The Great Bell Battle of 2010

Our old internet service required that I hold my computer above my head to get a weak and oh-so-sensitive signal.

As you may have noticed, I had temporarily given up on blogging. Our ridiculously slow internet made the experience unbearably frustrating and a number of times I lost everything I had been working on when my connection suddenly failed. My creative juices could only take so many blows before I had to give up. Now we have awesome internet! It only took Gareth upwards of 20 angry hours dealing with Bell Canada's annoyingly well-trained customer service department where typical conversations went as follows:

"I'm sorry sir, I understand your frustration, but Bell's policy clearly states that..."

or

"I'm sorry sir, I understand your frustration, but I cannot help you with that. Let me transfer you to the _______ department." Which they should have followed with "You'll have to sit on hold for 25 minutes and they won't be able to help you either, I hope that's ok."

Gareth reached his breaking point when a manager told him that he was just experiencing buyer's remorse for purchasing an expensive internet device and agreeing to a 2 year contract. What this manager did not seem to understand is that the device did not work, but he still wanted to charge us for 2 years of service. Hmm. Because we ordered the router and service online, we could not simply go to a store and get help from a real person, Gareth tried anyway to no avail.

Then one fine day, Gareth tried calling again to check-in with tech support who had said they would get back to us three weeks earlier. Gareth had been calling every couple of days for a progress report and everytime they were non-committal and unhelpful. But this time, this glorious time, someone actually listened to him and after an hour and a half of talking it out with two low-level customer service agents we had a promise of a new device within 3 days! They even credited our bill for the month where we did not have functioning service, something previous agents had told us was not possible and against Bell policy. Thank you Gareth for your persistence and thank you Claudio at Bell for helping him!