Here is my story about Tangerine Telco.
It is a long story, but I assure you it is a gift that keeps on giving. Money amounts have been rounded for convenience.
As our Tangerine plan discount ended, our monthly plan jumped to $85. I called before the month ended to say we were switching to another telco with a discount offer. To keep us, they offered a 250/25 plan for $75/month (normally $105) if we upgraded to FTTP, which was too good to pass up. Unfortunately, this was the start of the biggest pain in the ass I have ever experienced from an ISP.
The fiber was installed and a few days passed and we still weren’t getting the upgraded speed. I first thought that maybe it would switch automatically when the billing cycle ended, but it didn’t. The next day I spent over an hour on the phone to support. Turns out that they activated the new plan without ending the old plan, and both plans were active at the same time.
After customer support switched us to the new plan, we still had our old speed. Cue the tech support saga that was filled with great classic hits such as “You aren't using the right CAT cable” (I guess our cable conveniently maxes out at the speed of our old plan), and then “It must be your router”. Anyway, it started working for absolutely no reason at all on my end which I guess was just that something hadn't actually been done properly on their side, or because of a delay in the activation, but I digress.
A month later, the bill arrived, charging us $85 instead of the promised $75…
Plus, an extra $14.48 for an overlap period where both plans were active.
Cue another call to support. I explained what happened and the guy said he will have to get approval to fix it. He comes back and offers an arbitrary discount of like $7. Throughout my continued explanation of how much I was overcharged, he went to get approval like 3 or 4 times and each time, came back with a nonsense reason why he can't do it. He tries to conclude the discussion by saying he can't remove the charges because it says on our system that we started using the service on the date it shows. However, makes a final offer to make our bill $81.
If you are currently thinking 'well, that's only $5 more than what you should be charged, you should just cop it', then you are on the wrong website, bucko. I signed up for $75, im paying $75.
I asked what the extra $5 was for, and he said it was a calculation based on the price difference of our old plan and our new plan for the pro-rata period that we started the new plan.
That might not seem off, but let me break down what they did:
We paid a month in advance and our last month was at $85. However, we switched plans before that period finished.
Our new plan with no discount is $105.
$105 is more than $85, so they took $105 and worked out that for the days the new plan was activated before the billing cycle ended, we would be charged the difference in the plan costs.
Our new plan is supposed to be $75 for the month.
I told him that if he wants to consider the pro-rata period, our old plan was $85 a month, which is less per day than the $75 that our new plan is supposed to be. I did the calculations to the guy on the phone of the price difference per day, stating that if there are any pro-rata adjustments happening, then money should be coming off our bill.
The silence was so long, I felt like I had been put on hold with no music.
He says he has to go and check again with his manager or whoever and comes back and again, says sorry they can't do that. I said I would gladly pay $75 and to forget about the pro-rata discount I had just learned we were owed. He refused. I told him to make a note on my file that I will not be paying the bill until it is corrected and to call me back when it was.
They call me a lot. The first few times I did my best to explain the whole story, ending by saying that I am not going to pay anything more than what our plan was supposed to cost. Every time they called, I asked them if they had any notes about the case or about why I was not paying and they never did. So, I just told them to call back when they fix my bill.
About a month ago it was transferred to their debt collection department, who apparently have even less information about why I haven't paid my bill. Today I received a 'generous' offer of removing the $20 late fee and $5 failed debit fees they had charged me.
Overall, it’s been almost 3 months since I was overcharged by Tangerine. How many more calls do I need to take before I can sue them for harassment?
Maybe I am just unknowingly really bad at math and Tangerine were giving me a really good deal with that $5 charge.
If not, go and poo-poo yourself Tangerine.
Similar issue with dodo where their call centre is trash. Just escalate and say you would only talk to the senior manager