Thursday, May 29, 2008

Good Ol' Customer Service


Sasktel is the answer when the “independents” get it wrong. When we migrated to Sasktel almost two years ago the jump.ca guy promised our son Steven that he would be able to download the pictures from his phone directly to his computer. Long story short - Not. Possible. Ever.

In frustration, Steven downloaded his pix over the internet and rang up a $80.00 bill for doing it. I called Sasktel and the guy from customer service understood our problem and did the following:

He cut the bill in half - no questions, no hassles, just done.

He suggested a change to Steven’s package that included a two month free period that equaled the other half of the bill. Wow!!

We then went to Sasktel (at Cornwall), told them our story and Michael (the manager) offered to get Steven into another phone, agreeing that my argument was valid - that we wouldn’t have chosen the one we got if we had the right info at the time of purchase . There was only one tense moment when it seemed that they wanted to charge us for for the new phone (we were willing to pay to upgrade, but not to get an equivalent), but my reasonably gentle but firm and incredulous response ended that idea right there.

Steven now has a phone that does what he wants, plus they downloaded all of his photos currently in the old phone via the internet for free, and I am frankly way impressed. Sasktel fixed jump.ca’s blunder because, in the end we are Sasktel’s customer. I suspect Michael and other employees of Sasktel have some uncharitable ideas about what the fate of jump.ca should be, but the Sasktel folks did the right thing, for the right reasons.

1 comment:

Duncan M said...

Actually, if Steve had the USB cable for the LG Chocolate, it is possible to get both music and photos onto and off of the phone. Or at least get photos off.

The phone is designed to do it, out of box. There are mechanisms for it built into the phone. Specifically there is a USB mode the phone can go into, which allows it to be detected as an external drive by the computer.

However, most Canadian cell phone companies disable these features for no good reason. Except to make a few extra bucks off you. If he'd downloaded the pics over a few months you'd never have noticed the dollar or three here or there. Sneaky, huh?

Of course, all things can be circumvented. Using a bit of searching, I was recently able to transfer both Music and Pictures from a similarly locked LG Chocolate on Bell Mobility (Ruth's phone).

What needs to happen is that more people need to be aware of what their phones can (and are designed) to do, and demand that the phone companies not lock out these features for their own selfish purposes. There is no good reason for it, and the hardware should be free and open to use as you see fit. You bought it, after all.