It's been a long time coming - Bell Aliant & I have broken up

Bell Aliant - you are dead to me.

After all the nightmares I've had with them, first with the Great iPhone Rip-Off of 2013, and throughout the entire span of our time together with crappy internet service, this very morning, the straw that broke the camel's back occurred, and that camel fell right down on top of my last nerve. I said, "Enough is enough!!!" and called Rogers.

The bottom line is that I am now the proud owner of a gold iPhone 5s...

...and my total bill for all of my telecommunications services is $100/month cheaper. I'm pretty much a-quiver with joy!  

What's included, you might ask. This is the package. It includes:

* Home phone - Caller ID, voicemail to email, TV display, 3-way calling, call waiting, call blocking, and unlimited long distance across Canada.

* Internet - 500GB, "Extreme Tier", 30MB download speed, WiFi

* Television - Digital Plus TV package, 270+ channels, 'Anyplace TV' - I can access my subscribed TV channels on any tablet, worldwide, 'Whole Home TV', including 2 HD PVRs and 1 standard box for my little bitty TV in the kitchen. In three years, all I have to do is pay $1 each, and they're mine.

All of this, so far, will be $124.29. I was paying $72 for internet alone, and another $70 for Bell ExpressVu satellite TV, plus $49.95 for the land line with call waiting and caller ID. What was $191.95 + tax is now $124.29 taxes included, a savings of $67.66 + tax every single month. And I haven't even got to talking about the cell phones yet!!

* Mobility - Smartphones x 4. Yes, four. Even *I* will now have one, and not just any smartphone. It will be the above-illustrated shiny new, gold iPhone 5s. We will be sharing 6GB data, whereas right now, the 3 smartphones are sharing 1.5GB data, and I have none. All four will have unlimited text messaging. All will have unlimited calling minutes and unlimited long distance across Canada. All will have call display and voice mail. Four smartphones with unlimited just-about-everything for the cool sum of $237.30. How they work it is that my phone, as the primary phone, will cost $105/mo. The other three will each cost $35/mo. Thirty five dollars a month for a smartphone. Cheaper than what Bell was charging me for my flip-phone.

With my current Bell Mobility situation, I am paying a total of $260.72 for three smartphones and an embarrassing 18th century flip-phone.

NOW, I will have a gold iPhone 5s, and we all will have all the data and texting and long distance and minutes that we could ever want, and it's still $23 cheaper. If I had gotten an iPhone with Bell, I would have been charged over $80 more / month, and the four of us combined would still not have had 6Gb to play with.

So, here it is, $100 / month cheaper. Everyone with the phones they want, all the bells and whistles, two HD PVRs where at the moment I have only one, a firm promise of superior Internet service, and I'm saving $100/month.

And, what is interesting to me is that Rogers, from the moment you call and say, "what can you do for me", assigns you a customer service rep - somewhere around Toronto - and this is your person. You call this person, directly, with any questions / issues / concerns. Not some generic, foreign call center. Serge, who's first language is English, is my guy, and will be as long as he's with Rogers. I called him back twice today about different things. What a joy it was not to have to re-tell my story to every living soul in India. Whoever answers the phone, I just had to say, "May I speak to Serge, please?" If he's away from his desk, they give him a message, and he'll call back, promptly. It works. The human touch is back.

I told Serge that my sordid history with Bell is well-documented on the Internet, and I would be equally merciless with Rogers, if the same nonsense starts happening. He laughed and said he was very confident that it would never come to that. I had to rant and roar countless times with Bell before they gave me a name and a number to call, and even then, I fell through some mighty big cracks in their universe.

 

This might be a logo they've adopted, but things have to get pretty freakin' bad before they decide they want to "talk".

I haunted them, over and over, admittedly, but in essence I was very patient, and gave them multiple opportunities to put things right, but my patience was not rewarded, and was not without limits. The time has come to give Rogers a chance.

Boy, oh boy, oh boy... I sure as heck hope they don't let me down.

.