Telus - The Present is Indeed Hostile

I stole the title for this post from this recently set-up blog, which plans to accumulate stories of Telus' incompetence / poor customer service (hat tip to Azerbic).

From 'the Present is Hostile',

"So, in the coming days and weeks, I will make multiple posts of my experience with Telus from early April, 2005 to early June, 2005 and show you how blatantly disrespectful the Telus company is to it's customers. After reading my story, I guarantee that you, yourself, will not want to venture down this Telus "road to hell". You will know why I now advise you to stay away from Telus at all costs!!! And yes, you do have a choice to do so. I am now a customer with another local phone provider and DSL provider in British Columbia."

If nothing else, I figure I need to post something just to explain that the anonymous author of this blog is not *me*. After all, readers may recall my fairly recent rant against Telus (buried in this post), but the truth is, I can't hold a grudge to save my life so, despite my troubles with Telus, I was just going to let the anti-Telus blog pass without comment, figuring that my posted rant and move to Shaw for internet was enough punishment for Telus, at least on my behalf anyway.

But that was before I saw my last bill. Not only was I charged a late fee for being late with payment on my last bill (my payment was only late because I had been disputing the bill which they eventually fixed so as not to charge us for internet service for the week and a half we had no such service), but they added on a ~$60 charge for labour for them to come out and fix their own problem (which turned out to be a wire outside which had blown) which had caused all the service outage and hassle in the first place. This after explicitly telling us numerous times that we would only be charged for the service call if it turned out that the problem was our fault somehow (like our phone was busted or something like that).

I ended my last rant debating switching away from Telus for local phone service as well to be totally free of them, noting that,"it probably won't be long before Telus provokes me into switching." I guess at least one my recent predictions was accurate! At this point, I'm happy to do whatever I can to hurt Telus, including promoting, "The Present is Hostile" For all I know, it could be an astro-turf operation set up by Shaw or Sprint, but I have to say, it's certainly not the least bit implausible that it's just another unhappy Telus (former) customer looking for somewhere to vent.

Jetsgo Premium

Update (Mar 11, 2005): This post has been made redundant by yesterday's announcement that Jetsgo is going bankrupt, effectively immediately. What a shocker.

Warning: Self-Indulgent Complaining Ahead - read at your own peril (of wasting time)

Adversity can happen to any company, and more specifically, bad weather can happen to any airline. What sets companies/airlines apart is their ability to manage these situations. Now, if you'd asked me a couple of days ago about how I rated Air Canada or Westjet on dealing with bad weather / delays, I probably would have rated them about average, with reasonably high marks for minimizing the length of the delay and somewhat lower marks for their communication and attitude during the situation (especially Air Canada).

But after my experience¹ yesterday with Jetsgo, and keeping in mind that it's all relative, I would now have to re-classify Air Canada and Westjet as Avatars of Adaptability, the Royalty of Resourcefulness, and Caliphs of Communication.

Now, it would be unrealistic for me to claim that I'm never booking with Jestgo again, since I'm not a rich man, and if the price difference was big enough, I'd take my chances. What I will say, is that from now on, I will apply a $200 premium (return) to any Jetsgo flights ($125 one way). That is how much they'll have to beat Westjet/Air Canada's price before I'll fly with them, and I recommend to anyone reading this, that if they have a choice between similarly priced Jetsgo and competitor flights, don't pick Jetsgo.

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¹ My flight was originally scheduled to leave at 2:30 but was delayed 5 hours for the weather (which is fair enough - they even gave us $7 vouchers to buy a meal with). A few hours later it was cancelled, the only flight out of Vancouver that day which was cancelled. No explanation was offerred and in fact it took over 2 hours for me to get any information at all (after being told to wait for an announcement which was never made, having to line up in the general check-in line to ask a question only to be told I needed to line up in the comfort plus line to ask a question, and waiting an hour in that line to be told that there were no seats left on any flights that day and being booked on a flight this morning, leaving at 8:55 (since delayed to 2:15)). At no time did anyone from Jetsgo give me the impression that were particularly sorry about the delay/cancellation or volunteer any information whatsoever. It even took over half an hour for them to get the luggage back out, mainly because there was a jam which nobody noticed until people asked what was up with the luggage taking so long. I guess we'll see how things go today, they've still got two flights (there and back) left to try and repair the damage they've done so far.


Update: Well, my flight on the 24th ended up leaving after 5 and arriving just after midnight on Christmas morning. Somebody must have said something because everyone at Jestgo seemed to be trying a lot harder today and we were offerred $100 discounts of our next (we'll see about that) Jetsgo flight. Still, it was strange that they seemed so apologetic about the flight being delayed from 9am to 5pm, but still didn't have anything to say about the people who were supposed to leave the day before but were strung along for hours before being sent home.

The flight back was (thankfully) pretty uneventful (only 1/2 hour late). Given that my $100 discount isn't the same as real cash, I'm only going to reduce my premium by $75. So my next flight will be Jestgo if it's $50 cheaper one way or $125 cheaper return. After that trip (if it happens), I'll reevaluate.