What is the plural of "doofus"?

[bunsen_h]

For the past week, the house has been without internet service, and largely without phone service.

It started when we tried to have the phone service switched from Bell to Rogers, leaving behind the internet service.  I don't want to switch the internet stuff yet because I have my personal webspace hosted by Sympatico (Rogers doesn't offer that at

Comments

[shonokin]

I think the answer is that any company can seem fine when there is nothing wrong and they simply fulfill their mandate of doing something for you in exchange for money. But when something does go wrong you quickly find that they've fired all their competent customer support workers and replaced them with an electronic voicemail maze designed to induce despair and make people give up, and when you do get through it is to someone in a foreign country that doesn't actually speak English or French.

Given your experiences, it does not surprise me that they may have been following a similar trend with their technicians. I hope you manage to get everything working again in spite of this setback.

[o_bunny]

We've recently switched *to* Bell for internet, after 'way too many problems with our previous provider. There were a couple of issues, such as disconnecting our existing internet service two days before connecting the new stuff, and the technician not showing up *at all* on the original day scheduled (for which they waived the installation fee and discounted our service). Once it was installed and working properly (we had a hybrid network, now down to one router), all was good. Except for the calls on the answering machine from Bell, wanting to know when they could install our service....

FWIW, the Bell FIBE service has been delivering a rock-solid 15Mbps download speed, about 12X our previous supplier, for less money.

[terheyt]

My favourite utility company is my ISP, Securenet. In over 8 years with them, I have NEVER had a problem they didn't solve completely and immediately, on the first call. And I have had very few problems.

For example: I have had a technician on the phone say to me "Yeah, sounds like your modem might be the problem. Tell you what, I get off at 7, how about I swing by at 8 with a few new ones, and we'll see which works best?" Then do it.

I gave up on a land line phone years back after sampling the (lack of) customer service from all the providers available. I'm very happy with my Virgin cell phone.

I used to work for Bell customer service (Satellite TV, but still). Based on the "quality assurance" standards (5% for helping the customer, 30% for trying to sell them something) I will never use another Bell service as long as I live.

Good luck.

P.S. Coming in to ConCon this weekend. Any chance of meeting up?

[bunsen_h]

I don't think we're going to make it to the con; we're still overwhelmed by Stuff To Do and we've got mentisiterinvit's daughter here for all of Saturday. We may have some free time on Sunday, if that would fit your schedule..?

[beable]

My last interaction with a Bell technician (sent to me by Teksavvy as my phone is w/ Teksavvy and my internet w/ NCF) was very pleasant ... but it should have been completely unnecessary

[ambiviolent]

A headdesk of Doofi?