Fido's customer service mistakes cost me time, money and faith.

Since Fido merged with Rogers, their customer care people have made so many mistakes that I can't be sure from one month to the next what my charges will be or what's going on with my account. In the last year, I've had to repeat my calls to Fido to make sure they're getting it right. I shouldn't have to call up a customer care person, go through the run-around with them, and then say "okay, I'm gonna call back to get a second opinion." But I've had to talk to up to four different people and gotten four different answers about the same issue.

I think that Rogers is trying to get Fido customers to switch to Rogers, so they can kill Fido. That's the only explanation I can think of.

I've been with Fido from 2003 - 2008, average $100/month.

My bills have often been contradictory to the information they've given me. There have been two occasions where my bills have been at least $200 more than they should have been, and in both cases I had to talk with multiple Fido representatives, who gave me different explanations of the cause, and different solutions.

For example, I was told that I would need a $5/month feature that would allow me to talk outside my calling area, so that roaming charges wouldn't get applied to my account. After about a year and a half of this, I was told by another representative that it wasn't necessary, and they were kind enough to credit me $60 to compensate. That brought my account back into order, but I received another call the next day with a different story. The $60 was in fact never credited or recorded on the account, and Fido cut my service because I was past due on my bill (which I thought was resolved the day before).

To their credit, Fido offered to reduce my monthly bills by $10 each for a year. I quit my service with them after four months of this, but I verified that they were indeed doing this. They also paid one of my bills which was $92.

I've been told by one Fido representative that recording my conversations with them violates their terms of service, and by another that it's illegal. But I wish I'd been recording the whole ordeal. It would make my life quite a bit simpler. I feel so exploited and frustrated, it would be nice to have something concrete to back up my claims.

This month, I got a phone call from a cheerful Fido rep saying he was going to send me a new phone, which was an upgrade to the one I already had. I was ecstatic, because my Nokia 6300b had died of water damage and the software had always been really backward compared to the awesome hardware.

The rep made mistakes with my postal code that caused the package to be delayed, and it was only while I was trying to investigate this with another Fido rep that I learned why I was getting the new phone: because of the 3-year agreement I'd just signed up to. I said: what three-year agreement? So Fido signed me up without my consent and without notifying me, and only another of their own mistakes kept me from being legally locked into a three-year term with them.

Before Fido's merger with Rogers, I always had great service and reliable information. I had no problems with them. I switched to Fido after having a nasty time with Telus, but my experience with Fido in the last few years has been far worse.