lydia9
New User
Jul 28, 2005, 3:16 AM
Post #1 of 1
(1753 views)
|
City Fido is definitely an affordable plan. But when it comes down to it, I'd rather shell out another $20/month to not have to deal with such an incompetent company. Here's my experience over the last year. The handset that I received free with my contract was useless. No wonder it was free; the reception was terrible and it only worked about 70% of the time. I brought it back just in case this handset had been missed during a quality inspection. It was replaced with an equally problematic handset. When dialing out, I would get dead air and no sound. Then I would have to turn my phone off and then on again to make a call. When ending a call, I literally had to turn my phone off to disconnect. Otherwise, the phone would just stay connected even after hitting 'End'. The '7' stopped working. This week, I took 3 hours out my working day to try to have this resolved and travelled 45 minutes to a service centre. How convenien for Fido: their service centres are more remote and far fewer in number than their sales centres. I presented the list of handset problems to the Fido representative. She said she would have to charge me $15 to retrieve the information from their system since I didn't have a receipt with me and told me to come back in an hour. When I returned, she said "See, the number 7 works. Nothing is wrong with it", ignored my comments about the handset having other problems and insisted they couldn't do anything. As if I took 3 hours off of work and drove 45 minutes to a repair centre with a phone that actually works!
Besides all of these handset problems, the network has been terrible. I miss calls (get a voice message but no ring), always have an unsuccessful connection on the first dial, and my calls get terminated midway through a conversation with a client or a friend. You'd think they'd try to compensate for their lousy service. By this point, I'd fully realized that any promises of customer service or satisfaction were purely lip service and that I would have to buy a new handset.
Don't think you'll ever get a phone for the promoted "with agreement" price once you are a customer. Fido caters to new customers only. When I went to their flagship store in person, they couldn't even access my account information and I had to call in and order. If Fido can't even integrate their IS/CRM systems, I don't have much confidence in their ability to integrate networks with Rogers! I had good reason to avoid any interaction with a Fido representative at this point so I went online. I found I couldn't even order online because I'm an existing customer! I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that the online site promotes a gift with purchase for online orders yet new customers are the only ones that can order online. When I called customer service, they said I couldn't order a phone until my account balance was at 0 so I hung up to pay the bill online. When I called back, they told me that I had to call back in 24 hrs because my payment wouldn't be processed yet. How embarrassing to work for a company like this. Why wouldn't they place an order pending confirmation of payment?
After all this, I can venture to say that no other mobility provider can be this lousy. You will be much happier with another company. Needless to say, I am counting the days until my City Fido contract is over!!! They're really shooting themselves in the foot, as the lifetime value of a customer is more than the money they're saving by being so incompetent.
|
