{"id":2446,"date":"2012-02-10T16:33:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rf.podcastfixit.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/10\/bell-bills-customers-in-full-despite\/"},"modified":"2015-06-01T19:42:06","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:42:06","slug":"bell-bills-customers-in-full-despite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newscoverage.org\/index.php\/2012\/02\/10\/bell-bills-customers-in-full-despite\/","title":{"rendered":"Bell bills customers in full, despite four-day outage"},"content":{"rendered":"
No proactive reduction to West Islanders\u2019 monthly charge<\/i><\/div>\n

\n<\/b><\/div>\n
By Robert Frank<\/b><\/div>\n
www.thesuburban.com<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
Thousands of West Island home and business-telephone users were billed the<\/div>\n
full amount for their Bell Canada landlines last month, despite a massive outage that deprived them of service for four days.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
Some 2,500 customers were reportedly cut off Dec. 16-19, after flooding affected Bell facilities. Together, this represents tens of thousands of dollars of telephone service that they were billed for which they did not receive.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
A Bell customer service representative stated that the company is aware of the problem and will credit the accounts of West Island clients \u201con the honour system\u201d if they phone and ask to be reimbursed.<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThis is a forborne area,\u201d said Patricia Vallado, a spokesperson for Canada\u2019s telephone<\/div>\n
regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission. \u201cWe do not get involved in unregulated terms of service. Customers have to take their complaints to the<\/div>\n
Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (www.ccts-cprst.ca).\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
CCTS commissioner Howard Maker confirmed in a telephone interview that \u201cmost local phone service in Canada now is unregulated. It is governed by contract.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\u201cBell\u2019s terms of service might not require them to be proactive in compensating their clients for lost service. It\u2019s their business decision about how they would like to treat their customers.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
Mr. Maker added that \u201cwhere a service provider has been unable to deliver because of a technical problem, it is rarely disputed. We always tell them to credit customers for the period when they could not get through, through no fault of their own, and I\u2019m not aware of any provider that would not do that.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
Bell Canada has remained opaque about the cause of the outage and has not as yet disclosed what West Island telephone switching locations were affected, the number of clients affected and what measures have been implemented to prevent a recurrence.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No proactive reduction to West Islanders\u2019 monthly charge By Robert Frank www.thesuburban.com Thousands of West Island home and business-telephone users were billed the full amount for their Bell Canada landlines last month, despite a massive outage that deprived them of service for four days. Some 2,500 customers were reportedly cut off Dec. 16-19, after flooding affected Bell facilities. Together, this represents tens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBell bills customers in full, despite four-day outage - Newscoverage<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/newscoverage.org\/index.php\/2012\/02\/10\/bell-bills-customers-in-full-despite\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bell bills customers in full, despite four-day outage - Newscoverage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No proactive reduction to West Islanders\u2019 monthly charge By Robert Frank www.thesuburban.com Thousands of West Island home and business-telephone users were billed the full amount for their Bell Canada landlines last month, despite a massive outage that deprived them of service for four days. 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