The cell-phone carrier con job

[Agent]

[Sorry, this is a long rant. But I feel like getting it off my chest and I don't have a personal blog anymore.]

I get a phone call today from Rogers, one of the major wireless carriers in the country, of which I'm a customer of.

They called three times this morning. The first two times I answered the phone and heard nothing on the other end. I knew who it was because the same number shows up on my phone whenever I have a late bill (which is often, it's not that I can't afford it, it's that I don't keep track of it and never open my mail unless its a bill from a service I actually use.)

The third time I answered the phone there was actually someone at the other end. She wanted to ask me about the cell phone service and asked if I could spare the time. I couldn't, I was working, but I politely obliged anyway.

She asked me to rate the cell phone service from 1 to 5. I answered "2" and explained why. I told her my signal strength is terrible, it has been for years.

The poor signal quality plagues everyone where I live. It doesn't matter which carrier you use or which phone, no one gets adequate signal here. And the cell phone carriers don't seem to give a shit about these inadequacies until competition comes in to provide better versions of those services.

I told her I pay $35-40 per month for service that's terrible and I told her I hardly ever use the phone, which is the truth. She proceeded to talk under her breath, as if she was reading off a stats sheet, and just happened to mention I was on a $20 plan. I didn't bother correcting her. I had the feeling she was reminding me I was on a $20 plan (despite the fact after all those nice hidden charges it comes to $35 most months)

So she asks me if I would go on hold so she could check something out (in other words, to take a sip of coffee before reading the next paragraph of her script.) She comes back on after a minute to tell me her data says we should have excellent service out here, and the problem is my "old" phone. Not only that, they would give me a brand new Nokia. Then she listed off all its features. It did everything. MP3s. Photos. Blah. Blah.

The first thing I asked: Is there a contract involved?

Of course there was. Their contracts are bullshit, I entered my last contract with them when I was a poor college student building porn sites to pay my shitty apartment rent.

I told her I was planning to get a new plan sometime and I would just buy a new phone outright. So she reiterated that the phone is essentially FREE, the best deal they have.

Then I mentioned that I was going to go "pay as you go" or just get a cheaper plan because I can live without the service.

She looked over my usage data for last month. I cant remember what she told me, but the number was well over the amount of minutes I would dedicate to using a phone, even during my most chatty months. The numbers were not correct. But I didn't bother arguing them.

She kept coming back to the contract. She told me all the non contract packages are more expensive. Blah blah blah.

I'm pretty pissed. They can't provide good service, so they try their absolute hardest to rope us into their contracts. Not only that, they have their con routine down to a science. I worked Tech Support before, and the best skill I ever learned from that job is how to "manage" people over a phone. But I never "managed" them to their detriment, I never tried to sell them something or convince them they were wrong about a flaw in our product if there was one (and it was for an OS with many flaws.) I only used those skills when dealing with people who, if you didn't go on the offensive, they'd abuse you. So you "steer" them away from being angry at you.

The con job they tried to pull on me today is absolutely amazing.

They effectually told me: We want you back under contract and you might just be dumb enough to accept our offer.

[Maj. Stress]

Sounds like they use the same support center as Dish Network

[Toby]

Outsourced and paid a commission on upsells.

[ArtWilliams]

[For our US and other friends --->] In Canada, we usually have less competition than the US. That means poor customer service and higher prices. Cell phones are a good example. We have just three main carriers -- Bell, Telus and Rogers. Most other competitors just lease their services from the other three so, you can see, that is just about the long and short of it.

I'm with Rogers too. They have the worst website of any large corporation that I have ever seen. I am not over stating this fact. It is often too busy to get on. If you can get on it then it is all up sells. You usually can't find what you want and if you can then you have to call a sales rep to effect any change [unless you're adding services of course]. The only thing stopping me from changing to another company is that I don't believe that they'll be any better.

I feel your pain.

---art

[Agent]

I realized this a few hours later, and it made me even more angry: the woman I was talking to wasn't from Asia, she was North American (or she had an amazingly convincing American/Canadian accent for someone in East Asia.) Any other time, I'm trying to decipher what it is they're saying. This time, because they were trying to lube me into another contract (now that I'm finally free!), they had the generous courtesy of having someone I could understand call me.

And like Art says, we have only the major carriers he listed. I jumped ship from Aliant in '04. Their rep tried pretty hard to keep my business, probably because they didn't want Roger getting me. So I jumped to the other evil. Now Rogers is pulling out the tricks to keep another customer from Aliant.

Funny you mention the Rogers web site. It was a terrible web site last year when I visited it (around April, tax time.) It seems as though nothing has changed

...we need a cell phone revolution.