Good Customer Service is Refreshing
I recently moved out of my old house and into my new one, which is much closer to downtown. Of course this meant I had to change my address on all my credit cards, my bank account, bills and of course I had to get my new internet connection setup.
I dread moving my internet because the last time I moved into a new house I was originally planning on getting a Rogers high speed cable, but the guy who was supposed to install it never showed up. It turned out they called me the next week to confirm my appointment — they had scheduled it a week to late. But by that time I had already booked an appointment for another ISP called 3Web to install the almost identical cable high speed internet.
Finally after 21 days, my internet connection was active and I could get back to IRC, MSN and all surfing when I am bored. I lived in that house for two years and I kept 3Web service the entire time. The connection went out for about a day one time, but otherwise I had no problems with it. It was decent, but it wasn’t spectacular or impressive. Nothing to blog about.
Now two weeks before I moved, I called 3Web to let them know. They asked me what day I would like the service at the new house to be working. I said the first of May and they said okay. I thought, “That was too easy”. But on the day I moved, by the time I had a chance to open up the laptop and try it out, it was already working.
Contast this wonderful example of flawless service with my phone line. Bell recommends that you use the moving form on their site. So I did. However I got no response, no call to confirm from them or anything. When I got to my new house, the phone line was dead and I was still paying for the phone at my old house. As punishment I have decided I will no longer have a home phone. Right now I’m doing perfectly fine using Skype for outbound calls, but I still haven’t found a good provider of incoming VoIP lines for a 613 Ottawa number. I would be nice if SkypeIn was available in Canada. Maybe in the future I will get a cellphone, but it won’t be one from Bell.
There are certain companies which have such terrible service you dread dealing with them, and try anything to avoid it. Unfortunetly in Canada many of the monopolies are these kinds of companies, and these monopolies are so pervasive that everyone forgets what good service is like, or at least assumed there was no possible business model that would allow good support and cheap prices at the same company. My experience with 3Web, and flying with WestJet reminded me that is possible, so now I am voting with my wallet.