While I am enjoying a week off, I am going around attempting to clean up some loose threads in my life and one of these nagging issues, is getting my wife a better phone plan. She has been using a Telus pay per use plan, which has served her well, but Telus has realized that this plan doesn’t make them enough money, so they are changing it to make it less good.
I am constantly  disgusted by how existing customers for most service companies are treated like cockroaches, and I am even more annoyed by the fact that the “store” for the service company cannot do any “deals” for you either.
Yesterday we walked into the Telus store, and the nice young lady spewed the same deal that anybody who walked in off the street could get, if you want an iPhone 4S (yes the iPhone 5 is coming out soon, so there should be good deals on the 4S, at least that is what we thought). I was ticked off by this, since my wife has a “credit” with Telus of $180 (where credit does not mean real money, or even usable money) but there was no way to use this “credit” to make the deal any better. I tried a few ways to reflect my annoyance without being rude. Finally the young lady said those magic words:
“… maybe you should call our Customer Retention section on the phone to see if they can give you a better deal…”
I thanked the young lady and we left.
In that one sentence I learned a few things:
- Telus does not seem to empower their sales people in the store to do much for their customers, other than make them feel nice, by smiling at them.
- Deals are out there, but not in the store.
- The best deal can be had only if you thread to leave Telus. This I got from having to talk to Customer Retention, not the regular on-line sales people. Thus, she must threaten to leave Telus before my wife can get a good deal.
No She Got an iPhone 4S at the end of it
My wife and I pieced together all the information needed to call Telus, to talk to their Customer Retention group, to get the best deal. My wife did most of the talking and managed to get a fantastic deal, where she got her “credit” back and a $100 more on top of that, so off we went to the Telus Store to execute this “great deal”.
Executing the “great deal” that is where all things went a little pear-shaped, because as I said, the folks in the store have no power, but they can actually derail deals quite nicely. My wife wandered into the store, gave all the details of the master plan, the “sales droid” at the store then attempted to execute the “great deal”, however she had to call in to “head office” to make it all work, and at that point the wheels fell off the engine.
Luckily my wife had all relevant information about the chap who gave her the “great deal”, however, whomever was on the other end of the phone with our “sales droid”, did not want to honour the “great deal”. An hour and a half later, it seems like Telus may have honoured the “great deal”, but we cannot be sure, until we see the first bill. I am needless to say less than impressed by all this flim-flammery that the Telus Customer retention group and the Telus Store have executed.
Is This The Best Deal?
My advice is whatever deal you might get over the phone, you will need to get the name of your rep and some kind of identifying number for them, to ensure you might have half a chance of getting your “great deal”. That seemed to be the only thing that might have salvaged my wife’s “great deal”.
Anybody else with a similar Cell Phone tom-foolery story out there ?
And this advice works for dealing with various phone providers and even credit lenders over the phone. Ask for their retention department when you mean business; this shows them you are serious.