Fido.ca is providing an unacceptable user experience.

I am so glad that you had the same problem. There are some serious issues and I really see no need for paper invoices for something like this in this day and age.

The thing that really gets me, is that they just did a bunch of website changes and all of the changes are geared toward selling more products and have nothing to do with providing a better experience for their customers.

hello! If you use firefox you can see your fido bills. Safari and internet explorer don't work with their stupid bill viewer.

I have a number of gripes with Fido.

1. Their bill viewer does not work in Safari.


2. I tried to cancel a service from my account, and it took three tried before it actually happened. (To their credit though, they reimbursed me)


3. Their login widget moves the caret automatically from one input field to the next, so my pressing the tab button moves the caret focus too far. I want to tab along myself.


4. They overcharge for roaming in the U.S.


5. They don't have an option to turn off the PIN code when I call my voicemail.


6. They voicemail doesn't have any navigation options (FF, REW, back, next)


7. I could keep on naming things that bug me...

Luckily, I no longer have to use Fido as I've moved from Canada.

when my husband and i have received our notice in our e mail saying our invoice is now available for viewing and it will offer to download it and even copy it. when we try to access our invoice to look at our usage for the month we are not able to see.... not able to even accesses it. only that it is not available at this time try later... only thing we see is what our balance owing is.
before we added online billing to our e mail we would always get our invoice in the mail up to 2 weeks late or not at all every month. but they still expected us to pay our bill. we then would get an warning notice in the mail. we would then phone fido asking why we received this notice when we have not received a first bill yet. they say that we are late for payment and that the invoice shows that it was sent out on it's regular cycle that it is sent out the same day every month, well how do we pay when we can't even see or received our bill to see what we owe.

of coarse they say they are not responsible for mail not received or late coming and we are still expected to pay our bill every month regardless of not receiving bill in the mail.

we are at the wits end with this company that is for sure.
when we can we are going to pay out our contract that will be sooner then later and disconnect,...... go with another company. maybe telus......?

Juan n Leah - As I, and other people, have already stated, if you install and run Firefox internet browser on your system, then you can view your bill summary. It is not a bad user experience if you can't install the most common internet browser on your computer - it is incompetence on your behalf.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

I would have to disagree, seb. Using mac osx 10.5.4 (and all of the previous versions of leopard), I have still not been able to view my bill with firefox. Well, I should say that it is hit and miss, as sometimes it will magically appear.

The incompetence is not on Juan and Leah's part, it is fido. Their 'bill viewer' is a PDF viewer, a file type that almost all computers now a days have a way of viewing. Not to mention, it should not be up to the user to adjust their system to get information from the internet. I could see that if they needed to use some sort of proprietary file type due to security reason, they needed to make the users adjust their systems, but it is a pdf.

Furthermore, it is close, but ff still is not the most common internet browser.

2008 - August
IE7 - 26.0%
IE6 - 24.5%
IE5 - 0.1%
Fx - 43.7%
Moz - 0.5%
S - 2.6%
O - 2.1%

* Taken from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/bro...

They are providing a service to a wide audience of members, and thus, they should do so properly.

Ok, you're debating semantics now. Everytime I have tried to open it in Firefox, it has worked. I just tried it on 10.5.4 AND on 10.4.11 and it works on both.

What I am really trying to say here, though, is that it is silly to switch to Telus or Bell because you can't figure out how to open your bill.

I hate to rain on Canada, but our telecommunications providers are all equally terrible. Things don't just get easier by switching over to another company. These services are what you make them. If you keep getting a notice that your bill isn't getting payed on time, then maybe you should just ask them to send the bills in the mail again, or try a different browser ATLEAST. It is such a simple and fixable problem, that to actually terminate your contract and switch over to a company that has equally horrible customer service is just going to make more work for yourself.

I would have to agree that mobile providers are unsatisfactory. I also agree that it is probably a bit drastic to pay out ones bill due to a bad online bill viewer. Personally, that wasn't my point, though.

What really gets me, is that right before the launch of the iPhone they did a bunch of changes to the site. I am sure that this issue would have been reported on the last version of the site, but rather than addressing it, almost all of the changes that were made were to improve their e-commerce side of the side. The client services seems to have stayed the same, thus, they are worried about the number of new users that they get, but not to concerned about the ones that they have.

Me too... I was never able to view my statements online. What's worse is that when I called Fido to explain the situation and to request statements in the mail (for the months that it was not available to view online) I was told that they are unable to send them to people who are signed up online and that I would have to cancel my account online before they could do so???? WTF? Something is wrong. They obviously don't give a hoot about the environment.

I've given up on using the Fido site for billing. It will work for a few months, and then something goes wrong and it becomes unusable. Also, when I moved and changed my phone number, my online account was inaccessible, and when I got back on, my whole billing history had disappeared. So I couldn't even track my usage and figure out if I was on the best plan.

I have a Fido prepaid for two weeks and I am already thinking of reselling it....What a dreadful service!! They are a bunch of thieves!

buy another pc or go the next coffee web place and even better as like me wait the mail baby!

Hello everyone,

What is really getting me is that I cannot access my online album anymore because apparently the website has run into some technical difficulties that are baffling the technicians.

It appears their latest upgrade has caused the system to go into crashing mode which means all the normal fixing 'tricks' don't and won't work anymore. Or at least for the time being.

So insanely frustrating!!

I haven't been able to even access my account in at least a month. I think I have seen two designs as well. I'm completely confused and frustrated. Talk about bad user experience.

Yeah it's definitely getting worse. The good news is that you can have them text you your bill right to your phone. If you call 611, and follow the instructions it will tell you how

I am having the same problem too, my husband and I have been with Fido for about 3 yrs on and off. We have been trying to VIEW OUR bill online. We kept getting the same message that you got everytime! I gave up on online billing viewer a long time ago, as much as I do NOT want to waste paper myself, but, their online account service REALLY SUCKS!

Fido re-branded! New web updates! Yay?

You would think with all of these aesthetic changes, continually trying to re-position the brand to a different market, somewhere along the line they would make some changes to improve the current 'member' experience.

I would like to go and get my bill online, so I go to the newly branded site. To my surprise, I can't log in.

"Register for fido.ca" it says?

"But I'm already registered, I have been using fido.ca for years...!@!?"

So I go for it, not having a lot of time, re-register for fido.ca. The final step is completing a survey. At the time, I didn't want to do that, so I just quit and figured I would do it later.

Today, I try to go back and log in. I put in my phone number and password, press enter, and:
"Sorry, but your credentials are invalid."

"Argh."

I guess my registration didn't go through... I go back to register for fido.ca. Put in my phone number, press continue,
"This phone number has already been registered on fido.ca. Please enter the login name registered with this number."

"Argh... Maybe I changed my password and forgot the new one..."

I try the forgot password. I enter my email into the form and press 'send password'

Nothing. They still haven't sent me anything.

Frustrating indeed.

Now I have to talk to their 'customer service representative' which is a completely different and equally as confusing ordeal.

Hi,

The reason we are all going through this is because, when the website was rebuilt, to everyone's surprise, it was unable to read any of the previous info, thus everything has to be reset.

Yes we're going insane because of this but.........the technicians and call centre people are going even more insane because they don't understand why this happened, thus they are having the worst time trying to explain what's going on.

What I was informed of today by an extremely knowledgeable and patient call centre person was, try everything you do at the website once a week for awhile, to see if things start to work properly again. If not call the 1 888 number and tell them, as they need to know from us what is and isn't working.

They are trying to fix things asap even though it doesn't feel like it. It's just that they're dealing with a far bigger mess than was anticipated.

Anyway........that's my two cents worth.

I am extremely frustrated with the same problem!

Same thing here. I can't download my bill for over 6 weeks. I have to call them and ask for a paper bill. They don't have a clue at the support center. I left Fido a few years ago and came back but they have not changed at all. Really really worst customer service, it took 10 minutes to rep to change my new address...

I couldn't view my invoice for the longest time on fido.ca... I could at first, but then it stopped working (a long time before the website/logo overhaul), maybe July 2007. I gave up and now am using Canada Post's http://www.epost.ca/ to view Fido bills. It's great! It even stores it for the required 7 years, I think. The problem is, you can't see old Fido bills you missed already. But starting with your next bill, you can access it from the epost site, or from within your online banking and pay it easily!!

Each time my contract is about to expire, I compare prices for all the networks and end up with Fido: can't beat the per-second billing! Fido's been fine for me, which I suppose is because I didn't have any huge problems to resolve with customer service...

After some initial problems with the new Portal implementation, it seems things have gone slowly back to normal. I can now access all my bills online, even on a Mac! Thanks Fido.

In my case, it still does not work and I cannot log in or see my bill. At the log-in, I am told my phone number is invalid. When I try re-registering, I am told my phone number (same number, entered exactly the same way) is already registered... All I can do is get the amount I owe over the phone, which is not good enough! I will definitely switch to another provider, once my contract is up. This is too much, and there is not excuse whatsoever for this mess and the total disregard by Fido for their customers.

Inge Jordan (none of the faces below apply to me. I am FURIOUS>

It ain't working for me, and I'm frustrated as hell. I've been a fido customer for almost 3 years now and am sick and tired of BS. I've got a Mac and an iPhone and I think we deserve the right to view our accounts on the browser of our choice and think this is really poor business practice. So, taking the proactive approach, i'm setting up a facebook group to gather critical momentum and force Fido to change its ways, or face the consequences. Please take a minute to sign up and tell your friends that are in the same situation. Enough is enough!! Here's the info... pass it along!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/edit.p.../group.php?gid=59711557825&ref=mf

(and if that doesn't work just log in and search 'force fido to support firefox & safari'
power to the people!

I am brand new user to cell phones and to 'Fido '(the price was right... $0 and free txt. msg. My choice of servers seems to be a bad choice!!!).You only get what you pay for eh! I can't even get signed up for on-line billing. I tried the first time and received 4 txt.msg. from Fido giving different temporary passwords. Plus I found 8 old text messages from2008/! prior to me even getting this phone,and it was supposei to be brand new. I've just passed the "Exchange" time of 14 days.Must get on line billing before April 5th/09 or I pay $2.00 a month for paper bill! I'm sick of this.I have better things to do with my time than delete messages from

The updating did not solve it; I still get the usual: "Sorry! Your request cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later.", which is what I get about 95 times out of a hundred, since I became a customer almost a year ago.

stressfull and unable to open the fido.ca/billing. please solve this problem or stop it.

This problem is NOT solved.
I can log in to my online billing but have *never* been able to view my activity details or download/print the data - so how do I know how much of my account I'm actually using?
I've got an iPhone, an iMac with OS X 10.4 and an iBook Pro with OS X 5 - I get the same error message with all of them, regardless of using Safari, Firefox or even IE for Mac.
I spent over an hour on the phone last night with Fido tech "support" who seemed put out that I had a problem. Among their suggestions were: get a Windows machine (!), give my password (!) to a friend with a Windows machine and have them email me the invoice (!), and just put up with paying the extra $2 for paper-based billing. For the 1st half hour this person seemed unaware of this problem and then when she asked a colleague, found that it has been a known problem for 2 years! She maintained it was MY problem - apparently she wasn't aware of Martin G's statement above that this is THEIR problem. I refuse to follow any of her suggestions - Fido has a responsibility to either fix this problem with their billing, or make an exception to the $2 penalty they are imposing on Mac users, or at the LEAST warn their MAC customers that they cannot use online billing (haven't they realized that a lot of iPhone users will also happen to be Mac users, and that this number is growing?).
I'm astonished that this situation has continued for so long and that they seem to not care whatsoever. BTW, my session with tech support occurred after receiving yet another email announcing the "new" site design, which appeared to be merely cosmetic changes.
I used to prefer Fido because of their per-minute billing. Now I'm going to join that Facebook site and I'm going to tell everyone I know to avoid Fido like the plague.

I have the same problem for... since they started the website. My OS is XP for my nb, and vista for my desktop.
I've tried both firefox and internet explorer(newest), nothing works. I've enabled 3rd party cookies but it also doesn't work. The company DID NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

This is a HUGE inconvenience to Fido customers, I am thinking about switching to different phone companies now, so long Fido.