Complaint Against Telus Sent to Better Business Bureau (Resolved)

Vancouver:    Remember the hippopotamus who used to prance across the tv screen in Telus commercials, the one who eventually ended up dead due to mistreatment? That's my neighbour.

I warned her not to order internet from Telus. But she went ahead, saying they were cheaper than Shaw, and besides she'd had a Telus telephone land line for 20 years.

But after ordering internet service from Telus, this customer -- #2249906384 -- couldn't get the service up and running because she couldn't get through to the technical support line. Her friend M.L. who is tech savvy had offered to spend a Sunday evening at her house to help her set it up, but he too became frustrated that they couldn't get through to the tech help line.  She would later ask him to come back and try again but he refused, saying there was no guarantee it would be any easier to get through next time.

This customer phoned Telus Tech again the following week and didn't get through.  So she called an agent and cancelled the service. The agent told her she now owes Telus a $120 cancellation fee, that she had a verbal agreement with Telus that she must honor.  She says that's nonsense. 

She says it's Telus that breached a verbal contract: the contract to provide her with a readily accessible technical support line. She says she emphasized her need for technical support when speaking to Telus agent Jeremy who sold her the Telus internet service.  "It was almost a deal breaker," she said.  Jeremy first told her that a disk would come with the modem that would enable her to set up her internet connection, but she said her netbook didn't have a disk drive.  Jeremy checked with a technician who said no problem, all she had to do was call the technical support line and they would "walk you through it". Just phone the number that comes in the box with the modem, she was told. 

 "He should have told me that you're put on hold when you call the tech line and you wait and wait and wait."  She has a suggestion: instead of "T" for Telus, their company logo should be "W" for Wait.   Various neighbours and acquaintances at the local Carnegie Community Center on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside gave this woman feedback, encouraging her to dispute the $120 cancellation fee.  A security guard told her, "They don't have anything in writing."  
 When the customer called Telus to dispute the fee, a young female agent transferred her to a department with an Orwellian name, "Loyalty and Retention".

Natalie in Loyalty & Retention took her call.  Natalie, who had what the customer thought was an Australian accent, had a harder edge to her personality than the front line workers. Natalie told the customer that she would give her an alternative phone number -- one other than the official one printed on the instructional disk that comes in the box with the modem -- to phone for technical support. "It's like they have this special number to deliver the tech support to people who are so fed up they're ready to cancel."  The fact that Natalie was so quick to offer this alternative number was an indication to the customer that this is a common problem they hear about.  But it was too little to late. "I had packed up the modem and all the cords; everything was back in the box".  Telus had lost this customer's loyalty.

Natalie got increasingly "pushy", says the customer. She reiterated that the customer would be billed for the $120 disconnect fee.  "I told her I didn't for one second have an internet connection", the customer recalls.  Natalie responded that the internet signal had been running through her line all this time.

The customer told Natalie that she was going to fight this as she hadn't agreed to anything, she hadn't signed anything committing to a $120 cancellation fee.  Natalie, who's voice was getting louder, told her that she had to pay it, that if she didn't, "It will be sent to Collections."  

 The customer told Natalie that while contesting the internet cancellation fee, she was afraid to pay her phone bill as the payment would also be applied to the disputed internet fee and would be taken as a concession on her part that she owed this money.   She said if this wasn't resolved, she might have to cancel her phone service too.

 Natalie, who was sounding less like Loyalty & Retention and more like Disloyalty & Detention, was eager to oblige. "I'll cancel it right now!", she said. "That's the loyalty they show to a 25 year customer", said the customer. She didn't take Natalie up on her offer to cancel though because she needed time to remove the messages stored on the voice mail that was bundled with her phone service. So she told Natalie, "I'd like to speak to a supervisor first." Natalie said there was no supervisor to speak to, that she was the end of the line. "She was mad", says the customer. Natalie asked the customer several times if she wanted her telephone service terminated. "She had her finger on the button." 

I later told the customer, "Phone back and bypass Natalie." The man who had been at her home to help her with her internet set up agreed. "That's just a boiler room they're operating there."  

Next the customer got a young male agent on the line and told him she was afraid to pay her telephone billl for fear the money would go to the disputed $120 fee. He told her to just send the modem back to the Alberta address on the box and phone Telus back with the tracking number so they could confirm it had been received. He assured her that then the $120 charge would be taken off her bill. She had no idea he was lying.

She phoned back a week later and gave the tracking number to a female agent. The agent reminded her that she owed a $120 fee. The customer explained that the previous man had told her that the cancellation fee had been waived. The agent assured her that she understood and that the cancellation fee had now been waived.  The customer had no idea she was lying.
 Then the customer got a phone call from Telus at her home.  A woman on the line asked if she would participate in a survey for Telus to determine the reasons for customers canceling their internet service.  "I never do telephone surveys but I was grateful they'd dropped the internet fee so I gave them 20 minutes of my time."  She told the surveyor the whole story, even the part about Natalie "the agent from hell" hanging up on her.     

What she didn't realize was that Natalie wasn't finished with her.  And neither was Telus.  When the customer got her telephone bill last week, the $120 fee was still owing, so she called Telus. She got a female agent with a French accent who said there was a note on her file from Natalie saying that this customer had admitted entering into a verbal contract to pay a $120 cancellation fee. "I didn't tell her that," the customer says.

It was this French agent who revealed that the previous front-line agents had been lying. She said those agents did not have the authority to waive any fee over $100 and they knew that. The customer concluded, "They were just telling me what I wanted to hear to get rid of me".

The French agent explained that only the Help Desk could authorize the cancelling of the $120 fee. The agent went off the line and asked the Help Desk if they would do it. No way, was their response.  "The $120 stands." The customer asked for the name of the person who had made that decision, so that a record could be kept. The agent said she could "not divulge" that information. She told the customer that somebody from" higher up" -- this sounded suspiciously  like Loyalty & Retention, as Natalie had said that's as high as a customer could go -- would get back to her that day or the next either by telephone or email.  The customer had no way of knowing she was lying. 

 When nobody called back, the customer called Telus on Thursday, July 16.  She got an agent, again with a French accent.  This time she made a note of the agent's name which is provided at the beginning of the converation: Suzanne.  Suzanne revealed that the promise she had been given that somebody would get back to her that day or the next was bogus, that agents can't promise to get back to a customer in a time frame shorter than 72 "business" hours.  The customer did the math. "That's over a week."  Suzanne couldn't hide her irritation, says the customer. "There are 24 hours in a day, Ma'am."  But there are only eight business hours in a day, the customer pointed out, usually from 9 a.m. -5 p.m.; business hours don't extend into the night.  "I'm sure they have better things to do in the middle of the night," Suzanne responded.  

 The customer told Suzanne about the previous agents who had assured her that the $120 cancellation fee had been waived.  "The fee stands," Suzanne said.  After hearing the customer's spiel about how she couldn't get through to the Tech line, Suzanne stated, "The tech line is 24 hours", apparently not cognizant of the fact that a customer has better things to do in the middle of the night.  The customer had heard a previous agent instantly use that identical argument, as if they were following the same script. "They're ready for complaints from people who can't get through on the tech line.  They've got the comeback memorized." 

 When the customer went into detail about her tech savvy friend spending a Sunday evening at her home to help her with the internet set up but not getting through on the tech support line, and about trying again on her own the following week and not getting through, Suzanne snapped, "That's not what I have."  Suzanne claimed that her records showed that the customer had in fact talked to a technician, that she had made "six calls to our tech, 5-11 minutes in duration."  The customer insisted that she had never once gotten through to a technician. 
 
 But the customer's memory of events carried no weight, with Suzanne interrupting, "I'll talk to Tech so they can tell me how many times you've spoken to them."  Suzanne then came back on the line saying,"Thank you for your patience", another giveaway that Telus agents were following a memorized script as previous agents used the same line.  Suzanne seemed then to change her story: she said the customer's calls had consisted of "a couple of hang ups", an "abandoned call", and "a gentleman calling in on your behalf." Suzanne claimed this gentleman had hung up too. "You must have the wrong file", the customer told her. 
  

When my neighbour then asked for more information about these calls, Suzanne responded, "That's neither here nor there".  Suzanne reiterated that the fee would stand, that she was not going to discuss this further and that the call was ending.  The customer was frustrated that she didn't have a chance to explain that most of the attempts to reach Telus had not been made on her telephone line; they had been made by her male friend who was calling Telus on his cell phone because both her telephone and internet cord couldn't be plugged into her jack at the same time.  "I started yelling at  her," says the customer.  The customer told Suzanne that other customers were going to hear about this, that she was going to make sure her experience was reported on the internet.  Suzanne said she didn't care.  Suzanne said,  "Maam, have a nice day", and hung up.
 
 Later that day, the customer told her male friend, the one who had come to her home to help her with the internet set up, about Suzanne's claim that a "gentleman" had called Tech on her behalf.  "Did you ever get through to them?", she asked, just to make sure she hadn't missed something.  "No!", he said, outraged.  "They didn't answer!".  He advised, "Fight them," adding that his mother had gone through a battle with Telus, although she was now ok with the internet service she was getting from them.  

The customer is tired.  But she has lodged one more complaint, this time with the Better Business Bureau.  What she wants, what she really, really wants, is for Telus to honor their two verbal confirmations that the $120 internet fee had been waived.  Their claim that she didn't honor a verbal agreement to pay a $120 cancellation fee and that she had 24 hours to access the Tech line is, to steal a phrase from Suzanne, 'neither here nor there', as she has since been given two verbal confirmations that Telus had waived the cancellation fee.  She feels "tricked" into paying her bill.

The Better Business Bureau claims on their webpage that most consumer complaints against a company can be resolved by the company.  But unlike the slogan in the Telus ads, this customer is not convinced that, "The future is friendly."


Update:  After lodging a written complaint with the Better Business Bureau, the customer was informed by them that she had to re-submit her complaint by filling out an internet form. 
In the meantime, Telus has sent this customer a notice stating that her telephone will be cut off at the end of August unless she pays her bill, and that she will have to pay another hook up fee after that point.  She hasn't paid her bill because she didn't want to pay a $120 internet fee that she doesn't believe she owes. 

She sent an email to John Wheeler in Telus management about it -- a reader left email addresses for him and other managers on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog -- but went ahead and paid her bill out of fear that she would lose voice mail messages that were important to preserve.  She felt like she had succumbed to "extortion".

Wheeler did pass her message on to Deb Thorne-Latta, a customer service advisor (who is apparently not located in Vancouver) who emailed her and offered to talk to her about the situation.  "It took me a few days to get back to her", says the customer.  The customer called Thorne-Latta last Wednesday and was asked by a clerk to call back on Friday as Thorne-Latta needed time to review the file. The customer was too busy to call on Friday, Sept. 11 but called on Tuesday, Sept. 15 and was told that Thorne-Latta had now gone on vacation.  

The Executive Escalation TeamThe customer was hoping that Thorne-Latta had waived the $120 charge before she left and called a front line agent to find out.  The agent said she didn't see any indication that the fee had been waived.  The agent was polite but seemed "nervous" and put the customer on hold.  The agent came back on the line and told the customer that this file was now being handled by the Executive Escalation Team.  The man handling the case would get back to her.  But the customer said she is difficult to reach so it would be better if she took his number and called him. But the agent refused to give out his name, phone number, or email address, saying it was confidential. 


Case Resolved:  Late in the afternoon of Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, the customer once again emailed John Wheeler in management and asked that he make a decision as to whether or not she would be reimbursed her $120 fee, so that she could decide whether to go back to the Better Business Bureau or go to a legal clinic.  The next morning a Telus rep, Devon, telephoned the customer at her home.  "He was polite," she said.  First, he checked her account to verify that she had returned the modem. He wasn't familiar with all the details of the case -- he said he was replacing Deb Thorne-Latta -- but said that generally before internet service is cancelled and the $120 fee waived, a technician is sent to the home to verify that the internet can't be set up.  Since that hadn't happened in this case, he would give her the benefit of the doubt and waive the $120 fee.  So he credited her account with $120 plus tax which came to a little over $134.  

Devon also told her that the letter threatening to cut off her phone service had been automatically generated by a computer once her bill reached a certain amount, and that when Deb Thorne-Latta had learned of the letter, she immediately contacted the department that had sent it and ensured that the customer's phone would not be  canceled.
"I'm so relieved to have this over with", says the customer.  "I thanked Devon three times."