My Journey With Health And Fitness – Knowing When To Step Back And Take A Breath

My apologies to anyone who was looking for my blog on Thursday, I just didn’t have time to write one. Our good friends invited us out for a day of fun at a local water adventure park. My husband, brother and I spent the day floating on an inner tube down a long river eventually ending up in the Caribbean Sea. It was a lovely relaxing day and we are so glad we had the opportunity to do it.

A week before we left for the condo a worker came to our door and offered us a great deal on our internet/cable. Seriously it was about 1/2 the price we currently pay with Shaw (now Rogers connected together with Shaw) and she told me it was because we were a new customer. Huh? We’ve been with Shaw for 30 years. She left saying she would look into it as we don’t show on the system as being with Shaw but she was sure she could get us the same deal. Turns out she couldn’t but suggested because we had a very old plan that we look into shifting to the Ignite system where we would have better internet for less money.

I called to inquire about this and after more than an hour we had been set up on a less expensive plan and I was assured we would have the cable channels as we had before. Alarm bells should have gone off when I kept requesting that the agent add the WWE channel to which she kept replying the W Network is included (this is not the same thing at all). It took me 5 attempts to get her to understand what I wanted. There apparently were some weird issues with our account which she said she would ‘backdoor’ to fix but said the new account was all good. I reiterated multiple times I wanted the duplicate type of set up we currently had and she kept telling me this would be better. She lied. When the new cable boxes were installed and we transferred to the new system we realized we did not have the same channels as our previous system but we were a day away from leaving for Mexico so decided to deal with it when we get back.

On May 1st I got my ebill and it showed the same amount billed as what we previously paid and listed the old plan name. I reached out via chat and was told I was wrong that is not what we are being charged. I told them it is exactly what they had in their bill and again I was told I was wrong. Why I didn’t twig to the fact that things were seriously messed up at this point I don’t know but it was about to get so much worse. I should note, at this point I was close to 2 hours into what to me should have been a simple change in internet/cable plans.

On Monday I realized I hadn’t received any emails to my Shaw account for several days. Quite frankly this is an impossibility as I get a lot of emails each day. I checked my other email accounts and emails were still coming in. I checked Shaw outage and nothing was showing. So then I tried to log into my account online only to learn my email had been deactivated (as had my brother’s as his email is attached to my Shaw internet account). And so I called them, it took 2 1/2 hours to resolve this issue. They were not able to plausibly explain why they had deactivated my email nor could they tell me how the account was changed out of my husband’s name into mine. They refused to let me speak to a supervisor and every request I made to rectify things was met with ‘we can’t’. At the end of the call I asked how I could put in a claim for compensation as dealing with this had prevented me from putting in billable hours and it was going to take me a significant amount of time to deal with people/organizations getting bounce backs from my email address. I also said I wanted to make a formal complaint about all of this and I was told I couldn’t do that and that they would give me a $74 credit on my next bill. Seriously, now 4.5 hours of my time and that is the laughable offer? By this point I was done.

I lashed out in a DM on Twitter to Rogers/Shaw because I was disappointed that after 30 years of being a good customer this is what happened but I was also admittedly frustrated and angry. Later in the day I saw they had sent a response but I stepped back and took a breath and decided not to even look at it. I want to deal with this in a professional manner and make sure that this company understands their absolute failure in providing any sort of customer service and I couldn’t do that in the headspace that I was in. I know none of this was my fault and that I made very clear what I wanted and my expectations. I also know that at no time did I give permission to have the account set up in my names which I believe in itself nullifies the 2 year contract they are going to try and quote if I decide to cancel and go to another provided. I have opted to wait until I am fully in control of my emotions and their responses can no longer trigger how I am responding.

It’s the right thing to recognize when anger and frustration are getting the better of you. Stepping back, taking a breath and waiting until you are fully in control is the best response and that is exactly what I did.

Oh, and you may want to stay away from Rogers/Shaw if you don’t want to have the same experience that I had. In my opinion since the merger their services have apparently eroded to the point that they cannot handle a simple request without making a significant mess of it.