The Kindness of Islanders

Much to my amazement in less than 24 hours from my time of posting about my Eastlink experience I received this very helpful email from Derek MacEwen:

"Hi. I passed your "Huh?" blog post re Eastlink's HD service on to Marty Stewart, who is Eastlink's PEI Operations Manager (and my son's hockey team manager). He says that if you are the Dale McKie who lives at (my address), you should be able to get full HD service. He asked me to pass along his cell number: xxx-xxxx. His email is xxxxxx@eastlink.ca. He'll fix things up (he sure did for me when my Internet connection died last Thursday and the call centre told me they couldn't get there until Monday morning!)."


I spoke with Marty and he has suggested that within 24 hours I will be enjoying HD in my home again!

This is one of those times where I am marvelled by the benefits of living in a small province like PEI. Everyone here knows someone who knows someone who can help to solve your problem.

I would like to thank Derek and Marty both for taking the time to read about my problem and going above and beyond to help resolve it.

Please take note Eastlink, this is what customer service is all about. Perhaps you could give Derek a free month or two of internet for saving one of your customers? While you're at it, how about a nice Christmas bonus for Marty?

Rogers Revisited

Since I am usually the first to complain I felt that I really needed to post about the great service I have received from a Rogers employee over the last couple of days.

I usually just pick up the phone or visit the Rogers website when I have a problem or need to add or remove services or discuss phone plans. Actual visits to the Rogers Store, two floors below my office, are reserved for the days when Apple has released a new model iPhone. However, when I picked up my new iPhone back on June 19th, I dealt with a sales rep named Adam. This guy was super helpful and pretty much jumped through hoops to get me setup.

So, after my dilemma of: there is no plan that would give us all we wanted and nothing more at a reasonable price, I figured I would pay Adam a lunchtime visit and see if he somehow had a map to navigate the puzzling world of Rogers cell plans. As it turns out he did! He worked with me to go through the assorted plans, read the fine print, and compare the details. We think we found a nice little combination of plans and add-ons that by-passes the usual "You Get All These Features You Don't Need Or Want and Two of the Four Features You Actually Want, But Hey It Only Costs $10 Extra" plans.

With Adam's help, Carla and I now each have an iPhone with 300 local daytime minutes + unlimited local evenings and weekends + data plans + visual voicemail + call display + unlimited picture, video and text messages, + unlimited Canada Wide Calling to any 5 people we choose (and we can choose 5 new people each month if we like) for the same price we paid last month. That's right we just added a ton of features and will spend the same amount.

Thank you Adam! You have restored my faith in Rogers and you have two loyal customers. It's really nice to see a sales representative who understands that happy customers are more important than the up-sell. See you next iPhone day ;-)

Hey Rogers people who make the cell plan packages...talk to Adam! He has worked out what may be the perfect iPhone package for Canadians (still not quite as good as the deal our friends to the south get with AT&T). This package could go a long way towards creating happy loyal customers. You need those.

More for less, and less for more....just not what you want.

I just don't get it.

In the last two days I have had two different "tech" companies explain to me that they just don't offer the services I want...but they will give me more than I want for less money!

Let me explain.

Company 1 : ROGERS

We have two iPhone 3Gs with Rogers. We have fairly expensive cell plans. One of the phones has data and one does not. iPhone 1 has 6GB of data available. I would like to share that data with iPhone 2. Rogers says that isn't possible. They do offer a data sharing plan, but it is on their 1GB of data package...and it costs more money!

Now after some discussion and a brief lesson basic math (that even Jordan from Big Brother could understand), I had them convinced that 6GB is more than 1GB. I also had them convinced that with all the services I currently have + my 6GB of data, I am saving at least $20/month over what they are currently offering with the 1GB shared data plan.

Now, as crazy as it sounds, I tried to convince them to take away my wonderful 6GB of data and my grandfathered in Rogers to Rogers free calling, and put me onto their new 1GB Data sharing family plan for the same price I currently pay. They can't do it. So I then offer to pay the extra and go to the 1GB Data plan with all of our added services so that we can finally both have data (5GB less mind you!) on both of our phones...and that is when she tells me there is no way we can have all the services we currently have if we take that new plan....they no longer offer all of these services and some of them "conflict" with the text messaging plan that is included with the new plan!

This makes no sense to me. So despite my best efforts and a half hour of time on the phone with ROGERS, I am back to the unlocked iPhone and thinking about installing an app through Cydia which lets you share your 3G connection with anyone over wifi...I guess if I am not paying for it, I may as well make sure I use that 5GB of data somehow.

Now even better

Company 2: Eastlink

Now I would like to start by saying that Eastlink has some really great people. They also have some really, really terrible people who should never speak to customers. Ever. You know who you are. Tonight we had a good one. It's not his fault that his company can't do math.

They called to offer us a new package with home phone + internet + digital cable for a considerable savings over what we pay now. The kicker? We don't currently have a home phone and we don't want one. This deal offered a home phone with a ton of features, cheap long distance calling and a battery backup at our house so that in the event of a power outage we would still have home phone, and internet. Sounds good. Except we don't want the home phone.

Now I am sure that sending someone to my house (which is included) must cost them money. Putting that phone connection and battery backup in must cost them money. Talking to me on the phone about it must cost them money. So I offer to save them a ton of money! Leave everything exactly the way it is...no home phone, no battery backup, no tech to my house to install it all....just lower my bill to the new price.

They can't do that.

I must be missing something. It seems to me that companies in their race to figure out how to attract customers with tons of features and wonderful discounts have forgotten that perhaps customers just want a good service that meets their needs at a reasonable price. Hmm, perhaps there is a market for a company that offers just that.