thank you Anna

I don't know you, I just spoke to you on the phone. You work at Bell Canada, and you helped me out. Thanks! My saga with Bell is now ended. I don't owe any money, and in fact, Bell owes me $6. What a hassle. I somehow mistakenly paid some bills using online banking to an inactive account. Twice. Those payments never showed up on my bill, and the amount kept rolling over to the next bill. I thought, "well, sometime when I use the Internet, it takes a while for them to process the payment, and it shows up as not paid when in fact it is. I'll just wait for them to sort it out." Nope.

I try calling to sort it out. We track down the payments, they went to the wrong account, I am assured that they will take care of it, and since they owe me money, they'll be sending me a check. I feel good, having taken care of this loose end. About a month later, I get a call from the credit department saying that they're going to call the collection agency if I don't pay my bill. What? You owe me money and you're calling to threaten me? I'm annoyed. So talk to someone that they transfer me to, and she says that I have to send proof of those two payments to this fax number. So I download the two statements of the net, PDF them, and fax the whole thing to the number. Dutifully, I call back a week later to check what's going on. That was yesterday. Well, it turns out I"M not supposed to fax the information, THE BANK is supposed to fax it, and they have to do what's called a Data Centre Trace. So I call my bank. Can they do this? Unfortunately, they can't since it's been over 90 days since the transactions were made. (I think the bank needs bigger hard drives so they can do data centre traces further back, like say, 6 years, like I have to keep all my financial records for the government... but now I'm ranting).

So I call back to Bell (this is the 4th conversation, now, in case you're counting). I get bounced around from the billing department to the credit department, finally to some woman's voicemail, at which point I hang up because I have no idea who this woman is and I don't want to leave her a voicemail.

I wait a few minutes till I calm down a bit.

Then I called again, and spoke with Anna, who took care of things. Firstly, she thought that I had already provided enough information, and even though the bank couldn't do it, what I had provided ought to be enough. Secondly, she didn't transfer me to another department, she 'escalated' my issue to her manager, and was kind enough to keep me on hold for a long time while she did so. Frankly, I was happier to be on hold than to get transferred, so I waited. She finally got back to me and said that it would take some time to sort this out, could she get a number where she could call me back? This was yesterday afternoon. So I gave her my number, and then I didn't hear back from her until just now. Good news, it's taken care of, the money is transferred, and I'll be getting a cheque from Bell. Sounds eerily familiar...

This whole payment hassle is primarily the reason why I'm no longer with Bell.

technorati tags:Bell, Canada, phone, billing, issues

Blogged with Flock