TELUS review: poor customer service 14

I am appalled by the poor customer service at Telus. My story is far too long to go into here so I'll spare the details. They lock you into a contract (mine was 3 years) and then don't provide the service promised. Unless you are an attorney with an abundance of time on your hands, you are stuck paying for a service you're not getting. Telus' representatives are unhelpful and down right rude. The gem I spoke to "Angela" who refused to disclose her last name, informed me that she had "no supervisor" when I requested to talk to him / her and that "like it or not" she "was the end of the line". She then put me on hold, never to return. I am disgusted with this company. They should not be in business.

This is the letter I have written to the contact us site on Telus Website. Still I have not received any response after the letter being sent twice.

Please see below:

To: Darren Entwistle@telus.comATTENTION:Darren Entwistle, PRESIDENT AND CEO. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my concerns. This is the second letter I am sending you and unfortunately if I do not get a reply I will be forced to contact the CRTC and the Better Business Bureau. I hope I can receive a timely reply this time. As the was no reply on confirmation of my letter last time. I have been a customer since May 17/07. Over the past 8 months I have had good service and experiences with Telus service online and on the phone. My concerns today involve my handset which has been sent in 3 times for repair..ON the following dates: 10/04/2008... 26/04/08... and 28/05/08. Each time my A720 Samsung came back it was not repaired. I sent the phone in 3 times and by the third time I thought it would be fixed or they would have provided a replacement through samsung. On June 12.08 I went into the Milton store to purchase a phone which on my last visit I was told I could get without extending my contract and paying the 2 year contract price. When the clerk who was very good by the way checked she said she wasn't able to do this for me and I had to call telus *611, I called and was offered options by the escalations and the loyalty department which I felt were not congruent to the handset that I have, Also as a result of the luck of having a handset which is definitely a lemon, I do not want to sink my self in to too costly a replacement. The issues with my handset include the following: when I am speaking the caller on the other line can not hear me consistently as my voice frequently cuts out. Also NOW since the third repair the Camera on the phone NO longer works. I am really disappointed with Telus's Repair team as well as customer service. I explained this to Farida from Escalations yesterday (june12)(ext 6703 toronto office) and just received a bunch of rehearsed lines from her. About how that was all she could do or offer me, when she said she was sorry for all the trouble I have been through believe me she wasn't, it was very rehearsed and insincere. I am sure you would just like the facts at this point but I am not happy with the way I have been treated or the offers that have been put forward to me. I really do like my phone minus the problems it has been giving me that is why I have sent it in for repair so many times. I believe that you have the power to offer me a fair option, the phones that have been offered to me are not comparable to my phone and I would like it if you would take time to consider my request of looking into to this. I am a Registered Nurse at Trillium Hospital and have many friends and colleagues this experience has not been good word of mouth and publicity. And I hope in future I can be voicing my thanks and praises to Telus.

Thank You for your time,
Debbie Ramlogan RN.

We recently moved to Creston, BC and have had nothing but service issues with Telus. Apart from lengthy waits just to talk to someone (30-45 minutes on hold), their follow-up on service issues is totally unacceptable. We tried to get by on just a cell phone when we moved to Creston. We needed to switch our existing cell phone number over to a local number. It's cheaper if you do this on-line; which we tried; but their website was down for the day. I tried phoning (long distance on our existing cell phone) but gave up after waiting 30 minutes to talk to a service agent. Everytime I've called them since (6 times now) I always get the message that they are dealing with higher than normal volume of calls. It would seem that they need to hire more staff if that is the case. So about 3 weeks ago we decided to switch our cell number to a land line after getting a $455 bill which by the way, I still can't get to view on line but would have to pay another $5 to get a paper copy of the bill. Still not sure how we raked up $455 on our cell phone since we are on a plan with lots of minutes. The story continues... We had to wait 10 days to get the cell number moved over to a land line at our house. The day the switch was to happen, nothing happened. I called the next day to find out why. They indicated that they had too many sservice calls to handle on the day promised to do our switch over. I received no call from Telus to be made aware of this. The day I called, our land line was amazingly up and running 20 minutes later after my call. It was a flick of switch at their end since no one came to our house. However, 2 days later our land line stopped working. I called to get this corrected. The soonest someone could make it out to our home would be 5 days from today. We are running a home base business and this is the best they could do? I asked to talk to someone higher since this was not acceptable. They indicated a Supervisor would call me within 4 hours. The day has passed and no call from Telus was received. So here we sit without our phone operating for 2 days now and people cannot call us and we have to use our cell phone at high cost to make calls. My wife and I have had all that we can bare with Telus. Telus has clearly demonstrated that they have no regard to serving their customers properly and lack any understanding of how their lack of service affects their customers. We understand that Shaw is looking at setting up phone service in our area. We can hardly wait for another option. Dealing with Telus is costly in more ways than one.

Go to shaw, same problem when we moved in. Shaw had us set up in 2 days

Do you normally like dealing with a company that continually pays dis-respect to their customers in large portions? Do you think it is OK to hang up on your customers when you hear something you don't like, for example a simple complaint? Would you treat a loyal, paying customer with such extreme rudeness? I don't think you will if you care at all about keeping the customer. Time after time again I deal with Telus's lack of respect on an on-going basis, but hey, We don't have a choice! The future is REAL friendly.

Also if you expect the CRTC or BBB to help out, they will DO NOTHING for you. They are at the mercy of whatever Telus says. Telus is a company that has gotten a "little too big for their Britches". Telus's answer to customer service is to continue to offer dis-respect by hanging up because they know they have a monopoly and the know they are above the law. None of their customer care agents have any information about any problems you may be experiencing, all they can do is sell you a new plan and look up your account, they are powerless to make any decisions or take any action, so are the supervisors, whom you cannot speak with anyway, they will call you back in 24-48 hours, most likely when you are at work, and leave a message saying they called, anything else, you know the answer, click!
Are we going to continue to be good 'sheep' and say nothing, because Telus must be right, they are an honest company that wants to keep their customers...do you think they would really care enough to actually address even a simple complaint? Don't fool yourself, they will drop you like a hot rock after they have finished sinking their claws into you for a s much as they can get. If you thinmk I am venting, you are right. It is rediculous that i should even have to spent so much time writting this over a simple phone service. Do you remeber when the phone company did actually care enough to correct any problems or address a complaint, or answer therir phones, or call you back when they say.

BTW, Mike C, you got the classic run-around, Telus 'trained technicians' (farmed out to India) are using a sheet that has troubleshooting suggestions in a certain order, and if you do not fit into that critiera, then you are outside the scope of their ability to address the problem, and you will most likely get passed around like a hot potato. Guess they could of tried being honest with you and told you the truth, they don't actually know why their service wil not work with your equipment, but you know their answer, NEVER ADMIT GUILT! Remeber, The future is REAL friendly.

I've had poor service from Telus aswell. I phoned them early last week with concerns about my phone and internet plan. I wanted to reduce the bill payment as the telephone is only present for emergencies (possibly cancel the phone). They offered me a "deal" on some calling features however the total phone bill would increase by some $10 per month. I explained I did not want to be upsold, I wanted to downgrade my level of service. After being transfered a couple times I eventually landed in some sort of Customer Retention or Loyalty department. They offered to waive my long distance administration charge of $4.95, reduce my long distance charge from 9 to 7 cents per minute, double my internet speed from 1.5 to 3mbps and also reduce the payment on my internet by $5 to $25/month as long as I agreed to sign up for 2 years.

This seemed like a good idea at the time and I accepted the offer. Friday was the day they scheduled my service upgrade and I noticed Friday there was no Internet connection. I phoned Friday evening a couple times and was told by the ESL techie that the new connection speed is SO fast that it will crash my existing Linksys modem. I then told him I had another ADSL modem and swapped in a Dlink 300 modem which he said will be compatible. Still no DSL link light. Him and his coworker talked a lot, but actually said nothing for many minutes. I was told to wait 24 hours.

Saturday I phoned twice and was told to wait another 24-48 hours. They told me me the technical work had been completed, however their "Activations" department needed to activate my connection.

Sunday I phoned twice and this time was told to wait 24-72 hours for a resolution. They said they have no way of contacting the Activations department aside from sending a job to the end of their queue. A supervisor added special notes to my ticket and told me he would put a high priority on my case.

Monday I still had no service and phoned a couple more times. One of the ESL women I spoke with told me it should be working now. I checked and this turned out to be false. Many times that evening and the previous days I was put on hold for upwards of 20 minutes while they apparently consulted with other departments about the issue. They often passed me around to other departments and I had to repeat all my contact information and restate the entire problem. In the end, another supervisor told me to wait 24-48 hours. I asked about the expectations of 24-48 hours I was given Friday night, and Saturday morning and he told me that every time I call, the issue will likely get put back at the END of the queue and it will be an additional 24-48 hours. At the end of this particular 1 hour and 25 minute call, he told me he had scheduled an anonymous technician to visit my area Tuesday night to get it working.

Today is Tuesday and still no ADSL link light on my modem. The techie should be arriving between 4:00 and 6:00 tonight and I expect to have this fixed. I have spent about 6 hours on the phone with their poorly trained technicians who repeatedly ask me poor troubleshooting questions such as "how many computers are there in the house, " "try plugging your PC directly into the modem to see if it can get a connection", or the all too common "try removing the power from your modem and router briefly to see if they come back up with a connection." This is all after I explain how there is no DSL Link light, the problem is not that my router is misconfigured, there is simply no DSL connection and therefore NO DHCP server available for my router (or any networked device) to obtain an IP address. Of course, there's always an awkward language barrier and it seems the technician on the other end doesn't understand the concept of what's going on.

I've always had great network/phone service from telus, however if there is ever an issue, their telephone support is the worst of the worst.

Its sad, but it is necessary - record all correspondence with customer service agents. They are unethical and ethics must be forced upon them.

i like verizon

Telus sends me a bill for $80 every month even though I'm not a customer.

Yup. Change to Virgin Mobile as soon as you can.

I have their Internet service and I cannot wait to get out of the contract...

Also, check http://telussucks.proboards99.com