I'm so glad you could stop by. This is my personal blog of daily life and my journey through life. You will find a strong emphasis on family and friends as well as finding my ancestors through genealogy. Unlike my other blogs this blog is more of a catch-all so any topic is fair game.

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Sunday, October 28, 2012

Blog Your Blessings Sunday - Home From Vacation

Blog Your Blessings Sunday

We spend a considerable amount of time between September and the end of December at our vacation home in sunny Florida.  We flew out to Florida on October 2 and returned home on October 23.  It was wonderful to get away!  Family joined us for the first week followed by friends the second week then we spent two days at Disney World with our oldest and spouse before finishing up our vacation by ourselves.   We arrived home in the early morning hours of October 24, happy but beyond exhausted.  It had been a funny vacation in that we were on the go almost non-stop plus we had to deal with a couple of problems there but that is to be expected any time you own property.  It didn't help that I was physically under the weather most of the three weeks.

At any rate we had a wonderful time.  We spent time with family and friends, ate a lot of great food and just all around enjoyed ourselves.  We are very much looking forward to our return to our vacation home shortly.  For now, we are enjoying the peace and quiet of being home.  Both of us are exhausted but we have a couple of weeks to recoup before heading back to our vacation home.


Saturday, October 27, 2012

Bell Canada Frustrations

The other day I got a call from Bell Canada.  The person on the other end said 'I'm so and so from Bell.  I need your account password to discuss your account with you.'  Now, our account is not nor has been in arrears and Bell does have internet service so you would think asking for an account password.  I told the person I am not comfortable giving my password over the phone.  She was a tad upset but what the heck.  The next day, Bell Canada called again asking for my password.  We have caller ID but this number was not identified as being from Bell.  Again, I declined to give my password.  About 10 minutes later they called again so I asked them for a call back number.

We had been at our vacation home for the past 3 weeks. I am not happy with Bell because we have fought with them all summer over our PVR and believe me that was beyond nasty EVEN though it was their mistake.  This is the same PVR we have been fighting with Bell for almost 2 years.  See, we bought the Vbut the installer gave us a rental  according to the box.  I called Bell and they sent out a different PVR that quit about 2 months later.  We called Bell who sent out another PVR.  When we moved here an incentive for keeping our services with Bell was a free PVR so we said yes.  It never arrived and meanwhile the old PVR quit so we called them again.  They actually gave us a free PVR as part of their loyalty program then sent out another PVR under the replacement program.  We called them to tell them of their mistake and the rep said the PVR under the replacement program was ours to keep.  The following month we get a bill for the PVR under the replacement program that was still in the original packaging.  We called them back.  Despite what the first customer service representative said, we had to send back the PVR sent under the replacement program.  So basically we spent a good portion of our time in August and September dealing with Bell Canada who for whatever reason cannot get things straight!

I checked our call record when we arrived home from our fall vacation.  I saw where this number supposedly from Bell had called us on average of 4 times a day since we were left. They called twice the morning we returned so I called them back to ask what the heck the problem was figuring it was related to the PVR issue.  First I get Emily, Bell's friendly automated answering, click until you  die to find a live person, answering system.  After spending about 10 minutes on the phone with Emily with my temper rising, I finally got through to a customer service agent who  obviously was not in Canada and English was not his first language.  He says which account are you calling about to which I said this one but according to him we have two accounts registered to our house phone.  I told him we only have one account so he had to do this troubleshooting, finally deleting the redundant account.  Come on Bell, how can you be this stupid?  By now my temper was rising.

We don't need Bell Canada.  I think they really don't realize that  even though we have been loyal
Bell customers for over 35 years.  Currently, we have telephone, internet and  television through Bell Canada but that could easily change with one phone call.  I calmly told the rep that I had had enough of dealing with their incompetence for the past three months and if I got one more call from them, I would be taking our services elsewhere.  The ball is in their court but as it stands right now Bell Canada is definitely on notice.  I have had enough of dealing with their nonsense.