Will Telus ever “get it”??
I don’t know why I continue to use Telus as my mobile telephone service provider. Heaven knows that every time I have to deal with them, my blood pressure goes up at least a dozen points. I should have a section on my blog for Dumb Things Done by Telus. Don’t get me wrong, some of the individual service reps I’ve spoken with are pleasant enough, and they’re dealing with the stupid policies they’ve been given. But others have been on the ... let’s be polite and say rather obtuse side ... and then we have the ones who are disinterested and just going through the motions. Heck, I should have an entire section on my blog: Telus: yet another f-up.
So first of all, I call in and, hallelujah, because I am a platinum member (that means they’ve sucked lots and lots of money out of my wallet over the last many years), I get the choice of talking to an agent right up front. Well, hell yes. Because why would I be wasting my time calling if I didn’t have a problem complicated enough that I didn’t need to actually talk to someone? OK, so I enter my phone number get routed and routed, and routed by the auto-attendant and now the “fast service promise” begins. Now let’s back up for a minute. When I use my “park by phone” service, it recognizes my phone number automatically. So why wouldn’t the phone company, the very company who issued me the phone number, recognize my number automatically? Never mind, I’ve now punched it in. And my PIN code.
OK, so I wait and I hold. And eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. So now they explain to me why my bill is about five times what I calculate it should be for the last month. Ah, it seems that when I had that discussion a few months back about switching my plan to the Talk North America plan, they didn’t actually make the switch. I guess the rep just thought we had a little discussion for ... I don’t know, the sake of my health? So I’m traveling and making phone calls, and unknowingly paying some outrageous per-minute charge, something like $1.50.
So now I have someone else on the phone and this time I get a firm commitment. We’re changing the phone plan over, right? Yes. And to keep my phone minutes from going over, I’m going to take the phone forwarding option so I can forward to a land line on the days I’m in the office, right? Yes. But let’s switch on the 8th of the next month because that will be more economical. OK, let’s do that. Good. I’ll pay $50 a month more, but save $300 a month in overage and long distance charges. Good.
So on the 8th, can you guess what happened? Well, sure, the plan got switched over. But the voice mail somehow didn’t make it. All my voice mail from the evening of the 7th was wiped out, and when I called my voice mail, it just rang busy. Voice mail was part of the phone forwarding option, so I’m not sure what happened, but when I called to ask why my voice mail wasn’t working, I had to go through the whole rigmarole of giving my phone number and PIN code - twice - and so on. OK, so that was a lost 15 minutes.
And now, my voice mail icon has come on and won’t go off. All day, I wait. From time to time, I check my mail but the mailbox is empty. I don’t give up hope till the end of the day because I dread what I have to do. You know, call, wait, hold. Eventually get answered by a service rep. Who asks me for my telephone number. Again. And my PIN code. Again. I call as I walk to the bank, so at least I don’t feel I’m wasting more time on Telus today. But the third time the technical service rep asks me if I have pencil and paper, I want to slap him. I remind him that I’m w-a-l-k-i-n-g down the s-t-r-e-e-t and don’t have a pencil handy. But to his credit, the problem does go away, and with any luck, I won’t have to deal with Telus for a while. Too bad my contract doesn’t run out for a while yet because then I could look at a company that understands the concept of competitive advantage and user experience.