YAY! So I’ve been getting lots of mystery calls from 18776222662 for the past couple weeks, to my great annoyance, that hang on DEAD AIR or go “beep beep beep” when I answer, indicating that my call has failed. A quick GOOGLE of 18776222662 revealed many other people with the same problem, with some people waiting out the 10 or 15 seconds of dead air to finally be connected with FIDO PROMOTIONAL SERVICES.
All I will say is that Fido needs to get new telemarketing technology, because dead air, failed calls, and incessant calling will not buy them any new customers.
SO, I decided to call 611 from my Fido (free of charge), and speak to somebody about this. It is important, whenever you call Fido, to not fall into the trap of pressing “0″ right off the bat. You go to the end of the queue, and it will take you bloody forever to get to a customer service representative, a.k.a. Real Live Person. You must instead jump through the hoops (account information >> all other inquires >> “0″ for customer service) to get a shorter wait time on hold. This is totally scientific and reproducible too – Steve and I once had a competition: I called customer service from a store kiosk, and the lady pressed “0″ right away, whereas Steve jumped through the hoops. His line picked up a good 5 minutes or more before my line. AND NOT TO MENTION THE many many times I have called customer service otherwise…definitely a shorter wait time if you don’t press “0″ right away.
Long story short, it takes Fido 30 days to take me off their promotional list, but after that…NO MORE MYSTERY CALLS!!! (not sure if they’ll count your minutes on these calls, but if you happen to be out of town when they call you, you can be DAMMED SURE that they’ll charge you PLENTY for ROAMING CHARGES!!!)
Related story – put yourself on Canada’s newly introduced (September 30, 2008) National Do Not Call List, which can be found at http://crtc.gc.ca. Very useful.
