Bell / Reviews

In the summer of 2008 I decided to get a new phone to use at the University of Waterloo since my dad was able to get me a corporate plan for roughly 20 dollars a month for 200 minutes, unlimited text, call display, and voice mail.

Around October I found that I wasn't using my phone to contact people in the 519 area code, so I decided to switch it back to the 416. I had an old Telus phone that I used in Toronto so I didn't really use the 519 phone that much. Once I got the number changed back to a 416, that's when the problems started.

When I first got my phone, I received a PIN to set up my voice mail, but once the number was changed in October I couldn't use voice mail anymore. I called customer service and they said to use the PIN I first received with the phone. Tried it, didn't work. Couple days later I went to an actual Bell store to see if they could fix the problem. They told me to call customer service to have it fixed. After waiting about forty-five minutes for a rep, I gave up and just didn't use voice mail.

Fast forward to July 2009. I was outside in the rain for about fifteen minutes walking to my girlfriend's house. My phone was in my pocket the whole time, so it ended up getting water damaged. By the time I got to her house, I had absolutely no signal on any floor of her house. It's been that way ever since. I went on Bell's website to see if I could get a replacement phone. I didn't like the idea of being without a phone for the two to six weeks it would have taken to get repaired, and I didn't have the money anyway, so I tried to find a phone to permanently replace mine. Turns out the only way I could replace my phone was if I renew my 3 year contract, or else I'd have to pay around 200 dollars for a full price LG Neon or a similar phone with a full keyboard. The thought of renewing that contract terrified me; the fact that I wasn't able to receive any calls at my girlfriend's house (she lives in the Greater Toronto Area) was ridiculous. I figured I might as well just live through hell with sporadic reception until my contact expires.

Once the water damage occurred, I had a nightmarish time trying to find service. And even when I had service, I would receive large bunches of text messages all at once, despite the fact that they had been sent one, two, even sometimes six hours earlier. This became a frequent occurrence once I started working downtown and took the subway to and from work everyday. I would get off at Union at around 8:30 am and by 10:00, I'd have received all the messages that were sent to me while I was on the subway.

Even while I was at work (I work in an office on the second floor), I had absolutely no service at my desk. Even when I took a streetcar out of Spadina station, it took about six minutes to get any service even in broad daylight. Either Bell's service sucks or the TTC puts a 6 inch thick sheet of lead in the roofs of all their streetcars. I'm leaning towards the former. I know I can be blamed for not replacing the phone, but Bell's unacceptable and unethical business practices really discouraged me from shelling out money to make my situation bad as opposed to terrible.

One thing I don't need to go into too much detail about is this: 20 dollars a month to buy out the rest of your contract is just plain unethical. CBC's Marketplace did a great show on telecommunications companies in Canada, and it was pretty clear that the researchers found Bell to be the worst of the bunch.

In summary, the only thumbs up I can give Bell is the low price for what I was paying per month for the features I was getting. Now that I'm with Fido (whose phone reception and customer service have been great thus far), I'm going to avoid Bell like the plague.