How Canada Does Business Redux
Dear God. In the years abroad, in England and France, I had forgotten how truly horrid the Canadian Internet/Phone/Cel Phone etc companies are. The trio of Bell, Telus, and Rogers control literally everything, with apparently no regulation, and consequently laugh their way to the bank at the expense of every single Canadian.
Once the deal closed on our new home in Duncan it was time to order Internet service. In France that took about ten minutes. In Canada it has consumed hours over the last three weeks.
Because I prefer to shop local, and more importantly, avoid large, evil corporations, I decided to sign on with a BC outfit called hey babbi. They're small, friendly, super easy to deal with and felt like a great choice.
The problem is that the little Internet providers don't have networks, they resell Bell, Telus, or in this case Rogers service. (Your small cel networks do the same thing.) What that meant was that hey babbi got the cable modem package to me in a day or so, and the whole account set up equally fast, but when we next set foot on our new home there was no Internet. We could log onto the WIFI, but everything stopped dead right there.
A walk around the side of the house told me why: when Telus installed the fibre-optic cables, they obviously chopped off the Rogers' cable lines.
So the nice hey babbi cable modem inside the house was connected to a cable outlet that went nowhere.
A visit by Rogers technician would be needed, and that was impossible until a week later. I arrived as requested at 8 am. It was after noon when I texted hey babbi to say that no-one had showed up. And that I wanted to cancel the contract and instead give up and call Telus. hey babbi was angry at Rogers, but handled the cancellation and refund with ease. I actually would really recommend them.
10 am the next day I got a phone call from a Rogers tech, saying he had arrived at the house, but no-one was there.
A few days later I arrived just before 9 am, and the Telus tech arrived soon after. He was polite, friendly, informative and after an hour I had working Internet. Hurrah!
Today, two days later, we arrived at the house and - you guessed it - no Internet. Despite the fact that it had been working fine on Friday, I was told that the reason was that the service was "pending." After an hour on the phone I was assured that it would be working "in a day or two."
As it happened, it was more like a couple of hours, but it is still the case that this all was far more difficult than is reasonable, far more hassle, and of course far more expensive than would be the case in other countries.
Having battled the Internet into submission, I took on the next task: getting working cel phone service. When we arrived back from England I signed on with Chatr, mostly because they were slightly cheaper. Chatr is actually just Rogers with a supposedly cheaper price, just as Koodo is actually Telus with a bargain label. Bell has something similar.
What I've discovered is that Chatr has pretty poor cel coverage (I assume Rogers is the same) so for the last couple of weeks of pet-sitting I've had no phone service if I was at the home where we're staying.
Finally today I took the plunge and set up an eSIM on my phone and signed it up with Telus. (Susan's Koodo has a signal here, my Chatr cel didn't.) I now have a Chatr Sim in one slot, a UK SIM in slot two (deactivated at the moment) , and a Telus eSIM. In theory I can easily switch my Chatr phone number over to the new Telus SIM, except that Telus demands that I do that using their Telus app.
The problem now is twofold:
I somehow now have three different Telus apps on my phone.
But can't log into any of them, or to the on-line web site. All of them are locked out because of too many failed attempts to log in using an absolutely correct email address and password.
And oh yes - I'm now enrolled at Vancouver Island University in their Creative Writing program. Because I'm a student I can get a nice discount from Telus on the cel package. Except that for some inexplicable reason Telus insists that my VIU email address isn't eligible...
