The Good and Bad of Customer Service

What a difference 12 hours and one person can make? Late one evening I came home to find my FIDO bill in the mail and was shocked to see a text message premium charge of $8.00 for something called "jamster". I had called FIDO a month earlier when the charge first appeared and was given a good will credit and instructions on how to avoid this charge in the future. Basically I was told that this company somehow got my daughters cell number and sent a spam text message to her. Apparently in the body of the message there are instructions to text back "stop" if you don't want to recieve additional messages at $8.00 each.

I was told that this was a common problem and in effect my problem, however they would give me the credit after which I instructed my daughter to text the word "stop" back to the company.

Well as you can guess, in the August invoice, there was 5 additional charges for premium text messages. This time when I called FIDO, the service rep was not as sympathetic as the agent a month before. "Too bad, but it's not our problem and you will have to pay for the charges" stated the agent. I explained that a month earlier, I followed the instructions of the FIDO rep so that it should not have happened again. After 15 minutes of trying to plead my case to no avail I asked to speak to a supervisior. I was told that they were all busy and that it would be up to 30 minutes before one would be able to speak with me. I said okay. 

After 15 minutes, the agent came back on the line to say that the supervisors did not have time to speak to me and that they would call me within 24 - 48 hours. What? How could a 30 minute wait turn into a 24 - 48 hour wait? I insisted on waiting only to be told that no one will speak to me. I then asked for the cancellation department. After 2 minutes on hold, the agent came back to tell me that the office was closed. I was told to call the next day. Fine.

10 minutes later, my daughter calls me from her sister's phone to tell me that nothing worked on her phone. No phone, no text, no message service. Nothing. Vindictive bastard.

I called the next morning. Wow it was like night and day. This rep was friendly and sympathic and as soon as I said "jamster" knew exactly why I was calling. Damn. Yep, it's one of the biggest complaints they are getting. Unsolicited premium services which they can't block.

Well needless to say, he fixed the problem. I asked how I could avoid this in the future. I suggested changing phone numbers which he immediately did at no charge Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Wow, all I wanted was the problem to go away and to NOT pay for something I did not want. Perhaps the guy at night needs to go back to "customer service" school. I was about to cancel my daughters line but instead ended up a happy customer.

So, what I don't understand is that FIDO and all these phone companies are spending millions on advertising to get us to sign up with them but would not credit $8.00 to keep a customer happy. My bill that month was $172.00. I only wanted to pay for the services I wanted. $166.00. Millions or $8.00. Go figure.