TELUS Mobility Pay as you Go

Yesterday I found myself on payday once again, and ready to "top-up" my Pay as you Go phone from TELUS Mobility. Seems pretty normal.

I am more than happy with the cell phone that I use, (LG's 5450), nice camera, solid feel, good sound quality, all around good phone. I have been happy with the service that TM provides; that is until yesterday.

I did the usual calling up the account management number like I always do, and got the whole, 'We're changing things on you to milk you for more cash' message that comes up every couple of months, then went into the IVR prompts. I chose the account balance option, and was told that I had $23 and change, and that my balance expired that day. Naturally not wanting to lose my good rate, and carry over money by letting it expire, I went back to add more. First I was told that it could not go through. I checked my bank account, and my credit card balance, as expected all good there, so I tried again. This time I was told that my transaction was being processed, and to check back later in the day to ensure it went through OK. All was good again... Or so I thought.

Later that morning, as I got off from work I went to get breakfast before running my payday errands, when I decided to do as instructed by the IVR, (the only female voice I truly hate), and check my balance. Much to my dismay, it told me I had $0. Now I hated that lifeless voice even more. I figure that it may just be an error, and went for breakfast at Smitty's, to give the system time to recover from the glitch. Well, as I'm sure you have surmised, it didn't.

At this point I was getting quite frustrated, and called up to speak to an actual person this time. I got a woman that seemed to be completely devoid of any ability to care for anything. Not a good start. I advised her of my situation, leaving gaps in the story, in order to allow her to pop into the conversation. Only after the whole spiel, did she advise me that they are having a problem with the billing system, (only for the low-profit-margin pay as you go people of course), and that troubles of this nature can take a long time, possibly 24-48 hours.

This wouldn't be a problem, IF I was able to use my phone during the billing outage, and just running off of my existing balance. But no, I have to be without my cell phone for two or more days, with the possibility of never getting the carried over balance back. I mean I work for TELUS, and know that we are not the most understanding of companies, but I do remain hopeful.

If it doesn't work out, I'm most certainly switching cellular companies. And to think I was going to upgrade to the LG-535 yesterday too. Oh well, that's $400 that they more than likely won't be getting from me.

P.S. I just got a bunch of new toys, like MS Streets and Trips GPS, a bunch of new internal PC, and laptop components, and more. I'll be reviewing them once I have a chance to play with them some more. I tried the GPS on the way into work tonight, and it works pretty darn well so far, but I'll get into more detail later.

Until next time,

T.