Primus keeps letting me down

I am willing to take part of the blame for one of these 'issues' but the inability of Primus Canada to keep its act together and continuously provide superior/excellent/adequate customer service continues to astound me.

For previous unfortunate episodes, scroll through the archives.

Two incidents have come about in the past few months. The first happened when I called one day to inquire about replacing my (then) current high speed modem after being at a friend's house earlier that afternoon. I noticed the he was able to get between 1,000 and 2,000 kb/s download speeds from Rogers and I could only get 400-600 at the best of times. Even my dad could get close the the 1,000 mark with his Sympatico/Bell service.

As my modem was failing to maintain a constant connection, I deemed it defective and pleaded my case to a technician on the phone. To Primus' credit, I spoke with a Canadian in Canada which was so nice compared to previous efforts to talk to 'customer service' agents over in India back two years ago. The technician agreed the dropping connections did merit sending me a new modem, so he arranged for one to come my way. When I asked him about my transfer speeds compared to Rogers' (I knew that there was no way DSL could match, but surely something should have changed in DSL land since I first got DSL through Primus/Magma back in 1997) he put me on hold to look into things. Sure enough, my 1997 vintage 'package' no longer existed and I could be 'upgraded' to something newer. This new package would more or less cost the same... and when I asked what improvement I might get in speed, I was told nothing would change.

While technology has drastically changed since 1997, it seems that DSL service has not. Nice.

Content to being able to look forward to not losing connections on a random basis, I closed off the phone call, satisfied I had pretty much accomplished my goal. Soon enough the new modem arrived and I swapped it out for the old one. I put the old one in the box Primus provided for me to send it back to them (for what purpose, I to this day do not understand as it was close to ten years old) and put the box aside.

Weeks turned into a couple months or three. This is where I claim responsibility for my actions and will concede that I was a bad boy and did not send the modem back in the postage-paid box. One would think that a customer service oriented company specializing in communications would take a moment to auto-fire off an e-mail gently reminding me to put the box in the mail. Failing that, one would also expect that a 'dear deadbeat' phone call would be made, escalating the 'gentle reminder' process somewhat.

Nope.

Much to my surprise, I got a monthly bill including my regular usage costs and a hundred dollars for the non-reliable technological relic that would soon find its way to a recycler (or more likely, a garbage dump... I mean landfill site) PLUS TAXES of course. Irritated that Primus never bothered to send an e-mail or make a phone call and opted to go straight to the 'deadbeat charge' really got my goat.

Hoping there was still an ounce of customer service common sense at Primus I immediately drove to the local Primus office where Magma Communications once provided the best customer service I have ever seen from an internet provider company in the past (at a premium cost I was always happy to pay) over on Antares Drive. I was annoyed instantly when the nice receptionist(s) I met over the years had been replaced by a phone and a piece of paper indicating that some time in the last year or so, the receptionist position had been terminated and that incoming individuals had to call an extension number to reach someone.

If memory serves, I did not reach someone in Ottawa (surprise!) and had to be transferred. When I spoke to someone who could 'help' me, I was told that this was a corporate office only and they would only speak to business account holders. There was no office a residential customer could visit in person. Trying to keep calm I suggested in no uncertain terms that customers paying for service from Primus should all be able to get help from Primus staff in Primus buildings. After being put on hold for a good chunk of time, someone finally agreed to come downstairs to meet me.

I pled my case and after some time convinced the nice lad to take the modem off my hands. I was told, however, that the modem would not be deemed 'in the hands of Primus' until it would be manually shipped to an appropriate Primus building and manually signed for by a Primus staff in that said building. That person would then have to alert the accounts people, and... well you can figure out the rest. I was very annoyed by now because I had zero interest in paying in excess of $100 for something deemed missing that was no longer 'missing'. Doomed to having to put my fate in the hands of this gent, I meekly left and hoped for the best.

Some two months later and after I called looking for an update I was informed my account would be credited with the fee I had paid as the modem had in fact been documented as being back in Primus hands. Praise the lord!!! I thought that was the end of it.

Boy, am I stupid!

This morning I looked at my e-mail and found one from Primus indicating my new monthly bill was available for viewing. I am out of town and can only read it from my tiny Blackberry screen, but I wanted to see if my negative balance days were a thing of the past. To my surprise (!?) the bill was for way over a hundred dollars again. I called customer service straight away and got a female from Canada (at least they're consistent in THIS regard - they claim to have Canada only phone customer service since my 2008 complaints were made) who said she would look at my bill and break down the charges.

She told me there was a non-return fee for that modem...........................

I was in a meeting room so I stepped up my tone of voice while maintaining a respectful volume and threatened to terminate my service once and for all (as I did for the phone service some time ago) at which point she chimed in with an assertion that I had not given her a chance to speak.

This is where I get confused. Again.

She had just told me that the bill included a non-return fee... then after I mildly blew up (nicely) informed me that my bill was actually around two dollars and not the $100+ I had seen a few moments earlier and not the amount she had quoted me including that fee. Bizarre. On an aside, after pleading with Primus ages ago to just reverse the charges upon receiving the modem and being told that was not possible, I had received an e-mail some time later apologizing, stating it could and should have been done.

Pleased that my 'problem' had been rectified by this nice female representative, I went upon my business through the rest of the day and returned to my hotel room to check the facts one more time. I logged onto Primus e-care and checked my account's current status... that web page told me my balance was actually $15 and change. Which is it... $100+, $2 or $15 and change? Do I believe the e-bill, the customer service rep or the web site?!

I guess I will have to wait and see what they eventually process when they yank the bucks out of my bank account.

And I guess I will at some point this summer downgrade to the cheapest dial-up account I can get to preserve my 14 year old e-mail address for a while and get the faster Rogers service which is 4+ times faster and about 20% cheaper... and be rid of Primus once and for all.

Some way to run a business.