My fucking god. I am pissed. I am pissed. This is going to look like the spewings of a rabbid dog, if a dog could type that is, but I don't fucking care. This is unbelievable.
Let's recap. Wednesday night I was happy. Happy happy happy. Tuesday was a beautiful day and nothing could bring me down. I should not have challenged fate, because fate was game for the challenge. *snap* Out goes Carin's phone, among other things, and that's when I started to realize that Bell does not keep things simple, they employ the simple.
Maybe I'm just really unlucky and I just happened to meet the special ed shift, but my fucking god. First off, there's god damn blasted piece of shit speech recognition Emily. Somebody strangle that cheery little robot before she pisses off the next Bell customer who happens to be armed. Somebody might die because of that stupid thing.
Emily: Just tell me what you want.
Frustrated customer: phone repair.
Pause
Emily: Ok, repair and technical support. Now, is it about Bell telephone, Bell mobility, or Bell Sympatico?
Ok, if I called 611, which is the Bell repair line, do you think it's my internet, smartass? They even have a special number for sympatico, as I found out when Emily thought phone repair meant my internet's broke. Considering I use rogers, not sympatico, sorry Emily, time to tune up those high tech ears of yours. You seem to be deaf.
Emily: Ok, Bell telephone repair. Briefly describe the problem you are having.
I'd love to watch Emily's circuits fry if the customer's reply was:
Well gee, I get this funny buzz beep werr thing when I pick up my phone, and sometimes I can hear my uncle bob over there fucking a goat through my handset. what do you suppose that means?
No, all she can handle are simple commands, and even then it's chancy. The thing is they make her sound so conversational. "Just tell me." "My name's Emily." No, you're a computer. And you're about as effective if I could just press keys rather than try to talk to you.
So finally after she figures out that my problem is too big for her pea brain, she puts me through to an agent. I think phew. Someone with some brains. No. Wrong. This woman who's mowing through her talk at the pace of a race car tells me something about a repair tech coming the next day. But I'm in school the next day and it's kind of important that I go cause it's the last day. She mumbles something about outside wiring and notes on my door. After getting royally pissed at me for not understanding what in the blue christ she's talking about, she hangs up on me. Hangs up on me! Ok, who the hell is she to hang up on someone with a broken phone who's trying to talk to her through a cell phone on a 3-way call. Until she's had that happen to her, the bitch has no right.
Ok, so maybe she has, but I'm sorry. That just pissed me off. Flash to the next day. I'm at school, and very happy that I have a cell phone. it rings, and it's the Bell man. He says the problem's inside my house, and can he get in, even if the landlord let him in. I'm like call me back and I'll see what I can do. The landlord says it's ok. The Bell man calls back, but 3 hours later. I'm like good, you called back. You can get in. He's like, oh I'm long gone now.
Thanks, asshole. You've been ever so helpful. Thanks for listening to me so well. He's like, oh you'll have to call the Bell people back and reschedule. I do. And I'll swear until the end of time that he said, they'll be hear on Friday between noon and 6. I run home so I can be there for them. I miss a call on my cell phone. I call them back and this is what they say to me.
"Repair technician? today? We have no record of that."
Ok, so in front of each customer service rep, what do they have? An etch a sketch? A game of let's pretend? What the fuck? Did I talk to another person with no brain? So here I sit with a dead phone and the Bell people are oh so kind as to send someone between the hours of 8 and 5 on Saturday. 8 and 5? No, no one has plans on Saturdays at all. They just sit and wait for Bell. So I'm angry, but what am I going to do? Two hours later, knock knock knock, who's at my door? A Bell man! The first intelligent person I've seen at Bell. I'm thinking, woe they realized how pissed I was and sent someone real quick as a way of apologizing. Yea Bell. He tries to fix it and realizes that the problem is so bad that I'm going to have to hope that the owner of the restaurant next door, which I swear is some kind of mob front, is real nice and isn't a mobster for real. Cause, they're going to have to rip apart his restaurant and lay new wire, because some numbnuts caused a bunch of old wires to touch together and short out and they can't even tell whose wire is whose. Get this. I have my neighbour's wires in my apartment, but my wires aren't in my neighbours house. All the fucking connections are mislabeled down there, and the wires are spliced through some other crap.
So he leaves and I've resigned myself to the fact that me and my cell phone are becoming best buds real quick. Then I'm not at my house and my cell phone rings. It's Bell! They have no record that the guy who came yesterday ever came so they don't know why I am not home. They don't listen to what I'm saying. Later, when I call back, I'm told that now they're sending a whole crew to fix something the depths of which they can't even begin to understand, and they don't even know which technician ordered this crew. So I don't even know if they've been given the right information. And, hahahahahahahahaahahahaha, let me laugh some more, hahahahahahahahahaha, they think they'll have it fixed by 7! Hahahahahahahahahahaha my sides ache. 7? Are you out of your trees? Are you going to bring a full carpentry and roofing team too? I didn't know Bell had such diverse employees.
And here's the kicker. The report has been forwarded to a dispatch manager, but Joe Bell employee can't talk to said manager because he's not in the same building. Ok, hold the phone. He's a dispatch manager. That means he can talk to people who are driving around and send them other places. That means that he can be talked to. Bullshit they can't talk to him because he's in another building. What, the *telephone* company doesn't have telephones? Unless they can't call out, which is dumb, for sure dispatch manager guy can be reached. Sometimes I wonder at their idea of efficiency.
So now, perhaps a crew of befuddled Bell people *may* show up at my house. Or maybe tomorrow. Who the hell knows? Whenever I call there, I get a different answer. Either way, I am so unbelievably frustrated and without a phone and with a cell phone whose battery is nearly dead. I really hope this is over soon. And if someone who's reading this works for Bell, maybe you can explain some of this bullshit to me.
