So, I have been a Fido customer for close to 15 years now. My phone has not been upgraded for close to 5 years as I just continue to buy phones outright to avoid continual plan increases and I decided to look into a new phone after seeing all of the recent father's day deals and such. My husband is with Bell and was offered a great deal to port my phone over and set up a new plan with device.
On June 15, 2021 I decided to spend some time browsing on my Fido app to see any potential offers that were available and if there was something comparable to the plan that my husband was offered.
On June 16, 2021 got a phone call from someone from a Fido outbound sales team member checking in and seeing what i was interested in. They apparently have a way to track movement on the app and follow up to any unfinished leads. Kind of the emails you get from Lowe's when you leave an item in your cart but don’t check out. I had given them the details of the offer from Bell and then said that they would have a member of the winback team call me to see if they could do better to keep my service and possibly bring my husband over to Fido as well.
A gentleman called Keon, called back that same day and identified himself as a member of the winback team. Here's the breakdown of the offer that he gave me:
He was offering me a device upgrade, Samsung S21 Ultra with samsung earbuds (a coupon to be sent to Samsung) for $50/month on a 24 mth finance plan with a $300 one time account credit to be applied to the phone since pricing outright was regulated by the manufacturers and could not directly be changed. Along with this he offered me 25GB of data, unlimited canada wide call and text for $45/mth with a $5 monthly credit to be applied for years of loyalty with Fido. So phone and plan $90 per month until the phone is paid off in 24mths, then it would be just the $40/mth plan cost.
The secondary part, if I were to add another line to my account, my husband, he was offering me a Samsung S20 FE 5G with samsung earbuds (a coupon to be sent to Samsung) for $15/mth on a 24mth finance plan with another $300 credit to be applied to the account in addition to my device credit. Along with this he offered my 25GB of data, unlimited canada+us wide call and text for $45/mth. So phone and plan $60 per month until the phone is paid off in 24mths, then it would be just the $45/mth plan cost.
The offer was great as it was an improvement to my current plan of $60 for 15GB and i was getting a new phone. For me, it was a no brainer and I felt really happy that my years with Fido had not gone unnoticed and they really seemed sincere in retaining my business. I told him that I would need to speak to my husband and would call him back to confirm whether it would be just my line upgrading or if i would be bringing his line as well. Since he was in the winback department he told me that he did not have an inbound number and would call me back on Friday after work at 4:30pm just before the end of his shift.
Keon called back on Friday as promised and spoke with my husband going over all of the details. My husband makes frequent calls to the us and wanted to make sure of the details off his plan if he was going to bring over his line from over 20 years with Bell. My husband said that he would call Bell regarding his line but for sure that we would be accepting the offer for my phone. Keon was to call back on Monday to port everything over and finalize the switch. Since this was an outside call we were unsure if the calls were being recorded as all inbound calls are and thankfully the agent said that not only is the file documented with our offer but the calls are recorded should we need anything in the future. This is reassuring considering we just spent almost an hour on the phone together, after our initial 30 min convo.
This is where the promises stopped being met and everything began to turn south. The weekend passed and Monday June 21, rolled around without any calls from anyone. Not having any contact information to call back we simply sat and waited to hear back as was promised. On June 23, 2021 we finally received a call from Fido but this time it was another agent calling from the winback department. Explaining to her that we had already spoken to Keon and had everything set we did not require anything further and wanted to close everything with him. She assured us that she would reach out to him to call us as he may have been busy or forgotten.
More empty promises as another few days passed and on Monday June 28, 2021 and again we had not received any calls. Finally unwilling to continue waiting idle we called in to Fido customer service, having no other recourse. We were connected with an agent named Mike who was extremely helpful. Going over the file he did note that Keon was in our account and that there were interactions with him yet no formal notes were on the account. This after numerous conversations began to worry us about all the time that we had invested without any documentation aside from the contact showing that my account had been accessed by the agent. Mike was kind and helped calm me down saying that it may have just been an error and Keon the winback agent may have just forgotten to save his notes. Mike unfortunately could not do much more for me aside from putting in a request to have winback call us. Explaining what the offer was that Keon provided us Mike said that this is only a winback offer but did try his best saying that he could offer everything but the plan which the best he could do was $50 for 18GB. After almost an hour and a half on the phone despite not being able to complete everything as we set out to do weeks prior he was a great guy and did his best to explain the situation and get the issue resolved.
After a few more days passing without a call from Keon or the winback department to honour their offer, I yet again called back customer service on June 30, 2021. Since it was bath time for the children I asked my husband to go over everything and finally resolve the issues we were having. Well after 2 and a half hours on the phone, speaking to Rupinder and then to her manager Charen, it became clear that all of the great customer service that I recall with Fido was not what my husband experienced. Rupinder was so completely removed that she refused to acknowledge the offer from winback saying that it didn’t exist, negated the offer from Mike saying the offer is not valid in province and then provided to add salt to the wound offering $60 for 8GB. This is ridiculous, not only were all previous offers ignored but they keep trying to give worse and worse offers to the point where the last offer was actually worse than my current plan. He got the complete run around and had both the agent and the manager contradicting everything they were saying, refusing to aid in the situation and even becoming so brash to refuse to request a winback call, refuse to push the issue to a higher manager and provide him with the email of the office of the president and get a copy of the call if he was unclear as to what he was being told.
So all in all I’ve wasted almost 2 weeks waiting to hear from Fido. Called in 3 times and spent close to 8 hours collectively going back and forth making absolutely zero headway speaking with a customer service department more focused on infuriating clients and wasting our time as opposed to resolving our issues.
Now my frustrations are really an unwelcomed disruption to my peace of mind and a complete waste of time taken away from my family. This whole mess has cost me significant time, effort and frustration. Being 8 months pregnant, working from home and having 2 little ones to take care of, I definitely have much better uses for my time than wasting my breathe with outsourced Fido customer service department. So far I have spoken with 7 different people at Fido and not a single person has had the authority to resolve the issue or taken it upon themselves to have the appropriate parties reach out to me to close this matter.
Because I didn’t ask for a deal from Fido, they reached out to me and wanted to give me one, the ridiculousness of this ordeal is almost not believable. They call me, offer me a winback deal to keep me with Fido and in the end they do not wish to honor it by refusing to call me back.
How can i trust them now? All i wanted was the agreement to be honoured especially since we had so many conversations outlining everything.
I am very frustrated and disappointed with how Fido has handled this and hoping to find a solution as soon as possible. Its things like this that makes a company lose public trust and ultimately customers. But who knows, they may indeed get back to me and rectify the matter. Here's to wishful thinking assuming anyone at Fido even cares.
