Unsatisfactory Customer Service during a number port.

[cwspen]

I have been so happy with my FPL account that I recently switched both my parents to this service. I have also been responsible for another 4 customers. So I am generally happy with the service.

My mothers number port went quite well. The number she was keeping was transferred sometime around 9 AM. I called around 11 AM to ask why it wasn't working yet and was told that it should be active by noon. It wasn't, but it was working by 2 PM.

Yesterday was the porting day for my father. This did NOT go smoothly at all.

Around 9 AM calling the old number resulted in an error of "This account number is not valid" or something to that effect. I didn't bother calling, figuring that it would be active later that day. Not an issue, no one is home, everyone's at work.

At 4 PM it was still not working so I called to ask what the story was. The person I was speaking with put me on hold for approximately 5 minutes. When they returned they said they had contacted the porting department, and the port should be complete within 30-60 minutes. I said thank you and hung up.

At 6 PM it was STILL not working. I called again. I was again put on hold while they looked into it. When she came back on the line she said "it should be complete any minute." Again, I said thank you and hung up.

At 8:30 PM it was STILL not working. I called again. When I called I was informed I was caller number 5. After a while it was number 4. After a little while longer I was number 3. Then I got a message saying that the office closed at 9 PM and was disconnected. I had been on hold for 30 minutes, and then I was dropped.

Today I woke up hoping that the issue would have been resolved through the night. It was not.

I waited and waited hoping that it would be completed soon. It was not. Finally at noon I called again. The agent I spoke with said that he could see my two calls from the previous day (my third was never answered so it wouldn't show). He then said that the previous agents had never contacted the porting department. He put me on old to (presumably) contact the porting department. He then said that it should be complete within the hour. It wasn't. But it was finally completed at 1:30 PM.

There are a few issues that are real sticking points for me.

1) It should NOT take almost 30 hours for the porting to be completed. That's a long time to be unable to receive phone calls.
2) None of the CSR's promises were ever lived up to for either porting. I was told my mom's would be done by noon, it was 14:15 before it was complete. I was repeatedly told "30-60 minutes", "1-2 hours", and "within the hour" for my father's port. NONE of these were accurate.
3) Either the two CSR's I spoke with yesterday lied to me and did not contact the porting department when they said they did, or the CSR I dealt with today was somehow mistaken.
4) After I spoke to the final CSR this morning I asked to speak to a supervisor. He explained that he was busy, but would call me back on my mobile number (which I proceeded to give him). This was three hours ago. Still no return call.

I understand there's a bit of "you get what you pay for" in this whole deal, but I still think the above is just ridiculous. It's especially surprising since it is in stark contrast to my previous experience with this company.

Unfortunately there really is no recourse. There's no waiving of future fees or bills, since there are none. I guess that will have to be the silver lining I take away from all this.

[bridonca]

I gotta ask you to give Freephoneline a bit of slack. If you knew the hoops these newer carriers have to go through to deal with porting from the likes of Bell and Telus, you would understand how lucky you only had to wait 30 hours. Freephoneline does not slag these telcos publicly for obvious reasons, but I make no bones about it. I had to wait 2 months to get a number ported with another VOIP provider from Bell. The only reason you only had to wait 2 days, is because the CRTC mandated it lately. They should have mandated 2 hours.

The CSR's really do not have any good way to find out when anything will be ported. Most port take a short amount of time, but that is not a guarantee. It is unacceptable, but it is nothing Freephonline.ca can do about it. They should have called you back, but if they were in a busy period, one can only do so much. A phone call to you saying your number will be ported whenever is not a call I would put high on the priority list. It does not make you any less frustrated of course.

Do I see anything changing? No. Not unless the telcos are actually penalized for dragging their feet. You cannot even take your business elsewhere, because you will run into the same problems. I sadly know that from experience.

[FONGO_steve]

Hi cwspen,
I have passed a copy of your full post along to our senior management in our customer service department.

The service you received from us is completely unacceptable. We will make sure that the agents in question here are spoken to and reprimanded accordingly. Unfortunately there was sickness that struck our porting department at the beginning of this week which may have delayed some requests coming into that department longer than usual. We will ensure that what fell apart here is looked into so preventative measures can be put in place.

If you don't mind, could you send me a PM with the phone number you called us from and approximate times of the calls? This will help us track down the call logs on our end to identify who answered them.

[cwspen]

I just want to be clear that my chief complaint isn't the length of time the port took, but the "don't worry, everything is fine" answers I got from the CSR agents. If I had been told "Sorry sir, we're short staffed due to illness, it may take up to 48 hours" or something along those lines I would have been upset at the delay, but understanding. To be repeatedly told "1 hour" "30 minutes" "within an hour" etc. is the unacceptable part.

Thank you Steve for your reply, it was exactly the kind of professional response I've come to expect from FPL as a company.

As mentioned I've been very happy with the service overall, and my mother's port went very smoothly.

[user451]

I gotta ask you to give Freephoneline a bit of slack. If you knew the hoops these newer carriers have to go through to deal with porting from the likes of Bell and Telus, you would understand how lucky you only had to wait 30 hours. Freephoneline does not slag these telcos publicly for obvious reasons, but I make no bones about it. I had to wait 2 months to get a number ported with another VOIP provider from Bell. The only reason you only had to wait 2 days, is because the CRTC mandated it lately. They should have mandated 2 hours.

The CSR's really do not have any good way to find out when anything will be ported. Most port take a short amount of time, but that is not a guarantee. It is unacceptable, but it is nothing Freephonline.ca can do about it. They should have called you back, but if they were in a busy period, one can only do so much. A phone call to you saying your number will be ported whenever is not a call I would put high on the priority list. It does not make you any less frustrated of course.

Do I see anything changing? No. Not unless the telcos are actually penalized for dragging their feet. You cannot even take your business elsewhere, because you will run into the same problems. I sadly know that from experience.

Given the phone was no longer ringing through my guess is the number had already been ported over to FPL and that the "account not active" message was from FPL, because the account/number on the FPL end had not yet been setup.

When my port was done bell moved the number over in the morning and the same message was heard until late afternoon. The temp FPL number was still working until they got around to assigning and verifying my ported number to my account in the afternoon.

As I understand it Telcos are now mandated by the CRTC to port within 2 days of the request. How long it actually takes to make a request is a different question.

Cheers