Overall, I will say, of the major cell carriers, Fido screws you the least. And overall, the quality of the service, ie., getting a signal, dropped calls, was acceptable. But their customer service, mother of pearl! Whoever the asshole who's responsible for marketing should be handed the pink slip. Which leads me to the point - they, Fido, are essentially faceless. I have no idea who senior management is. I've written several customer service letters through their Web site which seem to go in to the void, you get some schmo fresh off the boat or without a hope in hell of getting any other job and they're the ones that seem to both man the call center as well as reply to customer concerns - i.e., nothing ever happens, no one really cares.
Ok, enough with the rant. Let's get down to brass tacks.
Why I left Fido - the mauling that broke the doggy's back was this. Fido has a rewards program. Great. Good idea. I liked, in general. I go to cash in my rewards to buy a phone for when I travel to Europe for other GSM networks. Lo in behold - that asshole in marketing strikes again - Fido charges $25 real dollars to redeem my $80 reward dollars to buy a $70 phone. So, as my finance teacher always told us " there's no such thing as a free lunch". I could see if you could combine your rewards and pay cash to buy a phone above $80, but charging an admin fee to just get the phone (I wasn't planning on switching phones, I just wanted to use my reward $$). Really? This is just bullshit. And I wonder who the dick in Montreal was making six figures a year that came up with such bullshit cheap way to screw the customer.
That was it. That was the final straw.
The ongoing pain is that a) I still paid way too much for service, and still about 2x what I'd pay in the USA, and b) lousy service.
I called recently to find out what the outstanding balance was on my account after I had ported my number over to Wind Mobile. I called at 10:30 am in the morning. Aside from the fact that there is RARELY an IVR # that applies to my query and I have to stay on the f'n line for minutes on end going down one track or the other trying to find A REAL LIVE PERSON, when I finally get to the end of the line, what do I get? "Sorry our offices are closed now, please call back during normal business hours."
WTF - I know things are a little more lax in Quebec, but 10:30am on a weekday is even 'normal working hours' in Latin America. This isn't the first time it's happened. They f'k this up all the time.
So here's the bottom line with Fido if you're interested in them for carriage.
Of the major providers, they're probably the cheapest, but still more expensive than the upstarts.
Ok coverage.
If you want to pay your money and NEVER talk to them again, maybe Fido is for you.
God help you if you need to reach them.
I've called with tech issues and have been stuck in IVR hell for 8 minutes because there are no options to address your issue, and when I don't get the 'we're closed' message, it's something else.
Bad dog Fido, bad dog!
You lost a $65+ a month account and 5 year customer because your IVR and customer service sucks, you're petty and you're now no longer a 'value' base provider after Wind Mobile entered the market. So, take this bone and shove it. Hopefully that asshole that's VP of Marketing or the President can get a clue about how bad things are from the consumer perspective, but you may not get another chance to recover from years of bad service.
Salut mon chien.
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