Posted Feb 9 2007

Today has been a bit of an ordeal for me. well looking back on it now, it wasn't too bad but I just want to rant some more about if you don't mind.

I woke at 5:30am today to bring hubby to the airport. This wasn't part of the ordeal though. I'm happy to bring the man to the airport so we can see him right before he heads out. I really don't like to send him (or anyone else really for that matter) off to the airport in a cab. I get this from my mom. I want to be there to wave goodbye and blow kisses as people departing go through the security gates. With Greg and particularly this morning we only dropped him off in front of the departures terminal but in essence we were there to wave goodbye and blow kisses. And yes, the kids were with me.
So when we got home an hour later I put the kids back in bed to sleep for at least an hour longer. The boy didn't manage a wink but the girl slept until 9am. At 8:45 I managed to get myself out of bed so I could feed the boy breakfast and get him off to school before the whole morning went by.

After dropping off the boy at school, Olivia and I went for a nice breakfast together. I took her to Cora's where she had the scrambled eggs breakfast (her favourite was the toast with blueberry jam which I really could have made for her at home *rolls eyes*) and I had the waffles mounded with custard, bananas and chocolate hazelnut spread. yum yum yum!

We then headed to Farm Boy to pick up some of the good yogurt I'm taking to avoid cankers (contains L. acidophilus and it's non-fat and sugar-free to boot). Also picked up some more rice pasta and bananas.
Then I went to EB to look for a Wii for Rich (no dice).

Then began my ordeal...
I went to Future Shop to check for a Wii. Then I went to the cell phone booth to get my phone fixed. First of all, there was no one in the cell phone area. I suppose it's not too surprising. There weren't many people floating around looking for assistance and it was a Friday morning. I had to wait a few minutes for someone to notice I needed help and then a few minutes more for an actual cell phone associate to come over. The man who came by was relatively helpful and directed me to the customer service desk to find my invoice to see if my phone was still under warranty. He said that if it was past a year since I purchased the phone it may not be under warranty. Nice guy, helpful, directed me where I needed to go next. Good service.
At the customer service desk I spoke to a nice enough woman who made a couple of calls for me. She checked with another sales associate to confirm that this was a phone that could be repaired. She had the notion that it might only have been under a 90 day warranty, but the person on the line said it should be fine, that we'd be looking at at least a year warranty. After I gave her my name and contact information she was able to find my original purchase invoice and found that I actually have a 3 year warranty on the phone! It's been over a year though so I'm only covered for repair and they need to send the phone out to get assessed. I think if it were under a year they would have just given me a new phone. argh... that's what happens when you procrastinate.

ok, a little history about my phone. Ever since I bought it I have had intermittent problems with making outgoing calls, almost from the day I bought it. I didn't see it as too much of a problem at the time. perhaps it was a glitch, something that would just go away. it was odd at first but then as time went on the problem started happening more and more and was getting increasingly frustrating. It was getting to the point that I wouldn't be able to make a call at all, I could only txt out. I would turn my phone on and off, kind of to reboot it, and I might get a call through but more often than not, I still wouldn't be able to call out. I called Telus last week to see if it might be a network problem but from our troubleshooting it looked like a handset problem. And so my trip to Future Shop to get my phone repaired.

So the next call the customer service rep makes is to see if I can get a replacement phone in the meantime that my old phone is out for repair. It worked out that FS would sell me a phone that I could use and then when my phone comes back I could bring the replacement back for a full refund. not a bad compromise. I really would have preferred that they just give me a replacement but I could go with this. The service rep was a nice woman, somewhat friendly and very helpful. I got the sense that she wasn't optimistic that we could pull this off but everything came together through her. Good work!
Back off to the cellphone booth I went to get me a new phone. They gave me a refurb model which came to the same price as my current phone. Not too much money out of my pocket especially if I was going to get it back. Then I asked if they could transfer all my info from my old phone before I sent it for repairt to the new phone. The man was very friendly and said that they couldn't do that there but that if he had the equipment to do so, it wouldn't have been a problem. Instead he was nice enough to suggest going to a Telus store directly where they did have the equipment but would unfortunately cost some money for the service. Not a problem. For $15 it's worth my time to get it done instead of spending whatever time it would take for me to add all my numbers in manually. This sales associate was also kind enough to direct me to the nearest Telus location. Excellent service. I was very happy leaving Future Shop.

Then I drove to Telus. In the store, the nice lady stated that in fact she couldn't do the transfer in her store because she was an independent location without access to the necessary equipment. She directed me to one of the mall locations that could help me. Not a problem. She was helpful, friendly and wished me a good day. It might help if I explain that this story is going to become a gripe about customer service.

So off I go to the next location in my goal to get my phone fixed. At the Telus store in the Carlingwood Mall I find a very friendly and personable young man who is more than willing to help me. This guy epitomized what customer service means to me. I explained to him the service I needed of transferring my old data to the new phone. He understood my request and explained that he would first need to establish that there would be no software conflicts between my phone and his equipment. He was very clear about what he was going to do, very polite and told me how long it would take for him to carry this out. He made sure that my new phone was ready to take the new info and went off to do it. Several times in the process he got back to me as I waited to tell me what he was doing and how much longer it would take. Unfortunately, at the end he couldn't manage the task. Apparently there was a conflict between my software and his equipment and it wasn't able to recognize my old phone to transfer the data. Sure this wasn't good news, but the man was so polite I certainly couldn't fault him for the bad news. He did direct me to another mall where I might have some luck but at this point it felt like I had already been all over town. I didn't want to make another trip to another mall. I decided that I would simply transfer my info manually.
I bought Olivia an ice cream (she was with me all this time and was really very good and patient about the whole thing) and we had a sit-down while she ate and I punched in numbers and names.
Once I had all the info transfered and double checked my work I deleted all personal info from the phone so it could go off for repair. We left the mall to return to Future Shop. It was 2:30p by this time!

At Future Shop I went directly to the customer service desk. The man was efficient and got all the information he needed to send my phone out. He was very polite and got the job done in no time. Then he sent me back to the cellphone booth to have my new phone put on the network.
Really, all the service I received up to this point was pretty good. The guy from the Telus store was exemplary (in fact I should try to send a comment to the store or Telus in general telling them how happy I was with this guy's service), but I had no issues with all the rest of the people I dealt with all day. All pretty friendly, polite and helpful.
Then things went downhill and fast. Again, there was no one at the cellphone booth so I had to go search someone out to get someone to help me. He called over a young man to help me out. I explained to him that I needed to have my new phone put on the network under my current contract. You know, I'd been running around pretty much all day to get this sorted out. I hadn't returned home since 10am and was up at 5:30am to top things off.
So the guy tells me, "You know, you can call Telus yourself and get this done." And my thought was, "You know, I've been doing this for long enough today, I'm going to indulge myself and get you to do your job and do this for me." Of course what I said was, "I'm already here, I'd like you to do this for me."
The guy was obviously put out that I would ask him to do such a demeaning task for me. Gone was any attempt at being nice and whatever friendly smile he might have been trying for, totally disappeared. Now I can understand perhaps wanting to handle a customer issue that might involve a hefty expensive purchase in the end, but being a sales rep in a huge big-box electronics outfit I think that sucking up to any customer who comes into the place would be part of the job. You may not need to be happy about it but you sure as hell shouldn't piss me off. I really felt like telling the guy that if he didn't want to do this for me then he should get someone else over here that wouldn't give me attitude about it. Lucky for him I'm the type to just sit by and let things like that go. Well, to their faces anyway. I have no problems bitching about it afterwards.
Anyway, like I said, I can let it go because whatever, in the end I'll have a replacement phone on the network and the guy need never provide service to me again because I sure as hell won't be going to him to purchase anything in the future. So the guy sulked on the phone to Telus to get my phone set up and he asks me if I understand that there is a $25 charge for putting a new phone on the network.
Well, this just made my head explode. boom. It was one thing for me to put up with this stupid guy giving me flack for asking him to do his job but he becomes the bearer of the news that my carrier is going to charge me to put this replacement phone on the network so I can continue to get the service that I'm already paying for! wtf?!?
I sure as hell wanted to rag out on this guy just for being a dick but of course it wasn't his fault Telus was going to charge me. *rolls eyes* grrrrr... not really the best ending for something that took me almost all day to get done.

I left the store pretty pissed off and typically I would just fume and stew about it and rant to whoever will listen. This time though I decided that Telus wasn't going to charge me for this. You know, I could have just put my contract on hold while my phone went out for repair. But instead I chose to buy a new phone so I could keep on giving money to Telus. There was no way I was going to let them get away with making me pay a fee to do that.
So I got on the phone with Telus and told the nice lady to credit the charge. I explained the situation and she was nice enough to accommodate me. Of course, she was not really happy to do it but as far as I'm concerned they made me a much happier customer by swallowing a piddly $25 fee.

Looking back on it now I had pretty good service and assistance from all the people I had to deal with. It took only a single person with a bad attitude to ruin the entire experience for me.

but... life goes on and I'm over it.