back to Bell while I had them check what was going on with my modem… So… Bell is using my bandwidth to make me spend an extra $30 a month… They are making a tidy profit because it’s so terribly hard to catch them at it. I need to find a good internet provider who does not have a bit cap in my area, I believe I have found one but when I confronted Bell about leaving their services they told me I was under contract… WITHOUT SIGNING ANYTHING. Would this hold up in court?

By: Jean Tremblay

Jean Tremblay — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:58:50 +0000

“How can I give you an excellent service today?” That is what they often ask when they greet the client. My answer is “It’s impossible, you work for Bell! It’s not your fault… It’s the system.” Many of them laughed.

Here are several problems I’ve had with Bell. These are not mere coincidences, it is what happens SYSTEMATICALLY:

- They never called back after saying they would do an investigation by listening to a past call. They were supposed to call back at most 2 weeks later. Happened twice. They didn’t even have a note about that. An employee even said that they don’t record most of the calls, that they record only a small part of the call for quality monitoring.
- They hung up, while I was supposed to be transfered to someone else.
- Have to go through 5-10 different people before having a “solution” which is not even a solution. Each time waiting for 5-20 minutes.
- Blatant contradictions between what different people said.
- Not transfered to the right department

Bell you have to change your ways or die. I’m afraid it’s too late though. I will push for your death.

By: Fagstein

Fagstein — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:46:41 +0000

But how do we know it cost them sales? How do we know any lost sales are more than it would have cost them to have proper service?

We don’t.

I think a lot of people who do searches like this do so after they’ve been screwed over, rather than before.

By: Michel Leblanc

Michel Leblanc — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:27:12 +0000

Steve,
Two years ago I wrote a post that went like this : Bureau en gros un service de merde. And you know what, that post ranked on google results page one for more than a year (iti is now on page two) and the keyword Bureau en gros was one of the biggest hitter on my blog. Two years later I have never heard of their head office and i am quite sure it costed them a hell of a lot of sales. But do not write about it in your paper. Let’s keep it between us cause i have been accused of doing “bisbille marketing” while giving that example at conferences.

By: Shawn Goldwater

Shawn Goldwater — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:19:06 +0000

I actually thought Bell was better than Videotron. But then again I haven’t had to deal with Bell too much one-on-one, to date. Maybe you’re right, maybe they’re all equally crappy.

By: Mitch Joel - Twist I

Mitch Joel - Twist I — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:08:35 +0000

OK, I think we’re in violent agreement because for every “Bell Hell” story there is, we have an equal amount of “Dell Hell” stories - where (cumulatively) enough of these stories have changed the way the companies operate.

I also don’t think it’s a silver bullet now, but in the Long Tail - where all of this content sits and resides in prevalent search engine results forever - I think it will be.

More and people are using a search engine to find out about whether or not they should buy a product/service and that first page of results “is” the brand. As more and more people go online, get savvy, etc… this is going to have a huge affect (I think).

Certain Journalists are getting customer service issues resolved because of their ability to tell their message to a large enough base. Bloggers are beginning to feel this access to the mass as well.

Do I kid myself into thinking that people would prefer customer service over price. No. Is there a growing segment of people who do. I’m sure there are.

The companies that move from Good To Great (to steal the phrase from Jim Collins) are the ones who rise above and provide great price, service and quality. But, as they say, your mileage may vary.