Jul 16 2008
By
Guillaume | Filled under:
Gadgets
Here’s what might happen if you try to get your data completely blocked so you don’t get charged “a-la-carte” @ ¢5/Kb by mistake. The following have used around 3 hours of my life, excluding the time on hold for the first call to order it:
1 – Order iPhone, ask to block data. You’ll be told the block will be active in 2hours, and that in the meantime, you will still get billed. No problem, iPhone won’t be here til Monday..
2 – Monday morning, try iPhone. Wtf Internet works? Call customer service…wait on hold. Be told that you probably had Wifi on. (There is no open Wifi near my house and I hadn’t entered any keys yet.) Customer service “resets the block”. CSR asks to turn off phone and back on to try again. I do it. It still works.
3 – Call back. Explain situation. CSR tells me “I see no data usage on your account so you must be on wifi”. Explain that wifi is disabled on iPhone. CSR tells me that “You’re lucky then, you’re getting Free Internet!” – obviously she was sure I was stupid and on Wifi, I can’t really blame her for that, I’m sure a lot of users aren’t exactly tech friendly. There’s nothing more she can do. Hang up
4 – Call retentions, explain the whole thing. I’m told that the store made a mistake: you are not allowed to own an iPhone without this plan. You need to sign up for it right away or I will cancel your contract and you will have to send it back. WHAT?
First, it was not a “store” – it was Fido directly. Second, I paid 50$ extra for the iPhone BECAUSE I didn’t have a plan over 30$ and/or the 6gig data plan. Guy refuses to leave my stuff alone. He enables 6gig plan on my account. Hang up.
5 – Call CSR. Explain previous call with reference number. CSR says “Oh, he must’ve been confused, the policies change so often”. Well he was extremely aggressive, and I bet they get paid commission on selling data plans, how weird. CSR cancels my data plan, waives the cancellation fees. CSR contacts tech support. Tech support tells him that the wrong “block” was on my account from the beginning. They say that within 2 hours it should be completely blocked.
6 – After waiting 2 hours…let’s test. Yes, I still have 3g god dammit!
7 – Called CSR. Found someone with a brain this time (previous CSR was nice as well, unlike the 2nd one in the morning aka Ms. Free Internet and Mr. “Send me your money or your iPhone). He tries to contact tech support but it’s taking too long. Says he will call me back. He calls me back maybe an hour later, saying that they put another block on my iPhone and that if it still works now, they’ll see what else they can do. I test while on the phone, 3g works. He says I might have to reset the phone, so I have to hang up. He tells me to call back if it still works. I shut the phone off…turn it on… 3g still works.
8 – Called back to leave a message for previous CSR to call me back. He should call me back today.
Update!
9 – Obviously they didn’t call me back! I called back late, finally got someone on the line. As soon as I asked for a possible rebate or some kind very subtly, he went to tech support for 20minutes, and they found an issue in the switch’s configuration. It got instantly disabled (Edge, 3g) !
Great, so now I have an ipod touch with phone capability. I’ll probably sign up for the data eventually, as soon as they have plans smaller than 6gig for 30$.
