Are Your Home Phone Providers Acting Like Heroes or Villains?
Like many Canadians, I used to give a good portion of my hard-earned income to a national home phone service provider who seemed to take me for granted each and every month. Of course, since I was forced to sign a contract in order to receive basic services from them … they definitively took me for granted! I was treated, as they say, as a “captive audience”.
I noticed time and time again that my bills got higher and higher while my service stayed exactly the same. When I attempted to call my home phone provider in order to get a clear explanation regarding these fees that kept appearing, I would be put on hold and wait for what seemed to be an eternity.
The reasons kept coming in: “your promotion ended”… “it’s a new market price” … “we have a new package” … “exploitation fees are higher”… it just never made sense to me.
My work colleagues had begun switching to non-national home phone providers who were able to provide the service I was paying a fortune for, but at a much lower price. Low and behold, they were even able to get unlimited Internet without signing any contract at all!
While I felt I was limited in my own options, I thought switching home phone service providers would be complicated—until my own true horror story with a national home phone provider happened.
Here is the scenario …
I was working in a busy store when all of a sudden I struck a conversation with a person who happened to work in the company I had been longing to work for years. As I began telling him about my educational background and professional aspirations, he took my phone number and asked me whether I would be interested in sending him my resume as soon as I got home.
I was so happy I could not wait to get home in order to send him the document he requested that night. The only major problem was this: for an unknown reason, my area did not receive any Internet signal for that whole evening.
The deadline to apply for the position of my dreams was that night … and I blew it. Or let me re-phrase: my national home phone service provider —who also supplied my Internet service—blew it big-time.
The next day, I contacted a lesser known but much better home phone provider who was able to save me money on a daily basis, as well as my sanity. Switching was so easy I should have done so much sooner.
Was it destiny? Sure enough, I am now living happily ever after with my new provider!
