More Unprofessional Bell Aliant Customer Support

Frequent readers of this blog will note that I have had issues with Bell Aliant (BA) in the past. Well, they've done it again.

On July 19th, my wife and I called BA to ask some questions about our existing account and about getting fiberop internet installed. We spoke with Lance. During that call, we tried to canceled my cell phone line. Lance explained that he could not cancel it immediately and that all cell phone cancellations required a 30 day notice. That's fine, I told him, consider this our 30 day cancellation notice and note it on our account. He did, and we assumed in 30 days, on August 18th, the line would be dead and the charges would be dropped.

Our next bill had the charges from Aug. 18 to Sept 18 on it. My wife made a note of that and showed it to me, at which time I immediately called the help number. I spoke with Tiffany on October 4th at 8:15pm. She said that "something had gone wrong with the cancellation request." For some unexplained reason, she could not cancel that for me but Lance could. She made a note on our account and set it up so that Lance would credit our account and give me a call back to explain what had happened and what he had done to solve the problem. I was to give Lance 48 hours from that phone call to accomplish this and call me.

On October 8 (didn't write down the time), I called and spoke with Alan. I explained the entire situation, told him I was angry that Lance had not contacted me, and wondered if those charges had been reversed and the line closed. They had not. Alan also said that he could not do it (and also gave no reason why). He put me on hold, spoke to Lance's supervisor, explained the situation, and returned to the line. He said that  Lance's supervisor was now aware of the situation and he (Alan) absolutely "guaranteed" Lance would call me the next day after he had reversed the charges, shut down the extra line, and resolved my issue.

On October 11, mid-morning, I called back. I had a 48 minute wait time on hold before a customer rep picked up the line. I spoke with Joe, who was nice, polite, respectful, and dealt with the ration of shit I gave him very capably. I once again explained the situation, he verified that all of that was in the account, and told me that Lance's supervisor had closed the line on October 9th and Lance had credited some, but not all, of the requested amount off of our account. Joe then went in and adjusted the rest of the appropriate amount off of our account. I then explained to Joe that I was very angry over BA's lack of professionalism in not calling me when my account clearly stated that Lance was supposed to call me back and explain the situation to my satisfaction. Joe apologized on behalf of the company. I, however, wanted to speak to Lance's supervisor. As Joe was in a different call center, he could not arrange that himself. He noted my request on the account, sent Lance's supervisor the information, and requested he contact me the next day, or when he next was working (Joe did not know the supervisor's work schedule). Joe assured me our next bill would show credits indicating the reversal of charges from August 18th through October 9th. He also assured me I would get my requested phone call from Lance's supervisor.

Today is October 14. I have yet to receive a phone call from Lance or Lance's supervisor and no messages have been left on our phone. I work from home, so I am here 99% of the time. We have call waiting, so I would have heard the beep if he had called during one of the rare times I was on the phone. We have an answering service, so he could have left a message had I been unavailable to answer.

I think I have been more than patient with BA's customer support on this. Yet, with the exception of Joe, I've really received no assistance at all and what, I feel, is fairly unprofessional behavior.

In the end, after three phone calls, I finally found someone who could properly and correctly (I hope) reverse the charges and verify the line was cancelled. I feel that this should have been handled either a) correctly by Lance in the first place so that I didn't have to call BA at all or b) by Tiffany the very first time I called. There should have been no "Lance has to take care of that" crap from Tiffany or Alan. However, once that happened, Lance should have contacted me back as requested. Failing that, Lance's supervisor should have made it a priority to contact me back. Each of these instances is a case of unprofessional behavior that should be used as a training exercise for all new and existing customer support representatives and supervisors in the future.

I should probably let this go at this point, but I sort of want to make a point of it now with BA. I'm considering calling back and asking for the manager in charge of supervisors so that I can explain the entire situation and vent my frustrations. Provide him with at least one shining, well-documented case of poor customer support and give him a chance to rectify the situation in some fashion. Of course, most of my Canadian friends (even those who work for the company) will just tell me that this is fairly par for the course with BA, and I should move on. But I feel that the company won't ever improve unless people are vocal about the issues.

What do you think?

UPDATE 10/17/2011
My wife has forwarded our complaints directly to a contact at Bell Aliant support, and the contact is putting it into the company's internal review process (after agreeing that this is not good customer support at all). I still have not received a phone call to apologize or explain this situation from either Lance or Lance's supervisor.

UPDATE 10/18/2011
Received phone call from Shelly. She apologized profusely for the unprofessional manner in which BA customer support has handled this issue. She gave us one month free of ALL services. She is also sending out the area supervisor to check on our fibreop cable (a complaint I didn't note above) and is forwarding our Mobility complaint to a special customer support liaison similar to her at the Mobility branch, who should be contacting me in a day or two. If they don't, Shelly provided me with her direct line and I can call her back to continue the complaint.

Now THIS is customer support. Why couldn't Tiffany, Alan, Lance, or Lance's supervisors respond so quickly, efficiently, and kindly?

UPDATE 10/18/2011
Got a phone call back from the Mobility side of things. The woman (I didn't catch her name and forgot to ask her to repeat it before we rang off) apologized profusely for how I was treated each step of the way. She said that Lance was wrong to not provide the cancellation immediately. Tiffany was wrong to say Lance had to do it and not transfer me to the cancellation unit for immediate assistance. Alan was wrong for the same reason and for "guaranteeing" a phone call back the next day. Joe is getting an accommodation for giving good service and a note/fyi to transfer a customer like me directly to a manager, even if it isn't the "right" manager, so that my concerns can be addressed immediately. Lance, Tiffany, Alan, and Lance's supervisor are all getting negative reviews due to this series of events.

In addition, she provided us with one additional month's credit on the now-cancelled phone line, since she saw I hadn't used it the preceding month. And, last but not least, SHE thanked ME for being dogged on this, as she knows far too many people just let it go and the company cannot learn or make good on issues like this.