{"id":961,"date":"2006-06-01T22:09:23","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T06:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=961"},"modified":"2006-06-01T22:09:23","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T06:09:23","slug":"refilling-my-prepaid-fido-accountnot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/refilling-my-prepaid-fido-accountnot\/","title":{"rendered":"Refilling my prepaid fido account…not!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m fond of saying that I’m the last consultant in the world without a cell phone. \u00a0 While that is true for business, my partner and I have one that we use for personal purposes. \u00a0 And because we use it so infrequently (mostly for emergencies or urban logistics when we’re in the big city) we have it hooked on to a prepaid plan from fido<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now fido offers you a couple of ways to handle prepayment. \u00a0 You can either buy vouchers or use a credit card. \u00a0 A credit card is preferable for us. \u00a0 So because we are running low on our initial minutes, we called the handy prepayment number to refill our prepaid account <\/a>…or not.<\/p>\n

This evening we have been stuck in voice mail jail trying to register to have our fido mobile phone account refilled by Visa. \u00a0 It has taken quite a while and we still haven’t gotten any help. \u00a0 Here’s what happens:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Dial 611 (or *46 or any of the other numbers fido says to call…they all take you to the same robot. \u00a0 She says her name is “Andrea.” \u00a0 Nice.)<\/li>\n
  2. Follow the robot’s directions patiently to register for instant prepayment, so that we can use our credit card to refill. \u00a0 Optionally don’t be patient and just say “representative” into the phone. \u00a0 It will take you to the same place anyway.<\/li>\n
  3. One of two things will happen. \u00a0 You might get an English speaking representative who will tell you politely that he can’t do this manually, and that you have to speak to the robot about it. \u00a0 If this happens, the robot takes you through the same logic chain that delivers you into the lap of an English speaking representative, who will breezily deny that this reality even happened. \u00a0 We had several very nice young people speak with us this evening, and we think we actually even witnessed a shift change down at the old call centre.<\/li>\n
  4. Once in a while Andrea will not<\/em> direct you to a friendly but useless English speaking representative, but instead will forward you to another robot who, in French, politely informs you that the French customer service office is now closed and will reopen at 8am. \u00a0 She then terminates the call, leaving you flummoxed and with no recourse but to blog the whole experience.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So that’s it. \u00a0 If anyone can help us figure out how to get credit card refilling authorized and then done, that would be nice. \u00a0 If you fido guys are reading this, give us a call, but don’t mince your words, we only have two precious minutes remaining in our account!. \u00a0 Your robot has the number. \u00a0 Her name is Andrea.
    \nIn the meantime I guess we’re thinking about switching to Telus or something. The bottom line for fido: crap customer services trumps friendly robots. \u00a0 The French twist on the whole thing was pretty funny though, so the evening’s entertainment was not a total loss.<\/p>\n

    [tags]fido, bad+customer+service, voice+mail, cell+phone, help![\/tags]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m fond of saying that I’m the last consultant in the world without a cell phone. \u00a0 While that is true for business, my partner and I have one that we use for personal purposes. \u00a0 And because we use it so infrequently (mostly for emergencies or urban logistics when we’re in the big city) we have it hooked on to a prepaid plan from fido. Now fido offers you a couple of ways to handle prepayment. \u00a0 You can either buy vouchers or use a credit card. \u00a0 A credit card is preferable for us. \u00a0 So because we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-fv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}