My gosh, seven calls from Bell Canada in the past two weeks asking me once again if I would like to sign up for their cell phone service. At the first call I ask to be put on the no call list. Eventually the calls slow down and stop. Until… the next time. Then once again the process begins… again and again… and again. OK, enough of this. I will write to Bell and complain to the higher ups. Oops, there is no place to lodge a complaint about this problem. You can complain about most everything else… but I couldn’t find a place to complain about sales practices. Ah, perhaps I didn’t look deep enough into the murky bowels of their website. I did find an email address at the end of the complaints resolution process. So I wrote to them. Here is a copy of what I sent them.
My name is Joseph Raymond. My wife, Linda, and I had been a loyal Bell Canada phone subscriber for over twenty five years. We were very pleased with the home phone service and the long distance program we had. Then about five or more years ago we began getting telephone calls to expand our services with you. For years I told whoever called that we were not interested and please stop calling us if the purpose of the call was sales. At times the person who called us would be a bit too belligerent. Eventually we thought we no longer had any recourse but to cancel our service with Bell and went to Primus for our phone and long distance needs.
Over these last few years we still get calls from Bell Canada sales representatives. I have asked many times to be placed on the no call list. After another 6-12 calls there would be peace, short-lived, and calls would resume once again. I have come to the point of hating these calls. I repeatedly ask to be placed on the no call list. When I ask to speak to a supervisor I get from some form of abuse to simply being told to wait on the line and then at some point they hang up on me without talking to me. These are extremely bad business practices.
I can guess that you have farmed out the sales contacts contracts to some company in India, judging from the accents, to take advantage of lower costs. However, if you lose long term customers because of the frequency, and sometimes abuse, of these sales calls I cannot see it being to your long term advantage. Perhaps you can do something about this problem. A no calls list should be honoured no matter where the sales calls originate if the company being represented is Canadian.
I am not the only one who is complaining. Others I know also complain yet at this time most haven’t done anything to stop it. Honestly, they don’t think anyone from Bell cares or would do something to correct the abuse. I am of the same opinion. Yet I write this email in the hopes of being proven wrong.
You never know, sometimes, someone listens and something gets done. I can only hope.
