bell bill bull

after months being hounded by collection agencies on behalf of bell for a clearly fictitious bill that i disputed (it was for a period i'd already disconnected my service and left the country), i finally got through to the right people (bell employees can't communicate by email or make phone calls out, apparently). after a breakdown of the final months and my payments, we finally established that bell bills are actually for the two months prior, meaning that a bill for march is actually the bill for january. it suddenly struck me that they'd been doing that since my first bill, which means that although i only signed up with bell in november 2012 my first bill in december was actually for the month of september. a time when i didn't receive any service from them.

it took the supervisor, who's clearly been working there for years, a few moments to process this information. i explained to him that as a human being, he had two choices: the first was to cancel the debt and call it a day, the second was to leave it as is and let me take all this information before a judge if and when we return to canada.

to his credit, he acknowledged the absurdity of the situation and cancelled the amount. this story has only cost me a few dollars in calling costs, but it's cost me a whole lot in hours that i don't have and in stress i have way too much of.

i knew all about hydro quebec doing crazy shit to steal customers' money, but this just blew my mind. and apparently videotron's similar.

wow, canada, you guys put up with a lot of shit.