Thursday, January 30, 2014

My beef with Bell

Time to leave the country and of course I'm one of those suckers who's stuck in that 3 year Bell cellphone contract with limitless clauses. I have an iPhone 4, the price was modestly reduced by signing a 3 year contract (way back when).

First things first, this iPhone is locked to Bell, in order to unlock it and make it available to run on on a  European SIM cart I would have to pay the cancellation fee to cancel my current contract 300$ + Canadian dollars and a 50$ fee to have it unlocked so it can be used overseas.

I decided instead to buy a used unlocked iPhone 4 (I like that model) on eBay for 300$ and sell mine to my dad along with the contract. To my surprise Bell told me that when I signed the contract I signed up for mandatory Internet usage (because it is a smartphone) so I "had" to have an Internet bundle which goes for around 55$/month. Obviously I had the caller ID and voicemail added for 12$/month (which is stupid because these are the most important features which everybody wants!)

= 75,71$/month (approximately)

The only thing I could do to reduce my cellphone plan was to remove the caller ID and the voicemail and save that 12$/month. My contract ends on the 4th of May 2014, so I asked them to cancel my contract on the 4th of May, that way my dad can benefit from choosing whichever provide he sees fit.

Bell's "Mohamed", told me that I should call 30 days before the end of my contract to cancel. Unfortunately Mohamed, I won't be in the country at that time, could you put a note on my file to terminate my contract on May 4th? You already know the date right? No? Oh, the earliest I can terminate my contract without any penalty is 60 days before the end? Still not going to be in the country at that time...

The only reasonable solution was to put my dad's name on the account so he could call in 60-30 days before the end of the contract and "negotiate"  his termination or renewal of the contract which involves loyalty (bullshit) points.

In the hope that everyone will forget to call ahead of time and make it a pain in the ass to simply "NOT RENEW" a contract which has technically ended, Bell is shit!

I'm moving to Germany where I'll be paying around 20$ CAN per month for the same service.

PS: Maybe Mohamed has two "m"s sorry bro you've been nice and helpful.

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