Thursday, June 3, 2010

Still Alive

Well, it's been a while. Managed to survive my first year at school with okay marks. Only one year to go. There's a cat on my lap who wants me to stop typing.

Today's rant is about Bell Canada. See, when we moved to Toronto, we decided to just bring over my brother's Bell account. But my brother's account had satellite TV on it because he shared with three other guys. We don't need satellite TV (nor can we afford it). However, Bell had scammed him into signing a 5-year contract over the phone (yeah, I know) and wanted to charge him $200 to cancel the satellite. So my brother had it disabled instead, which was supposed to end in March.

Come March, no notice that it had been reinstated. Nothing until April, when suddenly we got hit with a double bill. My brother contacts them and explains that we don't use the satellite. Too bad, Bell said. Cancel it and pay $200 or we'll keep charging you. And no we won't disable it again.

So they didn't. Now we have a $400 bill for something we cannot fucking use. Sure, maybe we should've just cancelled and paid the $200, but the whole point of this exercise in futility was to avoid having to pay a stupid amount of money for a stupid reason. Anyway, my brother said he would handle it. He'd been told he could get the charges waived if he got a letter from our old building stating we weren't allowed satellite dishes (which we weren't) and from the new building stating the same (we aren't; we face the wrong way in both situations).

Yesterday, someone calls the apartment. My brother's out so I pick up. The guy says he's calling from Bell regarding our account and that we owe $400. I tell him that I don't handle it, my brother does; his name is on the bill. Bell-guy then asks if I'm [my name]. My name is not on the bill, Bell. Where did you get it? Furthermore, why did you then ask if I could pay off the entire bill immediately? Fuck you. My name is not on the bill and I just told you that I don't handle it. Don't try to go behind the bill-holder's back just to get your money.

Anyway, so my brother just spent another 2 hours on the phone with Bell and the only thing we got off the bill was $50. Thanks, Bell. Thanks for the omissions and the run-around and the lying and the charging us for something we cannot fucking use. It's not like we're a college student and a guy who can only get odd jobs thanks to this shitty economy.

Oh wait.