Jim Murray

1 year ago · 2 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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Bell Canada & The Ninth Gate of Service Hell

Bell Canada & The Ninth Gate of Service Hell

Many businesses used the COVID epidemic as an excuse to to reduce service and goad people into becoming more and more dependent on online solutions as opposed to in-person service calls.

My wife recently went though this with Bell… one of the biggest corporations in Canada.

She has a TV, an older Sony flatscreen in her basement studio. One day the Bell remote she was using just decided to stop working. She messed around and messed around and nothing she could do would make it work. So she called Bell. She was reluctant to do this because everybody knows that a call to Bell, for any reason is like a trip through the Ninth Gate of Hell. And this trip was no different.

After spending an hour of her life on the phone with people on the far side of the world to whom you have to say, “Could you say that again, please. I didn’t understand,” more times than you can imagine, they informed her that what she needed was, in fact, a new remote controller. And, of course, she would have to pay $30 for it.

Two days later the controller arrived. Like pornography in a plain brown envelope with no instructions and batteries with no English words anywhere on them. So off she went again trying to figure out how to make the remote work so she could actually just watch TV.  The people on the other end of the call had literally no clue. But suggested that they would send her a universal remote. And they assured her that would be the answer to her dilemma. This time at no charge to her. Whoopie shit.

That evening we talked about it and I suggested trying to talk to Bell again, Maybe this time she would luck out and get the one person with half a clue and he/she could finally help her. So she called again, and spent another hour in the waiting room of Service Hell. Finally, it was determined that they could not help her and she would have to call Sony, because our TV was a Sony. And that was all the advice they had.

So my wife, now more determined than ever to get this resolved, got on the phone to Sony, and guess what. In about a minute and a half, she was up and running. It seems that all she really had to do with turn the TV off and then back on again. The Sony people knew that right away. But the Bell people, the people we pay a couple hundred dollars a month to provides us with TV, cell phone and Internet service did not have a fucking clue.

I have been dealing with Bell for most of my adult life and it seems to me that when they got into the Internet side of things, everything went to hell in a handcart, and it’s still there.

I’d pack it all in with them but for two reasons. One. It would be a total pain in the ass getting set up all over again, especially in the email department And two, there’s no guarantee that any of the other companies will be any better.

So here we are, like I would imagine hundreds of other people who get stuck at the Ninth Gate of Service Hell. Waiting for an answer that somehow never really comes.

Comments

Greg Rolfe

1 year ago #1

Hello @Jim Murray, My wife had a very similar experience with a completely different company.  She spent way too long on the phone trying to solve a reasonably simple problem.  You are completely correct that many companies have used the past and current issues to reduce customer service and tell us we will like it.  Frustrating!

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