The Consumer Complaints Blog

There was an interesting article recently in the paper about how the government is unwilling to make Canadian wireless companies release phone numbers in order to allow consumers the choice of switching carriers.

So lets tackle the wireless cell phone (mobile for our UK friends) companies in Canada and North America as a whole. The phone number issue is a good place to start.

This issue is particularly irksome because it is already available in the US. Yes that’s correct. In America you can take your phone number and move between providers. Sounds a lot more fair than in Canada doesn’t it?

So why is this important you ask? What’s the big deal? If you don’t like your company just move to another one and get a new number. On the surface that does sound good but let’s take into account a small business owner. Changing a cell phone number can be a decision which can cost thousands of dollars. Not only would they need to reprint business cards and stationary, but they also stand to lose future income from past clients that know the old number. Imagine the hassle / embarrassment of calling up all your past clients to tell them of your new cell phone number. The worst part is that these corporations could release the numbers and have the technology to do it.

But lets leave that issue. The cell phone companies have been having a ball with us for years. The phone number issue is just salt in the wound.

Here is an issue that, for some reason, gets no attention at all in North America. In fact, only recently has Fido (owned by Rogers) begun offering free incoming calls.

What’s that you say? Who has free incoming calls? Well, lets start with Europe. Incoming calls are free, and have been for years, in most if not all European countries. Even Eastern Europe. That’s right. Non first world countries have free incoming calls. In fact, and you’ll like this, even pay-as-you-go customers have free incoming calls.

Now we’ll move on to Asia. Yup. That’s right. Free incoming calls. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find developed countries outside of North America that have to pay for incoming calls.

So think about that for a moment. Why are North Americans being treated like total idiots? The answer is really simple. Because we let them treat us like this. Every time I travel, it’s fun to tell people about how our incoming calls are not free whenever the subject comes up. I find that most people get a puzzled look on their face because they can’t comprehend the notion.

Add to this the fact that if you choose pay-as-you-go, you are told that you have bought and paid for minutes. Then if you don’t use them, they just disappear into thin air. Wait a minute, did I buy those minutes or rent them? They told me I bought them. What’s going on?

In case you’re wondering, in the US you can find companies that roll over your minutes. Same as in the UK and Europe. So once again we’re left bent over and shafted.

The issue is not how badly we’re getting ripped off. That’s pretty much become par for the course with corporations. Here are the more important questions: Why do these things get no coverage in the media? Why don’t our politicians do something about it? Why is there so little choice in the Canadian cell phone market? Is it the consumer that benefits from this?

We as consumers have to become active in our own lives. Don’t let government and corporations force feed you. We should not be satisfied until there’s a plethora of choices, and good one at that. We are in an agreement with government. As citizens, we fund to keep our country a place worth living in. They in turn agree to protect our rights so we don’t get trampled on. Or revolt. As a society, we are keeping up our end of the deal. Government?

Society exists for the people not the corporation. Generating money is not the sole purpose of humanity.

For those of you that don’t know, Highland Farms is a supermarket chain in Toronto. They do huge business as each store is massive. The store I’m talking about is located on Dufferin Street north of Finch in North York.

As soon as you walk into Highland Farms you think that the store is impeccable. Or just seriously anal. The fruit is stacked in neatly ordered piles. The shelves are well “faced” (to use an industry term that means that everything is lined up nicely). Even the floor is clean. All and all a very nice presentation but, as I found out, looks can be deceiving.

Here is what happened on Thursday, September 19th 2005. My wife, Jennifer, and I just moved to a new place and we needed to go serious grocery shopping. We went to Highland Farms because we liked shopping there (once or twice a week). Our over $200 bill included 5 kilograms (11.0231131 pounds) of ground pork. Yes, that’s a whole lotta pork.

Jennifer has allergies at this time of year so she can’t breath / smell too well. Remember that.

When we got home she divided the meat into portions and froze it so we wouldn’t have to go shopping so often. A point that the keen sleuths at Highland would find very puzzling the next day. She puts it in the freezer and saves a portion to cook for dinner.

So, I’m sitting at the computer working when I smell the stench of rotten meat, getting fried. Jennifer has no idea as she sneezes and blows her nose. I go to the kitchen and confirm that it is off. I get pretty pissed at this point. I feel totally ripped off. I gave this store my hard earned money and they sold me rotten food. Not only did they rip me off but they could have made me sick.

We can’t make it back to the store that same day because of an engagement but we head over on Friday morning.

We walk up to the customer service counter and are ignored for a bit while a few women in tidy green outfits chat about something irrelevant. (Green is the Highland colour in case you’re wondering.)

Finally one of them waddles over to us and says. “Yeah, can I help you?”

“We bought this meat yesterday and it’s rotten. We’d like to get our money back.”

She looks into the bag with a disgusted look on her face. “Why is it frozen?”

My wife and I both explain it to her. Her expression changes to a smirk of disbelief and she calls the meat counter manager over.

He strolls over. “Is the pork in the original bag with the seal on?” He asks her.

Yes. I brought it back because my alternate secret identity has super powers which allow me to smell through a sealed plastic bag.

Some days I really feel like people are just not trying. And I don’t mean at customer service. I mean in life in general. It’s like they’ve switched off their brains and are just coasting on neutral.

He then proceeds to rub the meat. Smells the meat. Tries to twist the frozen meat around in his hands all the time saying that this meat is not rotten. Oh, okay. So now I’m a liar too. The one behind the counter is laughing with him at why we separated it why it’s frozen. She ends with a snarl of her upper lip and a roll of the eyes.

At this point I’ve pretty much lost it. This company not only ripped me off. They sold me something that could make us sick, they insinuated that we’ve lied and laughed at us. Not once did they have the courtesy of apologizing.

But I know, this was all my fault. I’m just a scheming bastard. That’s what it is. I bought over $200 worth of stuff at this place and when I got home I felt bad. I then came up with a brilliant scheme. I went and found 5 kilos of ground pork and replaced it with the pork they gave me. I then wasted money on some Ziploc bags and separated the bags so I could take it back the next day and get my money refunded from Highland. Yup. I am a genius. What can I say?

After a bit of heated conversation with these two people who obviously did not care about us as people or customers, the manager comes over. He introduces himself as the manager and points to his nametag. Ahh…The Omnipotent One!

By this point I’m pretty much in no mood to deal with him. I just want my money back and I’ll never shop here again. I have a few exchanges with the manger. Nothing aggressive or anything but enough to tell him how I feel about his establishment and his employees. No apology once again. Just the same look of disbelief. (Why, oh why, is the meat frozen!??)

What is wrong with these people?

In the end we got our money back but that is really the least they could have done. It is the bare minimum when they ripped us off and sold us potentially dangerous produce.

If anyone at Highland Farms stumbles across this blog, here is a pointer on how it could have gone.

First of all, no company is perfect. I don’t care how careful you are, you are going to make mistakes. Don’t act as if there was no way the meat could be off. It was, and you didn’t seem to care that you could be hurting people. And I’m not saying the whole 5 kilos was off but contamination spreads.

Second. Say you’re sorry. It’s a simple thing but it goes a long way.

Third. Don’t assume that the client is lying. Why would I be trying to scam them with pork? There are many better ways to get money out of a company. I am just a consumer who wants his money back for bad produce. And look at the bill. I’m not exactly making a profit on returning the pork when the bill is $200+. Use your brains.

Finally. Give me a box of Ziploc bags because you made me waste mine.

If those simple things would have happened, we would have kept shopping there. I really don’t understand what was so hard for them. Instead we got cheated. Then laughed at and then called liars.

But it doesn’t stop there.

By the time I got home I was still very incensed at the whole experience. I wasn’t so mad about the pork but rather the way we were treated. And the fact that they didn’t care at all about the health implications of them selling this tainted meat.

So I decide to do something about it.

I decided to contact the city of Toronto’s service for reporting these incidents. Here is their website and phone number in case anyone else is having a food related problem.

http://app.city.toronto.on.ca/food2/index.jsp
416-338-FOOD (3663) between 8:30 a.m and 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday.

So I call. They are actually very polite and they tell me that an inspector will look into it and get back to me by Monday. Great I think. Now someone will look into this and maybe Highland doesn’t have to get away with doing this to anyone else.

I get a call on Monday. The inspector tells me that he just visited them and he could not find anything wrong. He looked at all their paperwork and they have a good rotation schedule of only keeping the meat for 5 days.

He then proceeds to tell me that it could have been the pig’s diet which changed the smell.

Holy crap! Everyone has lost it. I’ve been eating meat my whole life and I know the smell of rotten meat. I don’t know if any of you have had the pleasure of ingesting meat that has gone off, but when you have it coming out of both ends for two or three days you pretty much remember what made you sick. What the hell could they have been feeding those pigs to make them smell like putrid flesh? Damn! Go inspect the farm then.

Of course I clearly failed to grasp his argument. I complained about rotten meat on Friday. The government went to the store on Monday and inspected the paperwork. Of course! That makes sense now. Not the meat. The paperwork! Because we all know that when a company puts something on paper, they always tell the truth. How stupid of me.

Basically he found nothing wrong and I am crazy after all. That makes me feel a lot better.

So in conclusion lets think about where we’ve come to as a society. The suspension of reality through bureaucracy, red tape and record keeping. It no longer matters what is real or truthful. If some quasi-official individual writes it down, it must be the truth.

The moral of the story being this: If this ever happens to you, eat the meat, go to the hospital and keep the records and then complain because you’ll at least have paperwork.

In conclusion. Highland Farms sucks.

As usual. Thank you for reading.

Just a quick note about a manufacturer of computer monitors, among other things. They seem to be a Chinese company with offices all over the place.

I bought a used PC. Now I’ve been on Apple computers since the 80’s but I needed a Windows machine to do my testing. I’m a graphic designer and web designer so I have to look at alignment and colours and so across both platforms. And I like the games.

Having bought this computer I decided to get a brand new BenQ 19″ monitor to go with it.

No problems for the first 4 months, until all of a sudden, anything dark/black starts to appear as a kind of funky day-glo purple. You can imagine how this is very disconcerting for someone who relies on the monitor to choose colours for a living.

I then wasted the next few days checking settings, running diagnostics, installing and reinstalling drivers and I even changed the video card. All the time thinking that it couldn’t be the monitor. After all the monitor is brand new. Finally, I take my crappy monitor and hook it up to my trusty mac. (I know I should have done that earlier but I’m new to Windows so I blame it first for everything.)

Lo and behold, the now tormenting shade of purple.

I go to the BenQ web site. I fill out their contact form and give them my phone number and address and serial number of the monitor. I explain to them how important it is I get this resolved because I rely on it for work. I get an e-mail back telling me that I need to phone the service department. Okay, but why don’t they call me since they made me give them my phone number and all the other details?

Fine. I call the service department. I’m on hold for over half an hour listening to how important my call is and all the other irritating crap you hear on these systems when you’re on hold. I can’t help but wonder why they put those messages in. If someone says they care about you but obviously treats you like they don’t, doesn’t that just make you angrier?

Finally I get a rep, based in California. He tells me I can give them my credit card details so they can charge me for a new monitor, to be shipped asap, in case I don’t return my broken one. (WHAT THE…?) I just paid this company money. They gave me a monitor that broke within the first four months of using it 5 or 6 hours a day. Now they’re asking me to give them more money? Why?

Alternatively, I could send my monitor back and wait till they receive it, at which point they would send me a replacement. Or I could go out to Scarborough somewhere to pick it up myself.

Now I know how easily things can get “misplaced” whenever a company asks to have something sent to them. Either through the fact that they are too big to handle all these issues or just plain incompetence. So I went with the pick up option even though it would cost me gas money to go there and get it.

Oh yes. Did I mention that the replacement monitor isn’t new? I paid them for a new one and they have graciously offered to give me a “refurbished” monitor. (“Refurbished” of course being a marketing word for garbage. I’m in the field so I know these things.)

The rep tells me they’ll call me back with the pickup location and details.

Okay?

I wait all day. No call. I wait all the next day. No call but I had a barbecue. Finally on the following day they manage to call me. I don’t know what took them so long but fine.

I head out to Scarborough. I drive past the address they gave me. I didn’t see BenQ. Did I miss it? I turn around and very carefully creep up to the address on the piece of paper that I’m staring at just to be sure. Hey! No sign says BenQ but it has to be right.

I pull in following the signs that say customer service. They lead me around the back of the building like some secret gang hangout or something.

I go inside and speak to a woman that takes down my reference number. When you come to a secret gang hangout like this you need to have good references.

As she goes to the computer to punch whatever keys she needs to push I notice that the shelves are lined with all kinds of defective BenQ merchandise. Everything from CD Burners to Monitors to you name it. If BenQ makes it, and it broke the way they knew it would, it was there.

I took home my monitor in a box that proudly said “Refurbished” on the side in big purple official BenQ letters. Embarrassing.

I’d like to wrap things up by saying a big thank you to BenQ. Thank you for the lousy monitor. Thank you for giving me someone else’s used monitor when I gave you money for a new one and thank you for telling me that you have some third party servicing your monitors in Toronto. It made it really easy to find the building.

My advice is this. If you’re in the market for a monitor, save your money a little longer and opt for a better brand.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Just so the search engines can pick up this phrase, BenQ Sucks.

Before I get on this rant I should, and will be the first to, admit that I was late. I didn’t make it on time. I know. That’s not the point.

So I got a job interview. I wasn’t prepared and I needed to get my portfolio together. After a full day of getting all my files together I realize “Crap! I don’t have a portfolio case to hold all this stuff.” Run down to Grand & Toy.

“Do you sell portfolio cases?”

“No. Sorry, we have to special order them.”

Okay. That was a bust but my interview is tomorrow. “What am I going to do?”

At that point I remember about the Loomis Art Store near Yonge and Eglinton. Thankfully I’m right on the subway so it’s an easy trip down to Eglinton. In fact, it’s only three stations away.

Jet down to the subway. Smack the token into the stall and run to catch the train that just pulled in. “No problem.” I think. “I should make it down there with time to spare.”

At that moment the sound that all TTC commuters have learned to fear comes on. It begins with a crackle of the antiquated speaker system.

“Attentichhhh all passengeerschhh on the chhhh Bloor chhh line. There is a chhh ….. chhh. TTC employees are chhhh. We’re sorry chhhhh chhhhh delay.”

Okay. This shouldn’t take long. I don’t really know what’s wrong but this type of thing happens. It’s only three stations after all. Now only two. It should still be fine. Yeah… 40 minutes of staring at the inside of an underground tunnel later, I get off at at Eglinton station.

Maybe I can still make it. I rush over to the Loomis which is about a block and a half from the intersection. I get there. Lights are on. “Phew… I might be in luck.” I reach for the door only to be met with firm resistance. “Is it closed?” I look for the sign. Open till 7:00. I quickly pull the cell phone out of my pocket. 7:03.

I look inside and see that the employees are serving someone at the counter. They see me and quickly turn their eyes away. I wait hoping to ask them to let me in.

Finally someone comes to let the customer out of the locked door.

“Excuse me. I was wondering if I could just buy one thing quickly.” The last few words of that sentence being cut off by the shrew in front of me.

She looks up at me and throws me a well practised phoney smile. “No. I’m sorry that was the last customer.” At that moment I look over her shoulder and see that there is another customer walking through the isles.

I think that I can appeal to her humanity. I begin my plea: “I just need to get one thing quickly. I have a job interview tomorrow and…” She cuts me off again with the same line.

Thought bubble: “What the f%$*k? Is this cow even listening to me?” End bubble. I decided that she was not and walked away.

Once again, I admit I was late. Fine. Three minutes late. But where are people’s humanity? This person could have let me in. It wouldn’t have changed her life much at all. I knew exactly what I wanted. She would have closed the store 5 minutes later and made some money. And I could have gone to my interview. A situation which for some people can mean the difference between paying the rent or eating. But no. Closing the store was more important than showing a little human empathy.

Truthfully, I am not going to be on the street if I don’t get the job and my interview was not till 2 o’clock the next day. I got up early and went down to Curry’s the next day. They have a few locations in Toronto. I went to the location on Yonge near College. They had what I needed and the employees were very polite. The best part was not having to give my money to Loomis.

I suppose that if I had to end this article with a question it would be this. Why have people become so bent on doing everything by the book? Are three minutes really that important?

If people are becoming sheep, then employees truly are little more than trained monkeys. That is the point of this blog. I guess that they could at least train their monkeys in proper customer service. Maybe one day they’ll figure that out like they have in other countries. But it’s up to you as a customer to vote with your wallet. It’s really the only power you have as a consumer.

Thanks for reading and please send us your experiences.

Rogers is a Canadian company that provides television and cell phone service in Canada. Because of the liberal Canadian laws and the stiff capitalist competition allowed, they are one of only two companies in Toronto to offer television service and one of the four that offer cell phone service. No wait. Rogers now owns Fido so they can stand on the podium of three. Wow! Talk about consumer choice.

Where to begin with Rogers? Over the past few years they have done more to irritate me as a consumer than any other company I’ve been forced to deal with. Should I start with their shoddy internet service which is guaranteed (not in writing) to go down at least once a month? Or maybe their wireless phone service and their inability to register my address change after sending out a bill to my new address and then cancelling my service? Or how about their cable tv offerings of “digital” channels which are for the most part analog?

No. That would take a month to write about. Instead, let’s talk about the Rogers store at Yonge and Sheppard.

I just moved into a condo near Yonge and Sheppard in Toronto. The “maintenance” fees include basic cable service. So, I thought I’d go down to the Rogers store and ask about getting some of those digital channels they’re always talking about. I walk into the store:

Three people in succession speak to me.

Them: “Hello.”
Me: “Hi.”
Them: “Hello.”
Me: “Hi.”
Them: “Hello.”
Me: “Hi.”

Okay. So everyone behind the counter says hello. Strange. Usually they’re just rude. This is a change…

I should at this point mention that I have a backpack on. I proceed to make my way to the service counter where they deal with the cable services and inquiries. The counter is maybe 4.5 meters (15 feet) from the front barrage of hellos.

Just as I turn away from my last “Hi”:

Them: “Ummm… I’m sorry but… Can I ask you to leave your bag at the counter?”
Me: “I’m just going over there to talk to them. I promise not to steal anything.”

I point to the counter within plain view of the front desk.

Them: “I know but it’s a policy.” (Delivered with a contrived smile which pretty much turned my stomach at this point.)

Perhaps I should explain my incense. This location just opened up a few weeks ago. It’s not like they have had a long history of people stealing chocolate bars. Everything else has a magnetic strip inside the case after all so I can’t really see the great economic harm they fear.

No, this is just a company deciding that even though I’m there to offer them my hard earned money, I’m a criminal above all else. I can’t even feign racial discrimination as I’m not a minority. But my wife is so maybe they thought she’d be doing the stealing and shoving it into my standard issue shoplifter backpack.

I can’t figure out any excuse for them other than stupid policy decisions carried out by trained monkeys. Chimps who can’t connect the fact that the money I was there to offer to their company goes straight to their minimum wage paycheques. But I guess me leaving my bag behind the counter is more important than running their business.

I wouldn’t have minded so much really, but leaving my bag there would have meant taking out my personal belongings, wallet and phone and so on, and then carrying them around for no reason.

To finish my story:

Me: “No! I don’t want to leave you my bag.”

I then proceeded to vote with my wallet and walk out of the store muttering some kind of profanity. The previously “Hello” shrieking chimps huffing offensively at my behaviour. (Yes. I was in a bit of a bad mood as well.)

What happened to customer service? What happened to human intelligence and personal freedoms? When did people become such sheep? How is it okay for a corporation to request your personal property or not offer you service?