7/14/08

Bell strikes again

So I had made the decision to stop paying the CO-OP gross amounts of money, and opted for Bell Expressview satellite.

I wasn't alone in this mission, the boy was also looking at Bell, after the CO-OP cut off his cable upon him owing $3.00 (this is, of course, after having paid for cable 6 months in advance, and then going in the hole a full three bucks.)

So we set out to set up our respective cable. He makes an online inquiry. Finds out you have to call the service centre to get it ordered for up here.

I just got off the phone with Bell. They will not send me a receiver, because Bell has not contracted anyone to set it up. So they recommended I go to my nearest Future Shop, Best Buy or BellWorld store and buy it.

Yah.

I tried to explain to the guy that I live in a fly-in community, and we don't have malls, let alone a Future Shop. He said "Well if people have them, you have to ask around. Someone is selling them."

Thanks Bell, and your stellar customer service.

8 comments:

jen July 14, 2008 at 5:13 PM  

STAR CHOICE!!! They are more then happy to have your business and will send you all that stuff, you just have to set up the dish yourself, which can be a little complicated.

Rob, Tina and the boys July 14, 2008 at 9:50 PM  

Wow, that really honks about Bell. Do you have the dish? I know for a fact that they will mail out a dish, I'm shocked they wouldn't mail out a receiver. It's a pain in the ass to set the dish up, but we did it here.

Jackie S. Quire July 15, 2008 at 9:14 AM  

Tina/Jen...

Yah, the only thing keeping me from the Star Choice route is that my neighbors (we share a triplex) have a Bell dish already and there is "space" on it.

Whatever that means.

Matt, Kara, Hunter and Cavan July 15, 2008 at 10:11 AM  

Okay beat this.

Same thing here, you have to buy your own dish. So we did. But then decided not to hook it up right away because we were too addicted to tv. Then a few months later our credit card is charged by Bell for over $300!! WTF! So I call them up and it turns out if you guy a dish and don't hook it up right away they charge you that horrible fee b/c they are assuming that you are pirating the signal. Bastards. But they did say that if you hook it up you get the money credited to your account. Well we have no decided that we don't want tv again, so now what do I do with the stupid dish and receiver? And I guess my $300 they took is gone forever. blah.

jen July 15, 2008 at 11:58 AM  

Space means (in my non technical language) that their dish has 4 spots, you can hook in 4 receivers. They probably are only running one tv, so they have room for you to hook a cable into one of the 3 other free spots. Now you just need the box (receiver). You know if you try calling bell back you probably can still buy a receiver from them. The guy you talked to was probably a dink. There is no way Bell would let starchoice eat up all their business. Star choice mails out receivers like they are candy (candy that you have to pay for of course). You should just try calling again and then threaten to go with starchoice if they are still being dinks. btw I hate bell too.

KOTN July 15, 2008 at 12:46 PM  

You know, if you were to buy a receiver, and have one of your neighbours activate it under their account, you guys could share the account and the cost, giving you all those lovely channels for $50 a month.

Not that I would do anything as illegal and impossible to detect as that.. cough... cough.....

OK, I'm still looking for another teammate here in Iqaluit who wants the cheap TV. But it works.

Matthew & Michele July 15, 2008 at 1:48 PM  

Michele and I have Bell and went through a lot to finally get it. Maybe I will do a blog post on the experience because I don't want to take up a lot of room here. In summery after the Bell rep said "I don't understand why you just can't get in your car and go to a store and pick one up." and then we suggested perhaps he look at a map and get a high school education, he then offered to put us through to their disconnect service. Once we got there the person knew what our situation was and helped us out in a matter of minutes. We still had to find our own dish. If you know someone is leaving inquire if they have a dish and if they want to sell it. That is how we did it. Good Luck.

Rob, Tina and the boys July 15, 2008 at 6:06 PM  

When we moved here Bell offered to send us a dish for free, since we had the receiver. I can't see why they would make you pay for one.