While it may be my specialty, I certainly don’t hold any sort of monopoly on ranting. Here is where I’ll put the guest rants I’ve recieved.
First is a rant about getting a ringtone from Bell, by Joce. As with my rants, potty-mouth caution must prevail.
Tonight, had a great idea of downloading a new ringtone from Bell Canada’s website … Thought to myself, how difficult could it be - browse for a song-download-pay, right? Wrong my friend, so very very wrong.
1. I need a password … I tell Bell to text message me a password, and they do in a timely fashion … Unfortunately, I cannot discern between a lowercase “L” and an uppercase “I”, so I try, what feels like, 8 million combinations before I finally get it right … Yay!
2. I browse their selection of songs for my particular phone model, and find one that I like … Upon downloading, it asks again for my password … I type it in, and a bold red message appears: INVALID PASSWORD … What?!? Didn’t it just work 5 minutes ago? I try again, thinking that I mixed up my L’s and I’s … INVALID PASSWORD … Beeatch!
3. I tell Bell to send a second password, hoping to avoid the L/I mishap, but to no avail … This time it’s 0’s (zeros) and uppercase O’s … what fun!! Life’s just too easy sometimes!
4. After 16 million attempts at this password, I AGAIN ask Bell to send another one … Lo and behold, no L’s, I’s, 0’s, or O’s! I’m well on my way!!
5. I download the ringtone, but then they tell me to use my Minibrowser on my phone to complete the process … As I connect to my Minibrowser, I’m warned that I’ll get charged $2 for the ringtone and for the airtime to finish downloading the damn thing … Alright, I thought to myself, this won’t take long anyway …
6. I download the ringtone, which takes fo-o-o-o-o-r-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-v-v-v-v-e-e-e-e-r-r-r-r. A message appears saying that the phone has “successfully received the ringtone” … Yay!! I choose to preview it and … IT’S THE WRONG BLOODY SONG!!! … Shit.
7. In my madness, I try again. Same result.
8. That’s it, I’m going to the Bell Canada in Erin Mills Town Centre and demand an explanation. So I get all bundled up and drive my way to the mall. I stand in line for 5 minutes as two sales representatives talk about their crazy drunken weekend, blah blah blah. I wait impatiently, and then I’m finally addressed: “Can I help you ma’am?” (I hate being called Ma’am - do I LOOK 40 years old?!?). I explain my situation and get a dumbfounded expression in return. “I’m sorry Ma’am, you’ll have to call Customer Service. I don’t even know how to approach this problem”. What the fuck?
9. I’m told to dial *611 on my cellphone to connect to Customer Service and that they’re open until 9 p.m (it’s 8:30 pm at this time). I dial, go through all of the prompts, and then: We’re sorry, our hours are Monday to Friday, 8 am to 8 pm … Fuck fuck fuck!
10. I go home, get in my Hello Kitty pj’s, eat too much chocolate, and try my hardest
not to throw my phone out the window …
In summary: what should have been as easy as motherfuckin’ pie, turned out to be as difficult as my first year Anatomy/Physiology final. A big BOOO for Bell Canada!
Addendum, December 20, 2005:
Joce just forwarded me the response from Bell about getting the wrong ringtone:
I am sorry but I can not tell you how to get the correct ringtone as I don’t know what ring tone it is and we do not have access to this since the downloads are a self serve system.
I apologize that Bell Mobility has not been able to favorably address your concerns. However, I hope to have adequately answered all your questions.
I wish you Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year.
Addendum, December 30, 2005:
I talked with Joce, and she told me that she called Bell again. The phone representative said that the charge for the wrong ringtone and airtime wasn’t showing up on her bill so she was fine — she figures it probably just won’t hit until next month, and then she’ll have to argue with them some more. The guy then spent the rest of the conversation trying to upsell her to get browsing time on her cell phone for just $5 more per month so that she wouldn’t have to worry about those surprise airtime charges when downloading ringtones in the future — which totally doesn’t solve the problem at hand. She’s assured me that just changing the noise your phone makes when someone calls you is not worth the hassle, and won’t be using that service again. Pity for Bell, as it seems like a very high-margin scam… err… service.
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Another rant comes from Wayfare. Well, it’s not a rant so much as a general “what the heck?” What happened was, we bought some fruit cups (we acutally go through a ton of these things), and after being at home for some undetermined time (we’re not sure how long, probably just a week), we noticed that they were the wrong colour:
Still not sure what to do with them. I’m inclined to just throw them away and not worry about it, but every now and then Wayfare seriously considers taking them back to a store (though we’re not sure if they came from Loblaws or A&P).
