Internet just isn’t any technology. Needless to say in today’s world everything and anything runs on the power of the Internet. When it comes to me I eat, sleep and drink on the Internet. So when this service was taken away from me I thought I wasn’t alive. For 4 long days! And this was an unprecedented situation according to Bell (my ISP). Also unprecedented for Canada I suppose?
The Fibe TV network which I am a proud subscriber delivers TV/Internet/Phone through the same connection at no extra cost. In other words TV runs on Internet bandwidth (but it doesn’t count towards my actual download) and the phone too but it uses very little power. However if the Internet goes down, it takes the TV along with it, but the phone is spared.
I immediately logged a ticket with Bell and they promised to send someone across within 24 hours (12-5 PM the next day). I waited and waited the next day and the technician doesn’t turn up. So I call them up to seek answers. I am told it was a server issue and an area outage which will be resolved by 3PM the next day (but no response on why the technician did not turn up). So 48 hours without TV/Internet, I was suffocating to say the least. The burden of guilt that I was carrying for not having checked my emails for 2 long days was bearing on me. Finally I lost patience on the 3rd day and got on a marathon 3 hour call! (yes, 3 hours). I wasn’t hanging up until I got my answers. And answers was all I got.
I was told that the technician was never booked to come to my place, the dashboard was empty. I was in no mood to book another appointment for Saturday, and by the time I finished waiting and talking to the tech support, the Saturday slots were full and Monday was the only likely day to book an appointment for the technician to visit my place.I was so anguished that I wanted to move out of Bell and opt for another viable ISP in the area. I was so sure that in the time that the technician will arrive to solve my problem the new ISP will gladly accept and service my request for a new connection in 24 hours!
Finally an L3 loyalty/billing supervisor got on the line with me and things started to take turn for the better. Not only was I compensated for the downtime, I was given credit for the trauma which I faced and a technician visited my place today instead of Monday to solve the problem. The problem was attributed to a firmware glitch for the modem. The Internet is back and I am back to breathing normally. Yes, the service was far from satisfactory, the customer care lost credibility while booking an appointment and not sending someone at all, but am I glad I am back in business online. I have no further comments to make to Bell except for requesting to provide prompt service the next time I face a downtime.
