This is a TL;DR version of a post I put up on Monday- you can read the whole article here:
In 2009 my autistic brother moved from Vancouver to Toronto to come live with me, after our mother passed away in the summer. Part of my responsibility for him, was to get him set up on his own and independent- which included a monthly budget he could stick to.
On March 9th, I set up a Wind Mobile account for my brother- this was the best option for him because:
- It’s the cheapest mobile option out there.
- They have unlimited plans, so I don’t need to worry about him generating massive over-usage charges each month (i.e.- stick to his budget).
My brother saved up the extra $50 he has each month (he’s on ODSP), for 5 months to be able to afford the plan and half the cost of the phone (on a Windtab).
It took a little while to figure out (mostly because he’s autistic- troubleshooting is not high on his list of skills) that the phone was dropping calls when he was at his house (even outside his house, where he got full bars). So March 15th I phoned into Wind support for the first time.
After 9 calls to Wind support over the course of a month, where I experienced repeated hang-ups and delays for them to respond to me, they finally admitted to me that the area was not well covered, and that the problem was their network, and they have plans of putting in more cell towers “at some point in the future, but could be years”. Every agent I spoke to before this last one, insisted that the area was well covered, and that the dropped calls must be something else, that they insisted they could fix.
My brother needs a phone now- he can’t wait “years” for them to upgrade their network- so I asked to be transferred to somebody to cancel the account.
Unfortunately, because the Wind Mobile support process took more than 14 days to come to a conclusion (even thought I followed THEIR rules- THEIR support process), my brother no longer had the option of returning the phone, but was forced into paying out the remaining balance for the phone- another $250; money that he does NOT have; and if he didn’t pay out the balance, they would refuse to cancel the account- so monthly fees for a service that does not work.
If they had told us day 1 that the area was not well covered- we wouldn’t have signed up; but instead, they repeatedly lied about the coverage, insisting that the issues were something else. I can only assume that this was on purpose.
Wind Mobile needs to take responsibility for their failed support process, and their agents who are misinforming the public. But instead of this, they’ve offered my brother $100 credit if he comes back as a customer- a credit for a service that does not work.
So far, over 80,000 people have read my main article, over 10,000 in Canada alone- not to mention people on reddit, facebook, and twitter- with thousands of people commenting and asking Wind to do the right thing.
Interesting update! Having had experienced the gradual degradation of WIND customer service firsthand over the years, I appreciate you staying on their case.
I’m surprised they could only offer 100 dollars credit after all this news. Sounds like something is a little broken on their end.
Keep the pressure on!
In my case, my girlfriend(student) was promised that she could pause her WIND mobile service by the staff at Queen & Spadina when she leaves Canada for extended periods on exchange.
When she called WIND up, they told her that she was misinformed. She had to pay-off the WindTAB and also a fee for switching to the Pay-As-You-Go plan as a strategy for keeping her number. (Which sounded very very unusual) The representative was extremely rude, and unsympathetic.
In another story, my neighbors were promised they could move their landline number to WIND. It took them several months of angry calls to make progress.
My own experiences were with the early-just-set-up-WIND. Phenominal happy customer service that made me happy all the time. They even discounted me some credit when it took them longer to port my number from Rogers Pay-As-You-Go.
My advice to others is, study third-party resources on coverage maps, and also ignore anything you are told by the staff in the WIND locations in favour of studying the contract.