Another reason to hate Bell...

[Miss Maria]

Aaarrg

I haven't read this thread BUT I allow myself to write in it because I am soooooo Dissapointed in BELL. They have horrible customer service and they always try to weedle you out of your money. I only have internet with them. I got it only because they kept calling me to have me back as their client. I told them what I would like: internet without a phoneline (I don't need it) for 9.95 a month. Sounds great, right?? They tried to make me pay 10 dollars extra for the phone line every month, and then I told them, no thank you I wasnt interested. They sent me the fucking modem anyways and when I called to know how to send it back, they said they would give me what I wanted at the price I wanted. OK, I say. so the thing works and I pay 9.95 a month for some time and then I start having problems and don't always have internet...weird... technicians come to my place and act sooo incompetant. But finally internet is restored. Then I leave for 2 months. Come back, and no more internet either... ok, ok, not the end of the world. Someone comes and its all good. THEN, I recieve the bill... 107$ AH! I call and say: "what is that?" The girl said its the download upload surcharge thingy. Meaning that while I was gone I downloaded too many things... hmmm.. I well her I wasn't there and that there must be an error, but she says she can't do nothing about it because it says I went over on her things.

So, They force me to pay for services I have never used. I HATE THEM!!!!

Frustrated bell customer

 

[jacep]

Let me ask a question, relating to Bell itself. I'm American by the way, so I am not that familiar with Bell's news and practices.
If the Canadian government allowed an American company like Verizon to buy the company, would you have an issue with that?
Verizon already has ties with the European company Vodaphone, so such a buyout or partnership would be nothing new.
No bashing please LOL, just trying to be educated. Thanks...
And I am assuming we are talking about the land line and the wireless divisions.

In Canada, different regions had their own local telephone company (it used to be a monopoly between regions). Without getting into the specifics of it with companies like Aliant, etc., the West coast is mainly Telus and the East coast is mainly Bell.

In regards to your signature, Bell phone booths (full enclosure) still exist in Canada/Montreal. We also have Bell payphones in an open area where the phone for the most part is mounted on a "pole".

I would have no issue with an American company buying Bell since I believe it would mean more competition and better prices/service (at least for the short term) and there was some sort of protection for Canadians. However, telecommunication is one of the protected industries in Canada and our government (both present and future) would never allow any foreign owned company to have more than 49% (I'm not sure of the exact value but suffice it to say, it is less than 50%) ownership of the company (especially an American company). This isn't bashing or anti-American, it is because the US has a larger population than Canada and an American company could unfairly use the customer base in the US to reduce prices in Canada to a level that causes its competition to go bankrupt and once competition is eliminated, there is no reason for the company to not raise prices dramatically.

Rogers cellphone service used to have a partnership with AT&T where the wireless cellphone service company's name was actually changed at some point to Rogers AT&T. However, now it has reverted back to just Rogers.

 

[J. Peterman]

Protest the .50 cent increase.

Write your protest on a sheet of paper 1.5 in. by 1.5 in. square, fold in hald and then fold it in half again. Place you protest note in the convienient slots provided for you in the phone booths around town.

 

[chef]

Write your protest on a sheet of paper 1.5 in. by 1.5 in. square, fold in hald and then fold it in half again. Place you protest note in the convienient slots provided for you in the phone booths around town.

And if someone else unconnected with Bell needs to use the phone they are screwed !

 

[Ben Dover]

The best way to get them back is to pick up every payphone you pass and place a (free) call to 310-BELL, then leave it off the hook and keep walking... Or, better yet, call air canada or aeroplan (guaranteed to hold for a LONG LONG time -- and you can get back at two companies you hate at the same time!)... You could tie up every payphone in the city like how the truck drivers block the highway to protest. but, it wouldn't hurt other people who need to use the phone since they can just hang it up and make a new call...

Someone should advise BELL of this protest so that they can track the debilitating effect on their systems, their CS queue, etc...

I also enjoy calling Bell on one line and Rogers on the other and then conferencing them together to listen to the operators confusion. "you called me!" "no -- you called me!"... it's great fun, but requires a little finesse to get the timing to work. Tip -- get the first one on the line, then when the second one starts ringing through to an operator, you put the first one on hold and say "hold on -- my friend is going to take over the call"

Have you ever thought about this... They are the inventors of caller ID, but yet they always need you to "enter your number" -- so you enter it and then what's the first thing they ask you? "what's your number?"... Bande de idiotes!

BD

 

[jacep]

If you want to screw Bell, you can also try to make free phone calls using their payphones. I'm not sure if the current phones have this flaw but about 15 years ago, it was very easy to make free phone calls using a payphone. Watch "WarGames" for an idea on how this is done. It doesn't work exactly the same way but the technique is similar from what I remember.

I haven't used a payphone in a long time. The only time I would use one is in the metro or in the underground city where cellphones from certain carriers don't work well or when an incall agency insists that I call from a particular payphone even though I have a cellphone.

 

[joelcairo]

Great post Ben Dover!

 

[ck_nj]

In regards to your signature, Bell phone booths (full enclosure) still exist in Canada/Montreal. We also have Bell payphones in an open area where the phone for the most part is mounted on a "pole".

LOL! First, thanks jimace for that response. I actually did laugh out loud!

Ok, now here is another question. Does your hatred for Bell also carry onto Bell Mobility as well? I am assuming that Bell and Bell Mobility are treated like separate divisions, and have different customer service all together. I was asking because I had heard that Bell Mobility has the majority of cellular customers in Quebec...

 

[Agrippa]

Maxima,

The article I originally posted as a source states this "Allison Vale, a Telus spokeswoman, said the company has no plans to increase its pay phone rates in the immediate future." Who knows what will happen in the not-so-immediate-future, but their phones are still 25¢. Now, if only we knew where they were...

 

[jacep]

Do all public phones in Montreal belong to Bell? If not, how much does it cost to use a non-Bell public phone?

I believe that I've seen one public phone that wasn't owned by Bell (downtown). I'm not sure how much it costs since I've had no reason to use it (I have a cellphone with me at all times). The only time I would use a payphone is if an in-call agency/independant insists or if where I am currently located, there is no cellphone service (like inside the underground city). But when I'm located in the underground city, I've never had to urgently make a call that can't wait until I go up a few escalators. However, if I'm waiting for the metro and I've already paid to get into the metro, I might use a payphone while waiting just because reception with my provider sucks in the metro.

However as ZoneAlarm mentioned, Bell probably has over 99% of the public phones in Montreal.

 

[Techman]

A few years ago, there were non-bell payphones all over downtown Montreal. They were placed all down St.Catherine street as well as in Wanda's and other bars. They didn't seem to last very long and as far as I am aware, there are none left. They were easy to recognize as they were larger in size and silver and the number pad was laid out in two rows of keys instead of three.

 

[jacep]

LOL! First, thanks jimace for that response. I actually did laugh out loud!

Ok, now here is another question. Does your hatred for Bell also carry onto Bell Mobility as well? I am assuming that Bell and Bell Mobility are treated like separate divisions, and have different customer service all together. I was asking because I had heard that Bell Mobility has the majority of cellular customers in Quebec...

I don't like Bell Mobillity. I've never had them but they are the most expensive in terms of prices (at least this was true 8 years ago when I switched providers and about 20 years ago when I first bought a cellphone). 20 years ago, I picked Rogers when I first purchased a cellphone. After about 10 years with them and having some minor billing issues because my plan was no longer offered but I still had my plan until the end of my contract (which they always fixed in my favour), I switched to Fido and I'm still with Fido even though they are now owned by Rogers (but both companies operate somewhat independantly with their own locked phones and their own price plans). The negative things that I've heard about customers on Bell Mobility is that the prices are high, they sometimes get overcharged, and the customer service of course is like any other Bell affiliated/owned company (it is bad). The good thing that I've heard about Bell is that reception is better than with the other carriers. I've never had any problems with Fido's reception in areas where I normally frequent (urban cores). When I had Rogers, I had some reception issues but this was probably because they were still using analogue at the time and not digital. In the metro or underground city, Fido is bad but then again, I don't expect to make phone calls when I'm underground. When I used to drive between Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal, my reception also cuts out (or is non-existant) at certain points but I rarely use it while driving between major urban centers. This was before Rogers and Fido "combined" networks so I'm not sure if this has improved.

With Bell's satellite service, I'm not crazy about them. I used to have it and when I called about a problem which was on their end, they either assumed that I was doing something illegal like pirating their signal or they had me do things that I knew for a fact wouldn't fix my problem. They also have the technological limitation/problem with weather where I would lose the signal sometimes at the most inopportune moments. I've now switched with Videotron cable and am somewhat satisfied with them.

I am completely Bell free. I don't have a landline phone. My internet is with Videotron and my television service is with Videotron. My cellphone service is also not with Bell.

 

[Big Daddy Cool]

Bell has almost a monopoloy in payphomes and that's whay they had the arrogence to have a 100% increase. What's worse is that these fuckers never gave any warning what so ever. So if you needed to make an emergency call and had only 0.25 than you just got a nice big plate full of "Fuck you, take it or leave it".

Also, do not get me starteed with Bells poor internet service. Little more could be added to Miss Maria's post and this is a usual with them.

As for Videotron, I have the internet/Illico digital cabel combo and for the past 3yrs there has been little problems and the service has been good so far.

 

[Big Daddy Cool]

Emergency calls were, are, and will remain free.
LG

I'm not talking about 911 calls. I'm talking about calls like you are suppose to meet someone and something happened and you can not make the meeting. You need to call your apointment, but low and behold you only have 0.25 so you can not cancel your appointment and you are left having to leave the other person waiting. This makes no sense and is unacceptable.

 

[jacep]

Problems with Videotron...

Videotron is far from perfect.

Here are some of my negative experiences with them so far (I only have TV and internet with them):

1) They don't allow you to split the signal inside your house since it can degrade the signal for other users. I was notified of this a few years ago with a letter telling me that they located a problem inside my place and they needed me to let a technician into my place in order to verify if everything was okay. Inside my place, everything was working fine (television and internet). I was also not using Dollar-store splitters but the good high frequency gold-plated splitters.

2) During the last Videotron technician's strike, my area was hit by the "extortion" racket from some Videotron technicians. They basically cut or damaged the cable line and asked for money to fix it. I was never asked money to fix it but once my cable line was damaged during the strike.

3) Their internet renews for 1 year automatically. For all the services that I've used up until this point (cellphone and satellite), after the contract period, the customer automatically goes into a month to month plan at the same price or with a slight increase. This happens with Rogers and Fido cellphone plans that I've been with and it happened when I had my Bell satellite service. Videotron automatically renews customers for 1 year if they are not notified at least 1 month before the contract expires. If you didn't know that your contract was up for renewal, you are automatically enrolled in a 1 year contract again.

However, I feel that Bell's customer/technical service is a lot worse than Videotron's.

 

[jacep]

Once I noticed that my phone bills got higher. After checking my last 3 bills, I noticed that Bell automatically subscribed me into their long distance plan. I never make long distance calls with them. I was not happy about it. Bell, send a notice about this to its clients. Though, this was tucked in all the junk they usually send their bills.

Yes, this happened to me as well when I had a Bell landline. I hate when companies use the "reverse owness" with customers where their attitude is we'll subscribe them to the service and make them pay for it unless they notify us that they don't want it. Listen, if I wanted it, I would subscribe to it myself! Don't subscribe me automatically unless I call your Customer Service line and wait forever on hold beforehand to tell you I don't want the service.

 

[jacep]

False,

I have 1 cable modem, 4 Illico decoders( 2 HDTV PVRs, 1 HDTV, 1 standard), and two standard analog TVs. My secret: I use the proper splitters. I have one active (using power from a power supply) giving me 4 outputs for my main input and I have an * to 1 passive. Your splitters can be gold plated but if they are not designed to allow the proper bandwidth you are screwed.

LG

My splitters where gold plated (~$30 each from what I remember) and designed to go up to the higher frequency which allowed me to split the signal from the source and send it to my VCR, my computer, my cable modem, my illico box, and the television in my bedroom. This was 5 splits. All signals came in fine so I don't believe it was a problem with my splitters.

Using a cheap splitter, you would not be able to get any signal to your illico box or to your cable modem (you would only be able to get the standard analogue signals if you were subscribed to this).

Maybe I should have been more clear with my post.

What I meant to say was that Videotron wanted to send someone to my place after detecting abnormal usage coming from the one cable that was going into my appartment. Their letter stated that if I didn't let them in, they would reduce the signal going into my place. When they came in, they noted that I was paying for 1 cable coming into my house and counted my devices and the following month, I received a surprise on my bill where they charged me for each split that I did to the line that was coming into my appartment.

This was a few years ago. Now, I only have it split 3 ways (cable modem, illico box in living room, and VCR in bedroom) and they haven't charged me or sent me a letter telling me to let them into my place.

My point to my original post was that they want to make sure that you pay for each split. For you, you have 4 illico boxes so they obviously will send you enough juice/frequency/whatever for your 4 illico boxes since they have a record of it. For me, I only had 1 illico box in my original set-up and I was splitting my cable into 5 devices which they had a problem with. If I paid extra, they wouldn't have had an issue with it.

What they are trying to prevent is people splitting the cable line and sending it to their neighbours. The line was staying in my appartment after all the splits but they wanted me to pay extra for it. I decided to just change my set-up and I haven't heard anything from them so either they no longer charge customers extra for splitting the line or they don't care as much.

 

[jacep]

Thanks for being clearer. To all of you here is a little tip: Unless you have digital box the only way they can detect you have more boxes than you pay for is by measuring the load on your line(how much current you draw). Now you understand better why my front end is an active splitter. From the outside guess what? It looks like only one box. I pay for everything I use but if I would change my mind they wouldn't see it unless I would have Illico's. Illico's are digital and they have like a "serial number" that needs to be enabled. Bell Express Vu have a similar mechanism but it seems easy to find a card that bypass the billing.

I only have/had 1 illico box but since I was subscribed to Telemax Ultra at the time, they were giving me the analogue signal for free. However, I only had 1 line coming into my appartment and I didn't feel that it was necessary for me to pay for additional lines coming into my appartment. I understand the serial number aspect of Videotron. I also understand that the cable line coming into your place is 2 way communication (which is why Videotron can tell what PPV you watch/choose and how your cable modem works... although it works based on a MAC address which is similar to a serial number for all intensive purposes) whereas with Bell satellite, they require a phone line to the receiver.

One question: Can you blame them? And before answering imagine it would be your business. And as I explained it is not a matter of juice when you deal with Illicos it is a matter of "serial numbers". I could tell you how get as much juice as you need but it would never work with Illicos because they are bi-directional: meaning Videotron can talk to each device directly.

I don't really blame them. I just take issue with them charging a monthly fee for each split (I'm not sure if they still do this) or for each line going into your house. It would be similar to Bell charging a monthly fee for using a phone "splitter" on a customer's phone line so that he/she could have more than 1 phone in my house. Bell doesn't do this with their phone line so I feel that Videotron shouldn't do it with their cable line (I'm not sure if Videotron still charges an extra monthly fee).

Since I had/have only 1 illico and only 1 line coming into my appartment but was entitled to the analogue signal based on my package, I believe that I should be allowed to split my signal within my own residence. Now that I have 3 splits for my 1 illico box and my 1 cable modem (using their Videotron splitter and their RF cables) where the remaining split goes to my VCR for the analogue signal, they haven't bothered me or charged me anything extra so I don't know if they did away with their monthly fee for additional splits/lines.

The technician told me that I can't split the signal within my own residence because the signal is shared and I might degrade the signal of someone else even if my signal was fine.

I don't blame them since they are trying to keep me from let's say splicing the cable coming into my house and sending it to my neighbours/landlord/etc. and sharing the bill with then. I was not doing this. All the original splits that I did terminated in my residence.

How did you get the active splitter? I'm assuming you aren't referring to a signal booster available at places like TheSource (old RadioShack) for around $20 where you plug it into your AC outlet and it gives you 4 RF outputs. I tried this and it boosted not only the signal but also the "noise" on the cable line so my analogue signals sometimes looked like crap. Also, with this $20 booster, it didn't have the frequency to allow me to split the digital signal/cable coming directly from Videotron. I had to plug it into the output of the splitter not going into my cable modem or my illico box which allowed it only to boost/split the analogue signal.

Getting back on topic, with TV service and internet service, I still feel that Videotron is a lot better than Bell but that doesn't mean that Videotron doesn't have issues of their own.

 

[jacep]

Another story about why I hate Bell...

A few years ago when I had my Bell landline phone, I wanted to buy a new high-tech phone at the Bell Teleboutique. This was the phone by Nortel which had a large display where you could access a lot of information via the display. I purchased this phone for a few hundred dollars (when it first came out). A few days after I purchased it, Bell came out with a promotion where by purchasing this exact model, I could get a $20 Bell payphone card.

I went back to the Bell store and asked them for my card. They said that I purchased my phone too early and the $20 Bell payphone card applies to purchases between these 2 dates. I told them that if that is how they felt, I would return my phone and just pick it up at another Teleboutique. They told me to do this so that's exactly what I did even though they could have said I returned the phone and bought a new one and given me the card so I didn't have to return my phone.

When I got my phone at the other Bell Teleboutique, they gave me my $20 Bell payphone card (sealed). I tested it out in the nearest payphone and the display on the payphone said "ERROR" and told me to make sure that the phone card was inserted properly. I verified that it was inserted properly and tried a different payphone. I received the same "ERROR" message. I immediately went back to the Bell Teleboutique and told them about this and they told me that I would have to send back the card to Bell Canada so that they could verify it. I told the salesperson/CS at the Bell Teleboutique that my card didn't show an amount/balance of $0.00 but showed "ERROR" and it was a brand new card so I'm not trying to screw them. He told me that I would have to deal with Bell Canada.

I paid to mail my card back to Bell Canada and after 1 week, they mailed me back a new $20 card with a letter apologizing for the defective card.

My brand new $20 card had now just become a "~$19.50 card" since I had to pay for the postage to send it to Bell Canada.

 

[jacep]

Another reason...

Here is the main reason why I hate Bell Sympatico Internet:

I was a subscriber with Bell Sympatico high speed internet service, I had a problem with them after a few years. I called their technical support department and they couldn't help me. My problem was that after a certain time period (under 30 minutes), I would lose my internet connection. I would then have to reconnect. My computer was plugged into the modem directly (and not using a router). I was also not able to create a personal webpage on Sympatico's server.

My girlfriend at the time was also using Bell. I asked her to connect to Bell using her Sympatico account on my PC. She did this and she was not disconnected after 30 minutes. I retried it on my PC using my Bell login creditials and I got disconnected again after roughly 30 minutes. She was also able to upload files to her Sympatico webpage whereas I wasn't.

I called Bell's technical support and told them that it was a problem with my account and not my set-up or my hardware because using a different Sympatico login account on the same computer login account and the same PC and the same modem, there was no disconnect.

They told me that they would fix it. After a few months of the same problem, I told them to delete my Sympatico login username (b1xdkdkdkd) and password and create a new one for me. They told me that they couldn't do this because it would require changing e-mail addresses, etc. I told them it wasn't a big deal and wouldn't require that I lose my Sympatico e-mail address. Even if it did, I wasn't using my Sympatico e-mail address (I was using hotmail).

After a few months of this, I got tired of them and switched to Videotron.

The problem that I had with cancelling Bell was that they require that you send all the equipment back to them. They don't accept the items (filters, modem, etc.) returned to a Bell Teleboutique. Since this was a long time ago (over 5 years), I'm not sure if I had to pay to send it back to them or whether they sent me a prepaid envelope. My guess is that I had to pay to send it back to them.

They also don't allow you to purchase the modem (at least they didn't allow this when I was a subscriber to their service).