Complaint Rating:

Company information:
Bell Canada
Ontario
Canada

Bell Canada is not responding and makes me a target of collection agency from a victim of Identity Theft.

I got a letter from Bell Collections on 22/10/2008 saying that I owed $400+ for a phone number at an address not belonged to me. I had not been Bell Customer since March/2007. I called Bell and was told I had to report the incident to police. It took me 2 days for police to come to my home taking the statement. I called Bell back on evening of 23/12/2008 and was told by staff that that I would not need to pay the money.

However, I started getting call from a collection agency since early Dec/2008. It said that I owed Bell money. I told the agency that I was vicitim of Identity Theft and Bell already told me that I was not responsible for the payment. I called back Bell Collections but got different answers from different staff. One said that my case was closed and she had no idea why I was after by collection agency. The other one stated that my file had been transferred to collection agency. I tried to get something in writing to clarify whether I needed to pay and what was the situation of my case but nobody was willing to do that. I then asked to speak to a supervisor but was told that I had to wait for 48 hours. Yet, still no supervisor got back to me after few weeks. So far, I had sent 2 letters to Bell Collections stating the problem and asking why my name was still referred to collection agency while I was first told that everything was OK and I was not liable to the payment since it was related to Fraud. Nobody ever attempted to reply so far, i.e. after almost a month. In result, I am still bothered by calls from collection agency daily.

I am really angry with Bell's inconsistent and irresponsible attitude in handling this case. Actually, I believed it was because of Bell that my information was used by someone for setting up a phone line in early Feb/2008 since the company lost personal data of 3.4 millions customers in Jan/2008. I checked with Equilfax and found out that the latest contact was from Bell in Feb/2008.

I am not sure what to do now. Only Bell can stop this by withdrawing my file from collection agency but nobody is doing such nor contacting me for a solution.