Bell Mobility Pays People in the Philippines to Harass Past Due Subscribers
Canadian telephone/Internet Service Providers are very profitable and are regulated by the government. There have a comfy, quasi-monopoly. Apparently, though, there is neither legal nor moral barriers to offshoring Canadian jobs.
If you are a Bell Mobility subscriber and are a bit tardy with your payment, you are setting yourself for a daily harassing call. I tend to be a bit last minute and have been subjected to the daily call pressure.
Ring, ring. “Hello.”
“Mr. Paul, …” I could tell by the syntax and the almost comical error (Mr. Paul, instead of Mr. Fromm) that the caller who woke me up was not a native speaker of English or even a very successful graduate of ESL.
I let it go the first few times, but finally asked: “Where are you calling from?”
Three days in a row, I was told by different harassers: “I’m in the Philippines.”
With my arms full, I was careening out of a local mall heading to my car through the bitter February cold.
Ring, ring. A sing songy voice chirped: “Mr. Paul, it’s Angel?”
“Angel,” I thought to myself. Sounds like some stripper or body rub joint denizen. Am I being solicited by some weird dating service?
“What do you want, Angel?” I demanded.
She was calling from Bell Mobility, she told me. I told her that I’d talked five days in a row to other of her associates and had explained that, when the bill arrived in the mail, I would hasten off to the bank and pay it immediately. Do they not communicate with each other? I don’t need reminding. If they checked my long association with Bell Mobility, they could see that I always pay my bill.
“Where are you calling from?” I demanded.
“The Philippines.”
So, scuzzy Bell Mobility, an offspring of Ma Bell, an iconic Canadian company, is too cheap to pay Canadian workers to harass late payers?
I was outraged. So, I decided to complain. Now, that’s not easy. Dial 611. You get a dog’s breakfast menu: “Press 1 to pay your account; press 2 for technical services, etc.” Finally, I did get a human being.
It turned out to be Brad — no one in business ever seems to have a last name — and he was in New Brunswick.
“I want to complain about being harassed on several occasions by people from the Philippines. You are a major Canadian company given a licence to make money. You should hire Canadians. You make your money from Canadians; you should keep your employment Canadian.”
Well, Brad has received the old anti-racist (code word for anti-White) brain scrub. “We don’t discriminate on the basis of race,” he announced snottily. (Where do they find these “customer service” types?)
“I wasn’t talking about race. I’d be just as upset if the calls were coming from Iceland,” I said. “You should be employing Canadians. Can I talk to a supervisor?”
“No,” I was told. “No one can discuss whom we employ with you.”
A few hours later, I tried another tack. I finally got a human being and asked for the shareholders’ department. “What are are they?” asked Low Watt Wendy.
Exasperated, I said, “the people who own shares in Bell Canada.”
She couldn’t help me, she said.
I’m not giving up and intend to pursue this. If you want to help, send your opinions to the following e-mail address.
Fill out the form and let them know what you think of their off-shoring Canadian jobs. http://support.bell.ca/
It’s time to start making some noise.
And a Saskatchewan lawyer had similar bad news: “ Telus also moved its call centre to the Philippines,” he told me. That’s mighty patriotic of them, I thought.
“They wouldn’t have gotten away with that if they’d continued to be owned by the Alberta and and BC governments and had been not privatized,” he explained. “Sask Tel and all Saskatchewan utilities are government owned. So, they can’t outsource.”
Paul Fromm
Director
CANADA FIRST IMMIGRATION REFORM COMMITTEE