Large Fierce Mammal

I have personally been a user of Eastlink telephone, internet, and cable TV service since way back in the last century. My security business has used their telephone service just as long. As far as their quality of service goes, once you actually have it, I have no more complaints than I ever had when I used the competition – formerly MT&T, now called Aliant. The quality of Eastlink’s record keeping though, most particularly as it applies to orders for service and billing, has been on and off my shit list for years. Now they’re back on it.

Before I get into the current issue, I’ll give you an infuriating example from the past.

Back on the evening of Friday, 5 December 2003 I attempted to check for any voice mail that may have come in on my primary business line only to find that I couldn’t log on. I soon learned that the reason for this was that my service had been suspended, and anyone calling my business would receive a recorded message from Eastlink stating that the number they had dialed had been, “… temporarily disconnected.”

It took over two hours of arguments to discover that the line had been shut down between 15:00 and 16:00 hours that day, for reasons that nobody I spoke to could explain or identify, and I was told that to get to the bottom of it I would have to speak with someone in management who, by that point, would not be available until Monday.

I am a calm and assertive man, which establishes a very important baseline for the moment when it becomes necessary to slay the messenger. The bearer of bad news I was talking to at the moment I lost patience experienced me with teeth bared, and in the full flower of my profane eloquence.

Apparently Monday came early for the supervisory level Eastlink representative who called me back a few minutes later. Faced with my compelling argument, he deemed it prudent on his part to turn my service back on while I got to the bottom of what was clearly a major Eastlink inspired clusterfuck.

When the morning of Monday, 8 December 2003 rolled around, my call to the Eastlink Business Solutions head office was beaten to the punch by a call from a woman named Pauline, who worked in collections out of the Eastlink office in Blockhouse, Nova Scotia. Pauline was looking for over $800.00 in long distance fees that, while it wasn’t crystal clear from her “records”, appeared to be associated with an 800 number.

Let’s pause here for an educational moment. For those of you who have never had one, an 800 number permits callers, who live outside the local calling area of a specific location, to call it free of charge with whoever gets billed for the 800 number paying the freight. That means every call made to the 800 number that comes from an exchange where long distance charges would apply will be charged to the company or person who “owns” the 800 number. The larger the volume of calls, the bigger the bill.

While it was true that I had once had the 800 number Pauline was telling me about, there were three little problems: -

1. I had ordered disconnection of that service in February 2002;
2. The charges she was telling me about had been incurred after that date; and
3. Eastlink had executed my service orders when I relocated my business address in September 2003, without complaint of any kind, something that according to Eastlink is impossible if there are any unpaid fees. Since, by that point, the 800 service would have been unpaid for well over a year and a half, one must conclude that their “records” indicated no problems with my business account at the time.

And here’s another news flash – the 800 charges were still accumulating because the 800 number involved was still in service when I spoke to Pauline on 8 December 2003!

I informed Pauline that I would not be responsible for long distance charges that had been incurred after February 2002 on the grounds that the service had been cancelled, and she admitted her “records” showed a disconnection, but that the date of the disconnect order was in October 2002. She was at a loss (I was coming to expect that from Eastlink) to explain why the service was still in effect, why there was an 8 month discrepancy between the actual date of my order and the date her system claimed it was received, nor could she explain why the billing system insisted fees were owing on a discontinued service. I told her it was obvious she lacked authority to handle my problem, that I was taking the matter to a higher level, and she agreed that was best.

This brings me to my experience dealing with a Business Sales representative named Mary-Susan, and Jeff who was her boss carrying the title of Sales Manager. My first communication with Mary-Susan was on the telephone shortly after I spoke with Pauline on 8 December 2003. I explained what had been going on and she promised to review my “records” of service and billing, a process she said would take her “some time”.

So you can imagine my delight when two days later, on 10 December 2003, I received a voice mail from Pauline telling me that my business service was scheduled for disconnection on 17 December 2003 if, “… this matter isn’t resolved.”

By the time I received Pauline’s message, I had done a bit of digging myself and was a bit better informed as to the depths of incompetence that was Eastlink. That same day, I sent a blistering e-mail to Mary-Susan, part of which is quoted below:

This morning I am in receipt of a voice mail from Pauline in which she informs me that my business lines are due for disconnection on 17 December 2003 if this matter isn’t “resolved”. I am left wondering, what happened to you? Is this the end result of the “some time” you told me you were going to need?

A few points:

• As previously stated, the 800 number continues to work.
• The November 2003 Aliant telephone directory, employing data provided by Eastlink, shows a toll free listing for my business of that same 800 number, and a personal listing for my residence of 640-XXXX! A toll free number that was cancelled in February 2002 and a residence number that was cancelled in October 2002.
• In numerous telephone conversations with Eastlink personnel, I have encountered records showing me to have service located at 83 York Street and 58 Cumberland Street while both are ancient history.
• In my explanation to you yesterday of my being told by Eastlink staff that my main business number (a Lunenburg area number) couldn’t be forwarded to another Lunenburg number as it was for a year in Halifax because the local (Lunenburg) switch couldn’t provide that service, you told me this was incorrect because there was “only one switch”.
• The (Eastlink) telephone number I had in Halifax was programmed to show “R. WHYNACHT” on the recipient’s phone, but not to display the phone number. When I requested the same on my new Lunenburg number, I was informed that this was not only impossible on the Lunenburg switch, but wasn’t possible on any telephone network anywhere. And yet, we had it in Halifax, and have photographic evidence of the fact.
• I have been informed by both you and Pauline that I have never been billed the $5.00 per month for my virtual line. You have also informed me as of yesterday that the $5.00 per month virtual line fee quoted to me both in October 2002 and September 2003 is incorrect; that it should be $25.00 per month because I (allegedly) don’t have any other business services with Eastlink, and that the people I spoke to (over a year apart) “… mustn’t have known that.”

So, when you tell me that you Mary-Susan, Pauline, and your business manager have gone into a huddle and agreed unanimously that I owe in excess of $800.00 for fictitious long distance fees, what I hear you actually saying is, “I realize you’ve cancelled the 800 line several times and that it’s both still working and that you’re still getting billed for it, that we provided that number to Aliant for inclusion in the current directory from our own erroneous records thus guaranteeing you a problem when it finally IS disconnected, that we have quoted you a service fee that’s one fifth of what we were supposed to quote you because we didn’t know the full extent of the services you have with us even though our representatives asked you for your telephone number so they could have all your records open in front of them when they spoke to you about it, that we provided Aliant with a residence number for you that you called us to have disconnected and replaced with another one over a year ago, that our own technical people don’t know how our equipment works, and we have no idea where you live, but TRUST US when we say what you owe because our record keeping is FLAWLESS !”

All of this resulted in my demanding a meeting with Mary-Susan and her boss Jeff. On New Years Eve 2003, I received an e-mail from Mary-Susan confirming that they would be happy to meet with me, and concluding with, “I will ask Pauline to postpone the disconnect to a later date.” Well, thank you VERY fucking much!

The meeting was held at 13:00 hours on Wednesday, 7 January 2004 at the Eastlink Young Tower business administration office in Halifax. In attendance were Mrs. LFM and me, Mary-Susan and her boss Jeff. It all started badly when it became obvious that the stack of Eastlink long distance bills Jeff smugly and ceremoniously plopped on the table in front of us was supposed to mean something. I don’t remember much about Jeff other than that he struck me as an unjustifiably cocky, rude little bastard who clearly thought he was holding all the cards.

I cut him some slack because he had just as obviously inititially missed the point that I, on the other hand, was  attending the meeting in my capacity as a justifiably cocky, much more rude, much larger bastard who actually was holding all the cards. In the end, even someone with his head as firmly lodged up his own ass as Jeff, found it hard to successfully argue that it’s possible to legitimately collect money from someone for a service they cancelled nearly two years before, and twice more since then when they repeatedly found it was still in service.

By the end of that meeting, Eastlink had wisely dropped their claim to the erroneous charges and went away, leaving my telephone service to sail along unmolested. That is, until the last week of January 2011.

I returned to my office to find a voice mail message from Eastlink business accounts receivable wanting a call back to discuss my account. When I returned their call on Monday, 31 January 2011, I learned that my business telephone service was scheduled for disconnection the very next day at noon due to an unpaid bill of $247.13 associated with a “watch, surf, and talk bundle” dating from 2007.

Welcome to the latest meeting of the Here We Fucking Go Again Club.

First of all, in 2007 I changed the civic address for my business telephone service from the Lunenburg area to the Bridgewater area. Eastlink accepted my orders and implemented them without complaint, something that even the person I spoke to that Monday agreed would not have happened if I had been dragging any arrears behind me. In addition to persistently doing business with head firmly lodged up ass, that’s the other thing that’s consistent about Eastlink.

Secondly, my business has never, in its history, had Eastlink internet or cable TV service. It has had nothing but telephone service all the way since first retaining them over 10 years ago.

In the course of a rather long conversation, I learned that the mailing address for billing of this latest bullshit amount is a post office box I haven’t had for three years, and in typical Eastlink fashion, the AR person I talked to couldn’t explain why she had my correct mailing address on file – I get Eastlink mailings delivered to my correct postal address – while bills for a nearly three and a half year old arrears amount I’ve previously never heard of, but that is so vital it puts my service in jeopardy, get shot into the void.

In her mutterings as she tried to semi-audibly interpret the tangled mess on her computer screen, she disclosed that a lot of the information included service addresses that haven’t applied to me for over seven years.

She told me she was surprised their collection agency hadn’t been calling me. I told her that if their records showed a three and a half year old bill still outstanding, so was I, although if they got my telephone number from Eastlink, Christ knows who they’d be calling.

In the end, it was clear, as usual, that this needed to go higher up the food chain. I will not pay a bill for service my business never had, and some cube farmer with a permanent headset dimple in their face isn’t going to have whatever passes in Eastlink for the mojo to stick that $247.13 up the ass of whatever administrative hack passes for Jeff these days.

The sweet confused thing magnanimously agreed to hold off on that disconnection until “the end of the week” so I could investigate and “resolve this”. Sound familiar?

Well, I referred the matter to Mrs. LFM in her capacity of Keeper of the Sacred Records and She Who Knows All. Not surprisingly, the truth soon came out – Eastlink is full of shit. Again.

I realize this is convoluted because disentangling criminal stupidity always is, so I’m going to pause for another moment to solidify the situation as I saw it as of Thursday, 3 February 2011, when I called Eastlink accounts receivable to confront them with the fruits of our labours. My purpose was twofold:

1. To prevent an interruption of my business telephone service; and
2. To explore why I now had people acting like I was a deadbeat over a piddling amount that has no legitimate reason to exist.

As usual, things started off on the wrong foot. Because I had been called about a threat to my business account, by a person who gave me every indication she worked for Eastlink business accounts receivable and carried sufficient clout to disconnect my service, I naturally called back to the number they had provided. When I gave my main business telephone number and my reason for calling, the woman on the other end abruptly told me she would have to put me through to another accounts receivable department because it was residence services I needed to talk to. Typical.

After a period on hold I found myself talking to a woman who pretended to know more about my situation than I did, and predictably talked to me as though I was somehow to blame for all the confusion. I brought her back to reality as I knew it and insisted we go from there.

She ended up assuring me that my business service was not in jeopardy at all, and that the $247.13 had been transferred to my residence service account.

She said, “You are aware that the amount was transferred to your residence account.”

I told her I was aware of no such thing aside from having been told I owed that amount from a bill dating back to 2007.

She told me I had a letter from somebody named Susan that explained it to me. I told her no, I had received no such letter. She asked me to wait while she read my file yet again. After more time on hold she came back on the line and told me the letter had only “gone out” on 1 February 2011 so I probably wouldn’t have received it yet. We parted agreeing that I should wait for that letter. Believe me, I couldn’t wait.

The letter finally arrived on Thursday, 10 February 2011, and while it was dated 1 February 2011, the postmark on the envelope showed it hadn’t been mailed until 7 February 2011. Oh yes – it wasn’t from anybody named Susan either. It was from a guy named Justin Muise who bears the lofty title of Manager, Accounts Receivable & Collections, and can’t be bothered to actually sign his correspondence.

The contents appear below with some edits for the safety of people who may not respect my privacy to the degree I deem necessary:

Dear Mr. Whynacht:

This serves to confirm that our records indicate an account in your name owing a balance of $247.13.

Service address: 291 Corkum’s Island Road, Corkum’s Island, N. S.
Account #XXXXXXXXXXXXX689
Balance: $247.13

The balance of $247.13 will be transferred to your active account #XXXXXXXXXXXXX317 at _____________ Road, ______________ to avoid sending to a collection agency.

Yours truly,

Justin Muise
Manager, Accounts Receivable & Collections
Customer Payment and Credit Services

Let’s take that a line at a time, shall we?

Confirming your historically faulty records “indicate” anything at all means bugger all to me because I have more than reasonable grounds to believe that they are full of shit. I have not lived on Corkum’s Island since 2007 and have never heard of this bill before January 2011.

Best of all, I find myself disinclined to be grateful that good old Justin magnanimously transferred the amount to my active account to “… avoid sending to a collection agency”. It’s nearly three and a half years old sonny boy. What’s your fucking hurry? Besides the fact that the amount in question is unadulterated bullshit, the fact that Justin works for an outfit that will shut down services on bills that are 15 minutes past their due date makes all of this even harder to swallow.

So no Justin, I’m not going to swallow it, but in all sincerity, neither should you. My personal usage is worth $3000.00 a year to Eastlink, so I would strongly suggest instead of sending it down your gullet you grab your ankles instead.

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