Call from BEV to "inventory" my receivers

  • Thread starter Thread starter I_Want_My_HDTV
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Typical piss-poor response from Bell. On top of that, you're yelling at him with that "YOU DIDN'T" remark. Very bad treatment of the customer on all parts. Who cares if Bell took the time to call...it's their job to do so. No customer should have to return a call and be FORCED to sit on hold for a half an hour just so they can spend money on a product. Very unprofressional, to say the least about the whole situation. Again, the customer is right, but Bell doesn't seem to think so.
 
It doesn't really matter if the receiver is hooked to a telephone line or not. The only purpose of having the receivers connected is for PPV. My receiver is personnally not connected to a telephone line at home.

We won't offer credit for calling in and follow the policy...
Also not credits are to be offered for a client who gets cut using receivers in 2 locations at the same time if we deactivate one. Policies are pretty strict on that, and even if we request a credit for that reason it would be refused.

Alos no credits for power bars or wireless phone jacks from Express Vu...this is not equipement we sell (Bell World does) so any refund or credit will go throught that store
 
If you are with the cable compagny you woudn't be able to pull the cable till the cottage. You would have to have a second account. Express Vu is more flexible than that:they give you two options 1) you call us when you leave home so that we shut down all receivers that are staying home on leave on only the receiver that would be used at the cottage and the same when you come back, or 2) If you want both locations active at the same time you open 2 seperate accounts. Bell Express Vu has no choice to make sure policies are enforced there, we got sued by cable compagnies saying we do unfair competition and we lost, with the results you know
 
Also if SAT agent has doubts (for example if they heard you calling someone) they might choose to deactivate some of the receivers to make you call in again and make a second verification

BellTV explained to us that if the receivers are not all at the same location the location ID that will appear on the receivers not being at the same location will be wrong...I doubt that it's true, but that's their explanation!
 
Which ever senior V.P. came up with such an asinine policy must be the same guy who wrote the piracy extortion letter that some have allegedly received.
Same mentality.
Actually more like a systemic disease around there.
 
why is it a customers resposibility to prove or verify where their recievers are?
personally, my bill is over $100 a month, easily, just for satellite
and now, because bell doesnt believe i have the recievers in my home, i have to wait on hold, because i missed a call to inventory my receivers?
if the installer had installed a phone jack behind my tv, then there would be no problem having a line connected, but if you think im going to pay in excess of $300 just so bell can know what i am watching, and when....
i have better things to do with my time, and money to help bell police their messed up system
 
I woudn't know the bonus that this departement is getting... As soon as a client mentions that he has a cottage the agent should put a code in the account which let's this verification departement that this house has cottage. This departement will start verifing periodically.

Also when you activate a second receiver, or more in the system we have pre-written notes to use for all calls, the one for additionnal receiver asks if client has a cottage. If the agent follows the note he should have asked and put the answer in the note, than the cottage tag.
 
Just for the records: I do work at a vendor, not directly at BEV. Therefore I am not getting any employe's discount and pay my services the full price as you all do. I've had my service for 5 years, and only been at BEV since 1 year. The account is not under my name, but under my mom's name, for billing purposes since we wanted one bill.

Nowhere on my account does it show employe...we can only know when an employe calls if they tell us. The service discount the employes working for Bell directly gets are not showing on their account. Only the employe services sees them.
 
People are going to complain regardless :) .

I will never claim to have the answers – just offering ideas here for banter. I agree that BEV/Bell has lots of bright employees and they obviously know the business best.

The only way I see that account splitting can be resolved is using a combo/multi-approach. I like SensualPoet's suggestion above as it transparent to the honest customer.

My quick thought on this came to this conclusion: The only way to eliminate/reduce account splitting is to encourage subs with multiple receivers to have them connected to the phone line. BEV has to know where the receiver is, and this is the most economical model.

Obviously mandating connecting the phone line in an End-User Agreement has proven to be counter-productive. Subs feel like Big-Brother is over their shoulder. So encourage them monetarily. Levy a multi-receiver fee - and a hefty, hefty, one. If they have the secondary receivers connected the fee is waived, and even possibly a small (say 5%) monthly discount on the bill (gee... that won't fly easily after reading about how BEV has huge billing problems). However, I doubt the single receiver households would be happy with that ;). This would require a mod to the s/w requiring the receivers to dial in more often (say every week), and immediately after a cold-boot. NO connect for two weeks, suspends programming until it does. If it doesn't do so already when it does connect, it could report the number of failed dial attempts since last connected. Couple that with SensualPoet's suggestion above to find the suspected account splitters. Keep the account verification dept. to hassle these suspects only .

Why would this work??? It might work because basically people are lazy. If I could hazard a guess, most of the honest subs that don't have their receiver connected, don't connect them because there is not a phone jack handy, or they don't want to bother to go to the dollar store to get a longer line, etc., etc. But will they connect if it going to save them some $$$. BEV could even give wireless jacks to those multi-receiver accounts that demand them.

So what about the real account splitters? Well now there is a serious financial penalty to "Joe Six-Pack" if his neighbour "Mike" doesn't pony up his share of the bill every month. And if bringing the receiver over to "Joe's" house every week to call-home isn't a hassle, it sure will be when "Joe" goes away on vacation or is at work, when "Steve's" programming gets suspended.

What about those subs who don't have a land-line? This is more difficult scenario, and I'm not convinced there is a lot of subs' in this situation, but certainly in the more urban areas it is increasingly becoming more commonplace to only have a wireless service. But I’m sure BEV/Bell could find a way to get a data-only line into the residence for a minimal fee, if not free. After all, if it is only going to be used for less than a minute once/week, for a few thousand residences what is the cost to Bell's bandwidth? They might even convince a few to reconsider Bell as a land-line provider if the right marketing incentives were applied.

What this doesn't solve is the potential problem of account splitters who live in close proximity to each other and share a wireless jack to dial in, but I would think this would be so uncommon as to be minimal impact.

What about the cottager’s who don’t have a land-line? That one I’d leave for the smart people at Bell/BEV, (or DHC ;) ) to figure out. But after all, it is in the current End-User Agreement.

This idea however does not address the issue of piracy. Although it is not the topic of this post, I believe piracy and account splitting are inextricably linked. Eliminate account splitting; you drive the popularity of piracy, and vice versa.

And before everyone jumps all over me, as I said at the beginning of this post, I will never claim to have all the answers.
 
You work at a Vendors.?

I thought you were a CSR.?

Please explain, your credibility is just about to go downhill fast.....

If you work for a Vendor, you are entitled to the staff discount.....

Nimiq 1
 
Piracy is a problem that starts with insecure Dish/E* equipment and ends up in Canada due to EV using Dish/E* equipment. Unencrypted FTA is not an issue. Those signals are legal to receive by anyone. It's the poorly encrypted signals that EV and Dish broadcast that are the issue. If anyone in Canada is able to stop piracy of Dish/EV signals it is EV. Dish certainly doesn't care if Canadians steal their signal but EV is indirectly supporting the theft of Dish signals by buying and using their defective equipment as is. IF EV was serious about stopping piracy, they would pressure E* to fix the defective encryption in Dish and EV receivers. But then maybe they just don't care. After all, it probably cheaper just to raise prices and make their customers pay for the losses to the industry.
 
I think it's wrong that Bell magically judges people and some how comes up with the idea that they have alternate residences without proof and any indication.

As for the replacement of the receivers, if I receive a phone call again from Bell regarding the phone connects, I will demand a replacement (Again...now this time, read this carefully because you obviously are missing this with my every post: This is why they said they called about my receivers. They said that 2 of my receivers are not plugged in and not dialing out). If that isn't a malfunction, what is?
 
It would be simple to put it on the web site, but Bell Express Vu probably doesn't want to do that cause it would give the client the possibility to activate both locations simultaneously, which is what we don't want. By goign throught an agent you make sure that only obe location remain active
 
This is a good and positive trend for Bev then.
Can we expect greater consistency in the future and more customer friendly policies as well going forward?
 
What annoyed me was how aggressive they were to me and how they couldn't identify which receivers (they say) were not dialing out. That whole system is painfully flawed.
 
Actually it's not fully paid, it's only half paid...

We 've been providing service at 2 adress, therefore should be receiving 2X54$ or whathever package you have...
 
Really, it's up to the customer...

They plug it, they don't hear from us

They don't plug it in the get a call fom the SAT team
 
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

Agent Express V, I have no idea what you are referring to when you say "As per your request". I didn't request Bell to call me to check on my receivers and I certainly didn't request they deactivate my service without any warning.

When they called and my wife answered, all they told her was they needed to speak with me about my account. As I mentioned originally, I only guessed that it was this so called verification team, I didn't know it. They didn't warn that my Bell service would be cut off and if they were going to be doing something like that, then I really think they should be trying to call back rather than forcing me to call them.
 
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