Tag Archives: Rant

Telus: The Anti-Customer-Service

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I have spent over 5 hours on the phone with Telus since Tuesday, trying to figure out why my internet stopped working on Monday. It’s now Friday.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, someone from Telus called me to offer me a change. If I switch my home phone from Rogers to Telus, they’ll upgrade my internet from high speed to high speed enhanced and my overall bill will be reduced. I asked specifically if there would be a disruption in service and I was assured I would never notice the change.

How could I say no?

So Tuesday evening I came home with the intention of getting a whole bunch of work that I didn’t get done Monday and Tuesday because of a leadership training seminar I attended. I thought I’d do a couple of hours and then do some blogging – a couple of entries for Urban Shore and some new photos uploaded to Flickr. I put mini-man to bed about 7pm and tried to connect… no internet.

Great. So much for working.

Apparently on Monday, they made the phone switch from Rogers to Telus. That was exactly the same time my internet stopped working. It turns out they cancelled the order for my high speed enhanced internet service because of their own technical problems, instead leaving my existing high speed internet account active. Unfortunately, that account was on the old Rogers number and not the Telus number, hence, no internet for me.

The World’s Worst Customer Service

It seems every time Telus touches anything in my life it turns to excrement.

No one seems to be able to get anything done. No one seems to know anything about anything. Even the management staff won’t give anything more than a first name. Three times this week I’ve been told by someone that they would call me back and I never heard a peep. I’ve also been accidentally disconnected 3 times now and still the issue isn’t resolved. You would think a telephone company would not have much trouble transfering phone calls without disconnecting people. I’m convinced that even their tech support people are completely untrained and simply working with a checklist of troubleshooting tips in a flow chart… like if A doesn’t work, move on to B. If B doesn’t work, jump to C etc.

When searching the Telus website it’s impossible to find an actual phone number or name of anyone within the company management at all. The idea of service just simply doesn’t exist there. I’ve been told tech support can’t turn my internet back on – that’s repair. Repair can’t do anything without Customer Service’s blessings even when they find it’s their own error. Then I’m told it’s working fine and it must be a problem with my equipment. Not true. The PS3 works fine as does my laptop.

That a company can operate without any accountability to service is against everything I stand for. I work for a company where if anyone screwed up so badly that a customer had this horrible an experience, any number of us (us, being management personnel) would be happy to resolve the issue even from home if need be. In a heartbeat.

I had a Telus “manager” tell me on Tuesday night that he couldn’t call anyone from Customer Service because it was after hours and they’d have to come back to the office to resolve the issue. Then, he said I would have to call back to Customer Service during business hours on Wednesday. When I asked him to take care of it and call my work number if he needed anything from me he agreed and took down my number. No call. No resolution. But before he got off the phone, he went through his robotic “Thank you for choosing Telus. Can I help you with anything else this evening?”

WHAT?! You. Are. Joking.

Thursday night’s call was equally frustrating. Thanks to Richard (tech support #3) in the Philippines I at least know what happened. Sadly, for me, he still can’t manage to get it fixed. After a flurry of mathematical calculations pertaining to time zone, he promised to call me Friday at 3pm with a Customer Care agent to get this resolved. Glad I didn’t hold my breath. It’s 4:30 now.

I have now sent my request to Shaw.

I will bundle my existing Shaw TV service with a new internet and phone service and have it all in one nice and neat package. I may even upgrade to digital TV. I don’t know why I’ve fallen for a few dollars saved when I’ve never had any problems with Shaw’s service. Ever.

Bye bye Telus. I’m out.

A few notes:

  • There are 492 Google Blog Search results for “telus+shitty”
  • There are 153 Google Blog Search results for “telus sucks”
  • There are even 35 Google Blog Search results for “f*** you telus”

This is not new, and Telus doesn’t care. And until people like you and me simply stop using their services, they will not begin to do so.

Google Rant

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Dear Google,

I’m very frustrated by your assumed understanding of my needs (or my own lack of understanding of your capabilities, anyhow). I’m especially frustrated with the new automatic login to analytics. That would be uber helpful if I didn’t mostly use google for personal reasons. Just because I have analytics and adwords accounts for work doesn’t mean that’s all it’s good for – my google reader, my gmail and my igoogle are all on my personal account, as is that AdSense stuff that served me up canadiancheeserolling.ca… nice AND this very blog.

So I spend a good portion of each day logging out of my natural persona and logging back in as my alter ego: the business woman. I think I’m starting to actually develop some serious mental illness over this point of contention. I can’t keep flip flopping back and forth! I’m already at risk of having the shortest attention span on the planet, but make me do it under two different identities and the fragmenting is almost unbearable.

Please, please find a way for me to have two accounts simultaneously. For the love of all things digital.

Sincerely,
A Dissatisfied Customer

PS – if anyone out there knows how to make Google understand my two separate logins from this one machine, please let me know via comment.

It’s always something with Telus…

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I just hate them. I hate Telus with every fiber of my being. I have hated them since their sales people lied to me to get me to sign up for Telus TV (they told me I’d be able to get all UFC PPV fights, but the truth was they were still in discussions over licensing) and I have hated them since one of their customer service reps told me, “My manager is only here to make sure I get a pay cheque,” when I pointed out their error and requested to speak to someone who actually gave a you-know-what. Apparently, if you do get through their automatic talk-to-a-machine-but-it-can’t-figure-out-what-I’m-saying system to a human being, you can’t get past the power-tripping CSR who was clearly in the right place at a time when there was a labour shortage in the service industry… oh, like now.

Today I decided to bite the bullet and add a data plan to my mobile device. I have the HTC S640 Iris. I don’t mind the PDA, but I still haven’t figured it all out even though I’ve had it over 6 months. I suspect it’s actually harder to use than the Blackberry, but I figured I’d be impulsive… what else is new?

Having added the unlimited everything plan I decided to add the Telus Mobile Email. Sounds logical, right? Get my email to my PDA… it’s unlimited data, so why not? Well… in the process of installing their handy-dandy software and trying to connect my work email to this thing, it ended up clearing all my contacts and my appointments on my Outlook. Nice.

I now have lost every single contact I had in both my phone and my Outlook – that’s all my personal AND business contacts. Not only that, but the lovely Telus Mobile Email says it’s working just fine, but it’s not actually sending any email to my phone. To make things even more annoying, Telus Mobility said there was absolutely nothing they could do to retrieve the lost records; they referred me to HTC Tech Support. Guess what? Yep. HTC Tech Support can’t do anything for me either.

I’m at the mercy of my IT guy. Please let him know what to do. I’m nerdy, but this is really beyond me. I think I’d like a drink…