Fun With Bell

When my Sympatico charge suddenly jumped by almost 11% last month, I called to complain. I talked to some Indian call centre agent who assured me that it was a mistake in billing. He said that he credited my account the $5 that the rate had gone up by, and corrected the pricing going forward. He then tried to sell me some new Bell features, which I declined.

I got my next Bell bill yesterday, only to discover that there was no $5 credit on it, and the Sympatico charge was still at the new, higher rate. In other words, the moron in the call centre had actually done nothing as a result of my 15-minute conversation with him!

So naturally I called back today, and immediately asked to speak to a supervisor. Eventually I got a very nice woman (in Oshawa, this time!) who told me that there was no record on my account of any call (though she assured me that she believed it had happened) and explained that the $5 increase was part of the new pricing scheme, which she could do nothing about. However, Bell wants to get their customers off of the old plans and onto new ones, and she could do that for me, effectively getting me back to my old price. I was resistant at first, but eventually agreed - after hearing the details, none of which seemed to be downgrading - but I'm still pissed off about them raising a service rate by that much in one go. I suspect this is just their way of pushing people out of plans that they want to obsolete: impose big price increases and then move the ones who complain.