Well, after much complaining, and eventually even contacting an exec, our issues regarding the promised and reneged $10 / month discount have been resolved.

I am pleased to note that I received a phone call this morning from the man I contacted a little over a week ago. He noted that while he could not find any evidence that we were offered the $10 discount, he has gone ahead and given us one anyways!

While having to go through all this hassle to get what we were promised was a huge pain, It is great that once we connected with the right agent, he was able and willing to help us, and has made us whole. Just goes to show that persistence pays off.

Well, after some complaining and an email targeted at a high-level exec, we have made some headway on our issue with Bell Canada.

Here is the summary of our initial issue:

• When we first phoned, the rep promised us a $10 / month credit for 12 months, in ADDITION to the $200 PVR Programming credit
• We got the $200 credit, but they refused to give us the $10 credit, essentially saying that the don’t offer such a thing.

What it sounds like happened is that the rep did not know the services very well, and mistook the $10 PVR rental credit, to think it applies to all new sign-ups regardless of if the PVR is purchased or rented. That is how their current promo works apparently, however, as a customer calling to ask what they could offer is to determine if we should switch, one has to assume the rep knows what he/she is talking about.

In the end, the rep made an offer, we accepted it, and Bell declined part of the offer. Even if the rep made a mistake, it should still be honored.

Well, all of this made us angry, after all $120 in credits over 12 months is a decent chunk of change. While reading a forum thread where people were complaining about Bell I stumbled on a post that had the emails of some high-level execs, so I thought, if customer service won’t help me, maybe these guys will.

I fired off an email with my situation, and left it at that, never expecting to hear from anyone about the topic again, however, later that day, I got an email response from the assistant to the exec requesting my account number.

Today that assistant called me and we spoke. They are investigating and will be looking up that initial phone call. He said that if they can find the original call that promisses the discount, then they will honor it. That’s fantastic news. He promised to call me back next Friday either way with the outcome.

Now, IF they are able to dig up that original call, I know for a fact they will hear the offer, and should give us the credit. If this happens, it will restore much of my trust in this company, but not all of it – after all, this issue should never have been an issue in the first place!

My bit of pessimism tells me though that this assistant could do nothing and then simply call me back noting that the call could not be found, and decline the offer again. I would hope they are honest enough to look into it, but time will tell. I’ll post an update when a final decision is made.

Interesting Note: The manpower they are using to investigate this is costing them more than the $120 in credits – it would have saved them money to just give us the credit in the first place – oh well.

Bell Canada, Oh why did we switch to you? You tempted us with $200 off in credit if we bought a PVR. We got this credit. You tempted us with better programming options than your competitor. We got that programming. You tempted us with $10 off per month on programming for the first year. We got…wait? No we didn’t get this….

We called you to find out about switching from Shaw Direct, and what you could offer us. You told us, on more than one occasion about the $10/month programming credit. That helped cinch the deal, we signed up with you, we canceled our 5 year relationship with Shaw Direct – then you decided to breach this contract by reneging on part of the deal you offered to us to get us to switch!

We called numerous times to complain, and finally the best you could offer was a $20 credit, not the originally contracted and promised $10/month for 12 months. – yet we are still bound to your two year contract!?! We took the $20 you offered, cause lets face it, $20 is still $20.

We are in a touch situation here. In most cases this $100 deficit in your contracted promise would result in us canceling service with you and switching back to Shaw Direct. But you have us over a barrel

While we are extremely UNHAPPY with you, and will NOT recommend ANYONE to ever use Bell Satellite services we will stay with you. Here is why.

First let me note that we don’t care about the contract. If we wanted to cancel we are not worried about those contract cancellation fees simply because you breached the contract first. Its that simple. It will not go to court or anything like that, but if it did, you are clearly in the wrong. You breach first, you lose. (I may be wrong here, but because we are not canceling, this us a mute point anyways)

The reason we will stay with you is because the loss of the $100 in promised credit is exceeded by the cost to switch providers. If we were to switch back to Shaw Direct, we need to buy a new PVR. Even after credits etc, the cost of a new PVR would ultimately far exceed that $100, so financially it actually makes sense to stay with you, even though we hate you. Your programming / channel line up is great, we are happy with that. It’s just your policies in handling customer disputes that we are, well quite frankly, pissed at.

You say you record all calls – why you refused to listen to the original call from when we signed up is beyond me. It really makes me wonder how many other people have been promised an offer, signed up, then had that offer reduced with no recourse. Not a good way to run a business…. Or is it? You are probably making Billions off it.

This last weekend my wife, daughter and I spend some time in Richmond (BC). Richmond, and really most of neighboring Vancouver, are full of rich folk. Here I am driving along in my 2008 Mazda 5 surrounded by vehicles like new BMW 7 series, Mercedes and Austin Martins with the occasional Lamborghini and Ferrari thrown in. Thank god there is also the odd mid-80’s Nissan Sentra, and Hyundai Pony’s around to keep me from the bottom of the food chain.

People have money – they buy nice cars, I get it – I’d do the same, but what get’s me is the parents that buy their kids half million dollar cars as their first vehicle. What’s up with that??

For those who are unfamiliar with BC law etc, The graduated licensing system in BC requires student drivers to have a red “L” on the back of their car (it’s a little 5 x 7 inch magnet), and new drivers, in their first 2 years have to display a green “N” on the back.

On this trip I saw many green N’s on BMW’s and other fancy cars, but there were two that really caught my attention. One was on a new Audi R8 – cost, about $160,000. The other was on a new Lamborghini Murcielago, cost about $450,000. Are you kidding me? Really? What on earth has a 17 year old done to deserve his parents buying him a $450,000 car! New drivers should have to drive cheap little beaters till they learn how to properly drive – I seriously doubt that any 17 year old can truly handle a 631 horsepower V-12. But I could be wrong.

Perhaps I am just jealous. When I first got my license I was stuck driving my dads 85 Ford Bronco II. For a 16 year old it was great to have access to a car, but still, it’s no Lamborghini.

I have had some nice cars since. My Mazda 5 may be a mini-van, but it’s practical for my family, and still kinda fun to drive… Fun to drive? A mini-van? Did I just say that? Man I must be getting old. I miss my 07 GTI, and old 72 Datsun 240z.

Okay here is my rant for the day.

I am sick and tired of calling businesses and having the automated system ask me for an account number, phone number, or any other piece of information, only to finally reach a real person and have them ask me for the same thing. If your automated system asks me for it, that should be it. Why are you asking me twice? If the live agent can’t see the info I enter into the automated system, WHY DOES IT ASK ME FOR IT?

Yesterday I had to call both Bell and a government office. Both systems asked me for info (one was my phone number, the other my social insurance number) and in both cases, I had to repeat the info to the live agent.

I told my wife that I was going to bitch about this in my blog today and her comment to me was:

“I don’t even bother, I just hit ’star, star, pound, star, zero, star, pound’ till I eventually get a real person.”

I think I will have to take up that technique cause it seems to work for her.

There are some companies out there who do the job a bit better though. For instance, when I call Mazda to book my car in for servicing, their call display pulls up my account info before they answer the phone.  They usually answer “Hi Scott, calling to schedule servicing?” or some other comment relevant to my account. I like that, makes believe that they remember me and care (even if it is an illusion).

Not too long ago the provincial Government announce the launch of the HST (Harmonized sales tax) which is to be put into place later this year. This tax came as a surprise to most, and for the vast majority, most people are seriously ticked off about it.

The new HST will also show all restaurant bills jump up from the previous 5% tax up to 12% tax. That’s an additional 7% on all food purchased in restaurants.

People are fed up.

A petition has been started at www.NoMealTax.ca . I urge you to visit the site, and if you agree, sign the petition. As of the writing of this article 164,315 people have signed the petition so far.

Last year I put up a post (I Don’t Care What They Say – Merry Christmas), asking if readers would be offended if someone wished them a happy holiday for a holiday they did not celebrate. Out of 180 voters, only  6 voters said that yes, they would be offended.

I wanted to re-introduce this poll to see if any new voters/readers out there would like to cast their opinion here.

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I celebrate Christmas. Its my favorite time of year. I would like to say Merry Christmas to people I come across, and send “Merry Christmas” emails to my clients, but because there are a few out there who are offended by this, I am reduced to saying a generic “Happy Holidays”.

If someone came to me and wished me a Happy Hanukkah, or any other holiday greeting for something I don’t celebrate, I would never be offended, in fact, it would probably put a smile on my face.

I was at the Home Depot looking for a Christmas Tree stand, and when I asked an employee where I could find one, he quickly developed a sour look on his face and said “I don’t Celebrate Christmas, I think they’re over there somewhere” and he pointed in the general direction. Are you kidding me? You don’t celebrate it, but that doesn’t give you a right to be rude to me about it – especially when I am looking for a product that you sell!

Why can’t we all just get along.

Well the contest has closed and the winners were announced. Before I go on with my rant, I do want to congratulate the two winners. Out of all the videos submitted I do actually believe that theirs were in the top 5 for sure. The winner “Captain Kirk” I thought very early on had a strong chance of winning, and I do believe that he was a good choice for the grand prize winner.

But here are my complaints.

The rules stated that the grand prize winner would be chosen by a panel of judges from the top 10 videos with the most votes. Second place would be determined by the video with the most votes.

Well, it seems that for some reason the judges scrubbed ALL the votes resulting in a score of zero for all videos. They then chose the grand prize winner out of ALL videos, not just the top 10. Kirk was somewhere in the mid-teens in terms of his position.

If for some reason they deemed the voting system to be flawed and as a result resent it, then fair enough, but then why was the second grand prize winner chosen based on votes, should he not have also been chosen by the judges review? Perhaps he was, but there is simply nothing stated about this… Read the rest of this entry »

This is just a brief review, my opinion, of Monopoly City Streets. I know I have missed a bunch of stuff that I wanted to say when I first thought of writing this, but here goes anyways.

When I first heard about Monopoly City Streets I was interested and looked forward to giving it a try. After the first couple days of chaos with the site being down and simply not operational, Hasbro finally got their you know together and the system started to run smoothly – but not without issues.

The issues in the game have brought me to the point where I have completely stopped playing, and have permanently turned my back on the game.

Here are the reasons I stopped playing after such a short while:

Glitches in Game
I had an offer from another player to purchase my best street. When I clicked on the offer I was never given an decline/accept option, the link merely took me to the street. After 7 days (had I kept playing) the user would have automatically got my street as I had no way to decline the offer. All offers are automatically accepted after 7 days if no action is taken.

Bonus Buildings and Hazards.
In the rules it states the bonus buildings protect streets from hazards and bulldozers, however, other players can still bulldoze your bonus buildings, a contradiction to the unclear rules. On my biggest money making street, I had a bonus building, and the next time I logged back in that building had been destroyed and several hazards had been placed on my street.

The only way to remove a hazard is to bulldoze it via luck of the draw and collecting the proper chance card. Getting chance cards is completely random, and I went a few days without any bulldozer cards (and I needed 3 of them). This frustration made me say, screw it, I just wont play any more. After all, why on earth would I spend my time playing a frustrating game, there is no point, I’ll spend my time doing something that doesn’t annoy me.

If the bonus building bulldozer issue is a glitch, then it needs to be fixed, or if this is supposed to be allowed, it should be clarified in the rules. In my opinion, that bonus building should keep the street safe forever, period.

Cheaters
After only a few days, there were people with literally trillions of dollars, yet they owned little to no property – this is simply not possible with out cheating, and unless these holes are filled by Hasbro, I see no point in playing a pointless game.

Here are a few of my suggestions

• My wife had an idea that I kinda of agree with – rather than getting rent income automatically from the bank each day, why not have rent taken from competitors. Every day each player could randomly be sent to a random street (either globally, or locally) and required to pay rent on that street to the competitor. This would make the game a bit more like actual monopoly.
• Make those bonus buildings immune to bulldozers
• Stop the cheaters – not sure how, but find a way, they ruin the game
• Change the “offer” system so that it actually works, when the “decline” option does not show itself, it is incredibly frustrating
• Add a “search for user” option within the leader board, rather than just the top 10.

So that in a nutshell is why I am no longer playing Monopoly City Streets. Some of you may think I am just a baby, and should suck it up – games need hazards etc. Sure, that’s true – to a point, but when it comes as far as to become frustrating, why bother? Life is too short – games are supposed to be enjoyable -  a way to escape and think about something other than the grind of every day life – when the game starts to frustrate me more than everyday life does, its just time out of my life that I could be spending out on the golf course, kayaking, or simply spending quality time with my family. As Eric Cartman would say, “Screw you game, I’m going home”.

I follow a lot of people on twitter, and that number is growing – well over 5000. Currently about 5100 follow me back. Some of accused me of being a twitter spammer, so I thought I would take a moment to explain why I choose to follow so many people.

It’s really quite simple. I like random stuff and tidbits of information. Now that I follow such a large number of people, every time I log on I see something different and unique – I really never know what I am going to find. Everything I read is from someone with a random lifestyle in a random part of the world. You see a lot of different perspectives.

I don’t consider mass following to be spam, quite simply because, I don’t ask for anything in return. Some people follow me back, some don’t. Either way that’s fine. I also don’t consider it spam because I am not messaging everyone pushing a product or service – the only time I DM or @ people is if I have something of interest to say related to their tweets. The DM’s I get from people saying “buy my book” or “visit my site” I tend to unfollow, unless their message has some meaning to me directly related to something I tweeted or commented on.

So, if you are one of those who think that I am a spammer, it’s simple, don’t follow me. I contribute, and try to be an active member in the twitter community – so I just don’t see me as a spammer.