Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashartus
Painfully unprepared telemarketers/technical support. Got a call from Rogers with the whole Shaw to Rogers transition, he says they have special deals for the migrating Shaw customers. Goes through what I have now, asks if everything is fine (it is), whether I watch much TV (I don't) etc. Says they can give me faster internet for about the same cost, sounds good to me. Then he has to go check the offer available to me, puts me on hold. Comes back almost 5 minutes later with a bundle with a bunch of cable channels that costs $40/month more than I pay now. I ask what about just the internet. 5 minutes later he is back saying it is $5/month more but double my current internet, I say sure. Then he has to go and get everything set up. 5 minutes later he is back saying I need a new router, and asking if I want to do self-install or have a technician. I ask if there's a cost for the technician - another 5 minute wait for him to find that out. Then he says actually he can't give me what we had talked about, they can only offer the complete deal with all the TV channels. So thanks for wasting half an hour of my time.
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Yeah, they have to honor the remainder of the previous contract.
But something I found out last year was that Shaw had a bizarre system for renewals. Basically the contract was coming up and we coincidentally had communications with door to door, online portal and telephone. 4 totally different responses.
Telephone to Shaw account rep when asking to change some account information was the best deal by a solid 20-30% margin for 24 months.
Online portal one was meh and actually the original one offered over the phone by the account rep. But when we expressed that we'd rather downgrade than pay those rates, they asked if it was OK to call back and then magically found that great option a few hours later. Technically this was still the second best deal.
Cold call happened as well, but what they offered was 10% more than what was on the portal. The guy said that based on my pause and then me saying I already had a different Shaw offer on the table, his offer probably wasn't close. He asked me if I could reveal what they were offered and when I revealed it was almost 10-15% more, he apologized and hung up.
Door to door it turns out the guy was a subcontractor for Shaw. He was above the portal by about 3-5% but said he couldn't match the online option due to Shaw restrictions but said he'd offer services/freebies that I didn't actually need. Dude was a little bit embarrassing and snake oily though. Literally flipping the paper charts/grids in person to tell me what he could offer me and it was obvious he wasn't going to the maximum on the chart to tell me what he could offer me. When I told him what we were offered on the phone, he ranted he hated how Shaw did things, how it was probably a higher up who had to review and approve such a deal. He said he couldn't match the contract, but said he really wished we would reconsider and support the little guy because he could offer superior service. He claimed if we needed tech support he would make sure we get help within 24 hours vs Shaw would probably take 2-3 weeks.
I wonder if other telecoms are like that which create these confusing differences in offering. But it definitely blew my mind that we got 4 completely different offers via different mediums for a contract renewal. It's so bizarrely inefficient.