Bell Can't Update Contact Info From Imaginary Numbers. No, Really.
Holy shit you guys Bell is fucking crazy.
Okay, so a few days ago I needed to call Internet tech support and it took them like ten minutes to find the account. We only have three possible phone numbers it could be under, and only one that it was likely to be under, and none of them worked. Eventually we found it by looking up our last name and postal code (which took at least five minutes because it's an unusual name and she had an extremely hard time spelling it correctly even when I was doing it phonetically with NATO phonics). And once we did I had her tell me the number on the account, and when she did, it was not a number we had ever had. Like, it was miles away from our actual numbers. For one thing, it was a local prefix on it, which we couldn't even get for our cell numbers; our actual prefixes are therefore all for one town over.
So naturally I asked if we could update that number to be our actual contact number. And was told we couldn't.
I should mention here that (as you know) I work for Rogers, and for Rogers, the home phone number is just a field on the account, like the email address, which can be updated with any damned number you like. So if you don't have a home number, just a cell, we put that in. If you change it (and tell us; not everyone remembers to), we just backspace over the old one, type in the new one, and hit the Save button. That's it. Simple.
And every now and again, when the account doesn't come up automatically and I have to search for it, and I ask for the home phone number on the account, people will say, somewhat uncertainly, that they don't actually have a home phone number, just a cell, and when I assure them that's fine, I'm just looking for whatever number they gave us as their primary contact number when they signed up, they will occasionally say, in a "Well but this isn't going to be any use to you" tone, "It's with another provider." I assure them again that that's fine, get the number, and 99.8% of the time find the account just fine with it.
I've always wondered about that, though, because I'm just asking for their primary contact number; why the fuck do they think it matters who their provider is? All I'm after is a number. It could be 613-555-1234, who cares; if that's what they gave us and that's what we typed in, that's what will pull it up. Also now I'm going to search that number at work and see if anyone has it, lol. Because if not it's mine. You know. Once I live somewhere Rogers services.
Anyways, now I know why the uncertainty: It's because Bell is fucking stupid. Like, really ridiculous. On multiple levels. Like, the retardedness is endemic to the system. Literally.
Because if you don't have a home phone with Bell, the system automatically assigns a number to your location (or possibly your home phone number would be the one the system automatically assigns to you, with no options to change it if it spells out something rude or what--which mine sadly doesn't--the agent was a little unsure of the technical details). And the only way to change that and to get my cell number into that "home number" field, according to the first agent, would be to "port" my cell phone service (which is from another provider) in to Bell and set that up as my home phone instead. Which of course I'm not doing because I cracked the phone and took it away from Bell in the first place because their service was fucking ridiculous. Like, I couldn't even see a list of all the calls made on the phone online or in a bill; I had to call a live agent and have her read the calls out to me. Really, guys? In the fucking TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY we can't manage this? You're shitting me, right? Because hey, we managed it in the Twentieth one just fine.
And according to the second agent--when I called back on Hubby's advice to see about just getting one of our Bell cell phones linked to the account instead, that also is not actually possible.
What IS possible, is that we get a home phone service with Bell, and then that will be our home phone number, and then they can look it up by a number that is actually applicable to us.
Get that? It is impossible for them, based on how their entire system works, to have our main contact number actually be the main number actually used to actually contact us. They have no way to change that, or to update it. They have a phone number their system automatically assigned to our physical location, and if we want to use our actual phone number as our main contact number on our account so they can search by that instead of this random number, they can totally do that--by turning on a phone service we neither want nor need at this location, so that fake number becomes our real number. So it's legit after all! :D
You have to be fucking shitting me.
Now, Rogers of course also uses numbers and codes to connect our Internet service--IPs and the like, and the IPs are, yes, automatically assigned by our servers. But (1) while we can bring up the account number by searching for certain info off the modem, serial numbers and MAC addresses and such, the phone numbers provided on the account don't have anything to do with how the servers connect with the modems, even if you've got the Rogers Home Phone service (which also comes in on your cable service), because (2) IT DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE CONTACT INFO ON MY ACCOUNT HOLY SHIT WTFBBQ ARE YOU KIDDING ME. This is a fibre optic connection. It's not a phone line. We are the ones who had it installed. This should not be an issue.
So my options are (1) remember where I wrote down a number I literally never use except to contact Bell (which I avoid doing whenever possible because of shit like this and also because their customer service hours are so short that they're usually closed when I want to talk to them) because it's not my phone number and they don't have a way to search for any other phone numbers other than that one (no, I did ask; wanted to know if I just needed to tell them to search for it as a cell number instead of a home number or something--nope; can search by name, account number, and ridiculous made-up phone number, but not my actual phone number. My COFFEE SHOP can find me by my cell phone number, but a multi-national Fortune 500 company can't do it--even when my cell phone number IS WITH THEM; or (2) get a land line with Bell, so when I call in and give them my home phone number, the number I give them matches what they have on file. No, I can't update what they have on file to match my info; I HAVE TO CHANGE MY INFO TO MATCH WHAT THEY HAVE ON FILE.
I do not have a land line because I do not need a land line. I have a cell phone in my pocket that ensures I am reachable almost 24/7 (I have to have it off at work, when my land line would also have to take a message because guess what, I wouldn't be there), even when I'm in the can. Oh, yes, I could get a cordless phone too, but then (a) it would mess up my wifi; (b) I would have to play the fun game of "Find the fucking phone before they hang up"; and (c) I would be literally paying for a service I neither want nor need in order to shave 5-10 minutes off my rare phone calls to Bell.
This is seriously crazy, yo.
I hear from customers fairly regularly who either came to us from Bell, or who came back to us after leaving us for Bell, and they all say the same thing; our customer service is great; Bell's is fucking terrible. And it is, you guys. It is.
So, okay, this is ridiculous but if three different agents tell me they can't update my contact info to include my contact info then I have to believe I didn't get that poor new trainee who didn't quite understand that lesson and that, no, they actually aren't able to update my contact info (although they certainly can update my paid services so my contact info matches theirs, which is--seriously, guys? This has to be illegal somehow. At the least it's ridiculous). So, okay, I ask (nicely) to speak to a manager so I can pass them along that feedback that this is a stupid practice and it sure would be great if, a decade and a half into it, they joined the rest of us in the twenty-first century--or even, you know, the latter quarter of the twentieth, because I'm pretty sure as long as there have been searchable databases there've been ways to update the info you're searching by. Anyways, asked to talk to a manager. Can't; they're at a funeral. Okay, so any manager. Can't; they're ALL at the funeral. It was for a co-worker's sister.
Seriously? Seriously. Okay, so Rogers has the Rogers Management Office (RMO), and yeah, occasionally all my Team Leads will be in a meeting or something--AT THIS ONE CALL CENTRE. Nationally, though? We have a department, RMO, and if it's within opening hours we can transfer a caller over to them. If it's not we can set up a call-back and a manager can call us back by noon the next business day. Or within 24 hours if it's a slightly different kind of callback.
But nope, right now Bell Canada has no managers available to talk to me about their ridiculous contact info system, because all five of them are at a funeral.
I mean, I'm sorry about the sister (and said so), but THE ENTIRE NATIONAL MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT FOR BELL CANADA IS TAKING A PERSONAL DAY?!
Holy shit, you guys. Holy fucking shit.
So I set up a call-back with her, and a manager is supposed to call us back within 24-48 hours. Not by noon tomorrow; sometime in the next day or two. And meanwhile I'm going to see what cell packages are available with Rogers, because while we don't have Internet service here in Nova Scotia, we do have cell service, and this is stupid enough we're probably going to move our cell services away from Bell over this. Plus I get a 40% employee discount, so yay. Wish we had Internet yere; I'm paying just over $100 a month for 75 Mbps down unlimited (had 80 down but they changed the package without actually telling us about that), and with Rogers, for just UNDER $100 a month, I can get 250 Mbps down. Also unlimited. 20 Mbps up. Also a subscription to TechXpert, our extended support department (which we ourselves don't actually need but every senior should have), a two-year subscription to Shomi (our Netflicks); and the rest of this season and all of next season of GameCentreLive, our streaming NHL service.
Anyways, I'll let you know how it goes with the manager, because SERIOUSLY???!?
This entry was originally posted at http://kryss-labryn.dreamwidth.org/99953.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Okay, so a few days ago I needed to call Internet tech support and it took them like ten minutes to find the account. We only have three possible phone numbers it could be under, and only one that it was likely to be under, and none of them worked. Eventually we found it by looking up our last name and postal code (which took at least five minutes because it's an unusual name and she had an extremely hard time spelling it correctly even when I was doing it phonetically with NATO phonics). And once we did I had her tell me the number on the account, and when she did, it was not a number we had ever had. Like, it was miles away from our actual numbers. For one thing, it was a local prefix on it, which we couldn't even get for our cell numbers; our actual prefixes are therefore all for one town over.
So naturally I asked if we could update that number to be our actual contact number. And was told we couldn't.
I should mention here that (as you know) I work for Rogers, and for Rogers, the home phone number is just a field on the account, like the email address, which can be updated with any damned number you like. So if you don't have a home number, just a cell, we put that in. If you change it (and tell us; not everyone remembers to), we just backspace over the old one, type in the new one, and hit the Save button. That's it. Simple.
And every now and again, when the account doesn't come up automatically and I have to search for it, and I ask for the home phone number on the account, people will say, somewhat uncertainly, that they don't actually have a home phone number, just a cell, and when I assure them that's fine, I'm just looking for whatever number they gave us as their primary contact number when they signed up, they will occasionally say, in a "Well but this isn't going to be any use to you" tone, "It's with another provider." I assure them again that that's fine, get the number, and 99.8% of the time find the account just fine with it.
I've always wondered about that, though, because I'm just asking for their primary contact number; why the fuck do they think it matters who their provider is? All I'm after is a number. It could be 613-555-1234, who cares; if that's what they gave us and that's what we typed in, that's what will pull it up. Also now I'm going to search that number at work and see if anyone has it, lol. Because if not it's mine. You know. Once I live somewhere Rogers services.
Anyways, now I know why the uncertainty: It's because Bell is fucking stupid. Like, really ridiculous. On multiple levels. Like, the retardedness is endemic to the system. Literally.
Because if you don't have a home phone with Bell, the system automatically assigns a number to your location (or possibly your home phone number would be the one the system automatically assigns to you, with no options to change it if it spells out something rude or what--which mine sadly doesn't--the agent was a little unsure of the technical details). And the only way to change that and to get my cell number into that "home number" field, according to the first agent, would be to "port" my cell phone service (which is from another provider) in to Bell and set that up as my home phone instead. Which of course I'm not doing because I cracked the phone and took it away from Bell in the first place because their service was fucking ridiculous. Like, I couldn't even see a list of all the calls made on the phone online or in a bill; I had to call a live agent and have her read the calls out to me. Really, guys? In the fucking TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY we can't manage this? You're shitting me, right? Because hey, we managed it in the Twentieth one just fine.
And according to the second agent--when I called back on Hubby's advice to see about just getting one of our Bell cell phones linked to the account instead, that also is not actually possible.
What IS possible, is that we get a home phone service with Bell, and then that will be our home phone number, and then they can look it up by a number that is actually applicable to us.
Get that? It is impossible for them, based on how their entire system works, to have our main contact number actually be the main number actually used to actually contact us. They have no way to change that, or to update it. They have a phone number their system automatically assigned to our physical location, and if we want to use our actual phone number as our main contact number on our account so they can search by that instead of this random number, they can totally do that--by turning on a phone service we neither want nor need at this location, so that fake number becomes our real number. So it's legit after all! :D
You have to be fucking shitting me.
Now, Rogers of course also uses numbers and codes to connect our Internet service--IPs and the like, and the IPs are, yes, automatically assigned by our servers. But (1) while we can bring up the account number by searching for certain info off the modem, serial numbers and MAC addresses and such, the phone numbers provided on the account don't have anything to do with how the servers connect with the modems, even if you've got the Rogers Home Phone service (which also comes in on your cable service), because (2) IT DOESN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE CONTACT INFO ON MY ACCOUNT HOLY SHIT WTFBBQ ARE YOU KIDDING ME. This is a fibre optic connection. It's not a phone line. We are the ones who had it installed. This should not be an issue.
So my options are (1) remember where I wrote down a number I literally never use except to contact Bell (which I avoid doing whenever possible because of shit like this and also because their customer service hours are so short that they're usually closed when I want to talk to them) because it's not my phone number and they don't have a way to search for any other phone numbers other than that one (no, I did ask; wanted to know if I just needed to tell them to search for it as a cell number instead of a home number or something--nope; can search by name, account number, and ridiculous made-up phone number, but not my actual phone number. My COFFEE SHOP can find me by my cell phone number, but a multi-national Fortune 500 company can't do it--even when my cell phone number IS WITH THEM; or (2) get a land line with Bell, so when I call in and give them my home phone number, the number I give them matches what they have on file. No, I can't update what they have on file to match my info; I HAVE TO CHANGE MY INFO TO MATCH WHAT THEY HAVE ON FILE.
I do not have a land line because I do not need a land line. I have a cell phone in my pocket that ensures I am reachable almost 24/7 (I have to have it off at work, when my land line would also have to take a message because guess what, I wouldn't be there), even when I'm in the can. Oh, yes, I could get a cordless phone too, but then (a) it would mess up my wifi; (b) I would have to play the fun game of "Find the fucking phone before they hang up"; and (c) I would be literally paying for a service I neither want nor need in order to shave 5-10 minutes off my rare phone calls to Bell.
This is seriously crazy, yo.
I hear from customers fairly regularly who either came to us from Bell, or who came back to us after leaving us for Bell, and they all say the same thing; our customer service is great; Bell's is fucking terrible. And it is, you guys. It is.
So, okay, this is ridiculous but if three different agents tell me they can't update my contact info to include my contact info then I have to believe I didn't get that poor new trainee who didn't quite understand that lesson and that, no, they actually aren't able to update my contact info (although they certainly can update my paid services so my contact info matches theirs, which is--seriously, guys? This has to be illegal somehow. At the least it's ridiculous). So, okay, I ask (nicely) to speak to a manager so I can pass them along that feedback that this is a stupid practice and it sure would be great if, a decade and a half into it, they joined the rest of us in the twenty-first century--or even, you know, the latter quarter of the twentieth, because I'm pretty sure as long as there have been searchable databases there've been ways to update the info you're searching by. Anyways, asked to talk to a manager. Can't; they're at a funeral. Okay, so any manager. Can't; they're ALL at the funeral. It was for a co-worker's sister.
Seriously? Seriously. Okay, so Rogers has the Rogers Management Office (RMO), and yeah, occasionally all my Team Leads will be in a meeting or something--AT THIS ONE CALL CENTRE. Nationally, though? We have a department, RMO, and if it's within opening hours we can transfer a caller over to them. If it's not we can set up a call-back and a manager can call us back by noon the next business day. Or within 24 hours if it's a slightly different kind of callback.
But nope, right now Bell Canada has no managers available to talk to me about their ridiculous contact info system, because all five of them are at a funeral.
I mean, I'm sorry about the sister (and said so), but THE ENTIRE NATIONAL MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT FOR BELL CANADA IS TAKING A PERSONAL DAY?!
Holy shit, you guys. Holy fucking shit.
So I set up a call-back with her, and a manager is supposed to call us back within 24-48 hours. Not by noon tomorrow; sometime in the next day or two. And meanwhile I'm going to see what cell packages are available with Rogers, because while we don't have Internet service here in Nova Scotia, we do have cell service, and this is stupid enough we're probably going to move our cell services away from Bell over this. Plus I get a 40% employee discount, so yay. Wish we had Internet yere; I'm paying just over $100 a month for 75 Mbps down unlimited (had 80 down but they changed the package without actually telling us about that), and with Rogers, for just UNDER $100 a month, I can get 250 Mbps down. Also unlimited. 20 Mbps up. Also a subscription to TechXpert, our extended support department (which we ourselves don't actually need but every senior should have), a two-year subscription to Shomi (our Netflicks); and the rest of this season and all of next season of GameCentreLive, our streaming NHL service.
Anyways, I'll let you know how it goes with the manager, because SERIOUSLY???!?
This entry was originally posted at http://kryss-labryn.dreamwidth.org/99953.html. Please comment there using OpenID.