Life, Love, Long Hair, Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth, and other mysteries

All this and more, from a semi-Serbian, slightly sane, former editor for physicians and surgeons, who is the mother of seven kids.


Sunday 17 June 2012

Abusive Bell Customer Service Rep

WARNING:  Contains coarse language.

Can you believe this?

Someone named Ian, who, at least until a few days ago, was representing the cellular telephone division of Bell Canada, seems to be in need of therapy.

A friend I've known since childhood, whom I've mentioned in another blog entry (this one) where I changed his name to "Argyle McArgyle", was trying to get some help with his cell phone account on Friday, June 15, 2012.  The following is the actual conversation he copied word for word between himself and Ian: 

Bell agent: Updating the Fab 10 contacts take 3 hours to take effect.

Bell agent: Getting a representative to change a contact(s) for you will cost $5.00.

you: ok, well it was a couple of hours ago. i wanted the top to be XXXXX, 2) XXXXX

you: but it was a mistake that i am trying to correct right away. you will charge 5$ for that?

you: seriously?

Bell agent: It's not exactly our fault the mistake happened, right? We'll find out in the next hour if that change took effect though.

you: that's excellent customer appreciation, Ian. lets point out whose fault it is. Never tried to imply it was Bell'

you: Bells fault of course.

you: just thought that Bell might like to be more helpful than penalizing. i see that its not the case.

Bell agent: Sorry but that's the rule. I mean, we've already tried making things easier by putting it on a self-serve application.

Bell agent: I'd say it'd be our fault if we were the ones who originally put the number for you.

Bell agent: As a one time courtesy, I wont apply the $5.00 but you should know better by now.

you: OMG - did you really just say that?


Then, after Argyle closed the chat log, he got the following text from, he assumes, the Bell agent:


To quote Argyle, "customer service excellence" indeed.  Such followup.  Wow.

I can't help but think of the song, "I've Got You" by Dwight Yoakam, which I've posted below.  In case it gets removed, the specific lyrics I mean are:

"I got a letter from the folks over at Bell
Just to let me know my next phone call I can walk outside and yell."



Bell could've been more tactful in the way they communicated with Argyle, and I wonder how much irony there really is in Dwight Yoakam wording things the way he did.  Even if a person is delinquent on payments, customer service representatives should be respectful, as should, I believe, all people.

There's way too much abusiveness in this world.  I hope Ian, or whoever that person was, gets help and changes their 'tude.

Argyle is following up with management, but it will take a few days till it gets resolved, if at all.


Read more of my writing in the right hand column of this blog, ordered chronologically.
Here are a few semi-related and completely unrelated samples:


8 comments:

  1. I had one yell at me, when I was inquiring as to why my phone was disconnected, when even the "My Bell" online account section showed that I had a credit. Now bear in mind I'm a very polite customer, I take far too much crap from people, and was not at all rude to her, even though her accent was almost unintelligible. When she insisted I MUST owe Bell money, I told her (for the third time), that my online account shows a credit, maybe she could go look at it. "DON'T YOU TELL ME HOW TO DO MY JOB!!!!" and then hung up on me.
    Umm... apparently someone has to, you don't know the difference between a credit and a debit...

    Needless to say, I switched to Telus.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Needless to say for sure, Violet! I've been with Telus for years myself and have never once been treated rudely by anyone there. They seem to bend over backwards to keep my business.

      Delete
  2. Someone tried to post an anonymous message in here containing abusive communication. I will not post abusive communication.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow - unbelievable! I suppose it's a good thing that the rep chose to take his abusive behaviour to writing, so that your friend has proof.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow and i thaught it was just me who saw this.I will tell you little sh shhh.All the big companys out there are owned by the same people a family of 13 different familys and they all make the same policy. Out of 666 empyoees thay hire one bad one just to treat you like second class person and make you feel bad and thay get well rewarded for it i have never in my 46 years of living seen one ever get fired .And i do lots of complaining.Here is just a few of them mic puks>crappy tire >any phone company rogers wall mart shaw any ting that has mass averts so just be aware of who and what you are dealing with and who thay think you are .And there thery is when thay knock you down thay put you in your place and it works becuse people keep going back .

    ReplyDelete
  5. When my husband and I decided to switch from Bell to another company, Bell sent us a letter saying that we still owed them 1 cent and if we did not pay it would go into collections! First of all, that was false. So I wrote them a nasty letter with a penny taped to it saying "here's your money". About two weeks later we got a letter from them saying "Thank you for your payment. We are sorry you have decided to leave Bell. Please let us know if there is anything we can do to bring you back..." Are they kidding? Never again!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And of course it cost them a lot more than that penny to mail out that generic letter, huh!

      Delete
    2. That was exactly my thought too! Idiots!

      Delete

Talk to me - please.