Saturday, July 7, 2012

Bell Is Ripping You Off

So unless something majorly bad happens it looks like all this moving stuff is proceeding forward as planned.  The couple that put the offer in on our house did their home inspection Thursday and we have not heard that the deal is off and the neighbour saw them lounging in the back yard and chatting and we saw them out by the road before they left and they looked awful happy.

With those pieces in place while I have not heard ‘yes 100% confirmed you house is sold’ we have begun to prepare some of the things we need to do to move like transfer communication services over to the new house.  While I was in the process of researching all that I looked at what Nexicom had to offer in Bridgenorth compared to what Bell had to offer.

It turns out I can get almost exactly the same service, except I will lose having RDS on TV (RDS is the French version of TSN (The Sports Network) that I usually watch the Canadiens games on.  TSN is like ESPN for my American readers). 

When I phoned Bell to cancel my service because I could get a better price with a competitor they were all like ‘Well what if we can save you that same amount?’ I thought that if I could actually save that same amount it would be worth it to stay with Bell for the consistency of email addresses and still get RDS and so on.  I was on the phone with their Customer Loyalty Representative for almost an hour.  In the end they ‘discounted’ each of my Home Phone, Internet and Satellite services to be about equal with what I could get with Nexicom.

EXCEPT – in Bridgenorth they could only provided the most basic of basic Hi-speed Internet, and there was a download cap of 30 gigs.  This for me on the phone was not a big deal.  But after I got off the horn and was able to think by myself I thought ‘we are going to have tenants, what if they are the movies downloading types, I want my own Internet to still be fast and I don’t want to run out of download space’. By the time all these types of factors were considered Bell was only going to save us about $55 a month.

So I went back to Nexicom and actually went physically to their office and did an application.  I already had a general idea of the cost in mind, but since we were signing up for all their services there was extra saving in that we don’t get charged for the PVR for the cable.  The Internet they provide is unlimited download and at the same speed I have currently (though with the problems we have had with the phone lines in the area I bet it will be faster).

By switching to Nexicom we are going to save just around $100 a month!! Seriously. I was also really annoyed by the fact that Bell was like ‘If we try to price match will you stay with us?!’  If they can offer me as good of a price as their competition when I want to leave they should provide that price the entire time!

In the end I am actually really disappointed with Bell as a customer.  To use my ECE language a bit, their Image of The Customer must be very low.  To be willing to charge so much, willing to just drop the price to match a competitor like it’s nothing, to have installers that leave things hanging from the roof, to make me stick with a certain receiver for a year when I want to upgrade to one that even gives them more money each month.

I look forward to dealing with a local company where I actually know people that work there, I’m not on hold forever, the people that I speak to I can understand easily and they are giving me a great price without the threat of me switching away.

I had always maintained that I had no issue with Bell while using their service.  I think part of that is I’m pretty easy going, part is that I was a computer tech for about seven years and could just fix my own problems and part was that I was with Bell and never looked into how much other companies were charging for the same services.

If you are on Bell now, and have the option of Nexicom, Cogeco or someone else in your area, look into it.  Even if you don’t switch, just having the ‘please cancel all my stuff’ conversation with Bell could save you a lot of money!

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