Fido / Rogers (Canadian provider) to charge $10 for customer support that can be done by customers on their own

Mooshi · March 31, 2019

Let me play devil's advocate here. I take customer care overflow calls for one of the largest US cell carriers and they somewhat recently started charging if a customer took a payment with us. We actually just lost the ability to waive those charges because we did it too often.

I use the same carrier and pay my bill through the app. Literally done in less than 2 minutes while someone is wasting their time waiting in a long call queue then wasting an agent's time to take that payment, get yelled at about the fee and so on. Maybe this company got tired of the cost of phone calls from customers over things they should be doing themselves.

Old age isn't an excuse because my girlfriend's mom is in her 60's and pays all the bills she can online. Simply put, customers that call in to make a payment vs using self-serve options waste the time of agent's who should be available to help real problems. Tired of wasting time on long holds? Stop tying up the lines!

kokakolia · April 1, 2019

10 hours ago, Mooshi said:

Let me play devil's advocate here. I take customer care overflow calls for one of the largest US cell carriers and they somewhat recently started charging if a customer took a payment with us. We actually just lost the ability to waive those charges because we did it too often.

I use the same carrier and pay my bill through the app. Literally done in less than 2 minutes while someone is wasting their time waiting in a long call queue then wasting an agent's time to take that payment, get yelled at about the fee and so on. Maybe this company got tired of the cost of phone calls from customers over things they should be doing themselves.

Old age isn't an excuse because my girlfriend's mom is in her 60's and pays all the bills she can online. Simply put, customers that call in to make a payment vs using self-serve options waste the time of agent's who should be available to help real problems. Tired of wasting time on long holds? Stop tying up the lines!

...You just cannot justify the behavior of Canadian phone companies! They increase their already record-high prices and remove features. There's something really absurd about complaining about customers and what they should do themselves. In a perfect world, the customer is always king and can easily switch to a competitor if the quality of service doesn't satisfy their needs. Moreover, it is painfully obvious that these Canadian mobile companies are drowning in money because Canadian cell plans are more expensive than any other country on the planet. These companies should easily afford to hire enough staff on the help lines and provide excellent service. But that's not the case because of greed and the obvious lack of competition.

IMHO, lower the prices if you're gonna remove features. You can always offer better service to customers who pay for more "premium" plans. This might already be a reality actually. Rogers is more expensive than its budget brand Fido. Therefore, you'd expect better service from Rogers. But since nobody is competing on the Canadian mobile market, prices are sky-high and the level of service is only degrading over time because of greed.

Mooshi · April 1, 2019

5 hours ago, kokakolia said:

...You just cannot justify the behavior of Canadian phone companies! They increase their already record-high prices and remove features. There's something really absurd about complaining about customers and what they should do themselves. In a perfect world, the customer is always king and can easily switch to a competitor if the quality of service doesn't satisfy their needs. Moreover, it is painfully obvious that these Canadian mobile companies are drowning in money because Canadian cell plans are more expensive than any other country on the planet. These companies should easily afford to hire enough staff on the help lines and provide excellent service. But that's not the case because of greed and the obvious lack of competition.

IMHO, lower the prices if you're gonna remove features. You can always offer better service to customers who pay for more "premium" plans. This might already be a reality actually. Rogers is more expensive than its budget brand Fido. Therefore, you'd expect better service from Rogers. But since nobody is competing on the Canadian mobile market, prices are sky-high and the level of service is only degrading over time because of greed.

This completely missed my point.

Let me repeat: when a customer calls in for something mundane like a phone payment, it takes away resources. Think cop spending time on a jaywalker vs someone speeding through a school zone - latter a higher priority.

I'm not Canadian, I don't follow what services are offered. I'm going off a US company and personal experience serving customers. Customer calls in to make a payment instead of taking a minute to tap a couple times on the app. This takes up my time that could have been used to resolve a complex billing error. The customer in queue with a serious issue gets the impression service sucks because the person ahead of the queue is taking up time with self serve options available.

Premium service isn't extra service or lack of. It's being able to get assistance when needed for issues that can't be resolved on your own. I don't want to wait a long time to speak to an actual person because someone would rather waste time calling in for non issues making others sit in the queue longer. That's the complete opposite of an excellent experience.

Don't want to get charged a fee for payment? Use the app or pay online. It's a non issue that people blow up like it's one.

Let me also add this: when we get calls, it's back to back because of the huge customer base. From a customer perspective, it feels like it takes forever before someone picks up because it does. Now imagine if less people were calling in, you get an agent quicker due to less call volume. I never understood why someone would rather wait forever for something that literally takes under 2 minutes to do yourself.