Long customer wait times are now making headlines (again) as frustration with our ‘Big 3’ telecoms have boiled over.
A recent investigation by CBC News has highlighted a growing wave of complaints against Rogers, Telus, and Bell, confirming what many customers have been ranting about on Reddit lately about long wait times when it comes to dealing with customer service and billing issues.
One example in the story is Toronto resident Vicki Sloot, who spent eight weeks trying to fix a billing error with Bell. After being promised a cheaper monthly rate and the same TV sports channels for upgrading her gear, she lost her programming and was told it would actually cost more to get it back. Sloot described the experience as an “odyssey” where no two agents could provide the same answer. She waited three hours for a callback that never came.
The CBC reached out to Amas Tenumah, an Oklahoma City-based “customer service evangelist” who claims the system is made to frustrate as many people as possible so they give up.
According to anonymous employees from Rogers and Telus speaking to CBC News, they suggest the frustration might be by design. Current employees revealed that frontline staff are often discouraged from issuing credits or lowering bills.
One Telus employee claimed that their performance score is negatively affected if they reduce a customer’s bill, while one Rogers worker said agents are frequently left without the proper training to handle basic promos or financing questions.
Bell told the CBC it did not live up to its commitments in Sloot’s case but denied that the system is intentionally designed to frustrate people. They ended up giving her $90 credit and a $30 discount on her monthly bills, and that was only thanks to CBC Marketplace reaching out.
Rogers pointed to their intensive eight-week training program for new customer service agents.
So what is there to do? Spain recently passed a law requiring large companies to answer 95% of customer calls within three minutes or face heavy fines, which is one model highlighted in the story. The CRTC said it is currently monitoring that legislation to see if Canada should follow suit (typical Canadian move).
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Throw the book at these greedy companies. I waited 2 weeks or more during the holidays to finally get through to a rep that wasn’t even in Canada. And no matter how many times I tried, I never got a refund from Roger’s dishonest act. They made a promise to never raise my phone plan price. And they still did.!
Rogers is dishonest. They won me back with the promise to never raise my price. Then they raised my price, were sneaky and never really advised me except on some small fine print nobody ever reads. Then it took me 2 weeks to get through to any customer service. Once I got through the rep wasn’t even from here and wasn’t able to do any creditbacks. They burned me because my previous plan had a price freeze promise. Don’t trust Rogers ever!