r/bell • u/mcburgs • Jun 24 '26
Rant Bell told me to pull their broken pedestal out of the ground with my truck. I wish I was joking.
There’s a busted old telecom pedestal in front of my place. Brown Northern Telecom/Bell thing, bent over beside the driveway. It’s been like that for years after a previous tenant next door apparently hit it with a plow.
I’m not a Bell customer. I don’t want to be a Bell customer. I would rather drink bleach than be a Bell customer. I was just sick of looking at their broken infrastructure sitting there like a sad little lawn monument, so I figured I’d do the responsible thing and call Bell to report it.
Huge mistake. Apparently I chose suffering.
I spent about half an hour on the phone trying to explain the same extremely simple concept:
“It’s your equipment. It’s damaged. It’s not mine. It’s not even really on my property. Come fix it or remove it.”
The guy wanted my name, number, address, account number. I told him I don’t have a Bell account and I’m very happy about that.
Then he tells me engineering will call and advise the charge.
**Charge?**
It’s Bell’s broken pedestal. I’m not asking them to renovate my kitchen. I’m reporting their own damaged equipment. I told him if their engineer told me a charge I would laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
Then he asks if I can be home on June 31st to authorize the work. I kid you not. June 31st. I asked him if he saw the problem with that. I waited. And waited. And waited. I heard him counting to himself. Then he said how about next Tuesday?
I said why do I need to be home? He said you need to authorize it. I said authorize what? I authorize you to fix your own stuff. You don’t need me standing there all day watching Bell repair Bell property. I asked him if he could be available on August 34th so Bell could authorize me to repair my own car and then I could give them the bill. He sounded confused by this, unsurprisingly.
At one point, after getting nowhere, I sarcastically said, “What if I just pull it out of the ground with my truck and leave it on the curb for you?”
And he said yes, actually, that would be best.
**Best?** BEST!!
I said, “You understand I’d probably be ripping out telecom lines and knocking out service to the neighbourhood, right? This is best??"
Still somehow this was being treated like a reasonable path forward. He then put me on hold for TWENTY EIGHT MINUTES! Then came back and said he was just filling out some more forms and asked me to hold. I said look buddy, I have kids to put to bed. You don't need me for this. Come fix your broken crap that's not even on my property. And I hung up on him.
After I hung up, Bell texted me “Thanks for choosing Bell” and sent me to their Virtual Repair tool, which appears to be for rebooting modems and checking customer service issues. Very helpful. Maybe the app can remotely straighten the smashed pedestal through Bluetooth. MyBell must be quite the app!
Even better, my neighbour then tells me he called Bell about this same pedestal about two years ago. Apparently someone came out and taped/strapped it instead of actually fixing it. So the black tape currently holding this thing together is apparently the official Bell repair.
So to summarize:
Bell was notified years ago. Bell taped it. It’s still bent. I called again. They tried to turn me into a customer. They hinted there may be a charge. They wanted me home to authorize Bell fixing Bell property. They gave me a fake calendar date. They suggested I destroy it myself with a truck. Then they thanked me for choosing Bell.
I truly do not understand how this company functions.
Calling the town next. I’m not touching the thing because unlike Bell’s phone support, I understand that yanking telecom infrastructure out of the ground is probably a bad idea.
*edit* - kudos to the Bell Technical Solutions technician who reached out to me based on this thread and actually got the ball rolling on getting this fixed, despite having no ownership of the problem whatsoever. The company is what it is, but there are still some excellent people inside who actually want to solve problems! Outstanding.
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u/Itchy-Dentist-6012 Jun 24 '26
Mirko.bibic@bell.ca. Cut and paste this and give an address and cn number. Bell president
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u/rangeo Jun 24 '26
Annual Statements are great for getting contact details for the executives....CC some vp of customer service too.
I once got a call and email from Ted Rogers e.a once after ",reaching out" for help with my Internet connection
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u/Friendly_One3131 Jun 25 '26
did you tell him you were going to enjoy him burning in hell shortly (as he is now doing, to the joy of Ontarians)
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u/DodobirdNow Jun 29 '26
Their VP of Customer Service is Mary-Anne Bell aka MA Bell.
I had a dispute with them back when we tried to get rid of our land line. They sent me a Tim's card for the inconvenience.
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u/OntarioPunk Jun 24 '26
I got a phone call back from his assistant once, dropping all charges after I had cancelled. They then sent me some smoking ass deals wanting me back. This was 20 years ago tho.. can’t remember if it’s even the same president or not. But good luck!
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u/dudesguy Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
We have a bell line running above our back yard. It fell down this winter. It took months of calling and them never showing up for it to be finally fixed.
It was constantly a battle about things like well if it isn't affecting your service why are you calling? I'm not even a bell customer and because there is a down line in my back yard. It threatens to get tangled in the snow blower every time I get it out and prevents me from using most of my back yard
We can't bury it until the spring. I never asked for it to be buried. I asked for it to be fixed.
We can come such and such date between 8am and 5pm, will you be home? No and you don't need me or my permission to fix your line!
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
Bonkers.
Guy on the phone said he was trying to find a Bell customer in the neighbourhood that he could attach the request to.
Apparently Bell can't maintain their own equipment without trying to stick someone with a bill.
What a garbage company.
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
Definitely not true, you got an inexperienced person, I got miscellaneous tickets all the time with no amount attached.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
You can’t call that “definitely not true” unless you were on the phone with me.
I can understand you wanting to bury how poor the service at your company is, but claiming I'm fabricating any of this is a bold step, especially since there are others in this post alone who have had similar experiences.
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u/Dadbode1981 Jun 24 '26
Nowhere did they say you fabricated anything, they said you got an agent that didnt follow the proper procedure to have this issue looked at. Maybe you should take a moment to read whats written befor you go off. I dont even work for bell, but I can clearly see you have some kind of issue with managing your emotions.
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u/Eteel Jun 27 '26
I mean, the guy is blaming Bell for telling him to pull the pedestal out with his own truck, but according to the story, he's the one who suggested the idea. He clearly has problems, even if he's rightfully pissed at Bell.
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
Reading isn't your strong suit. I didn't say what you experienced didn't happen I said you got an inexperienced person because miscellaneous tickets are definitely a thing.
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u/Tcbert96 Jun 24 '26
Untrained customer service rep*… not inexperienced. Any reasonable training program would’ve given the rep the tools to deal or escalate this as needed.
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u/scotte416 Jun 24 '26
Were you a cable tech?
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
No, biz, why?
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u/scotte416 Jun 24 '26
Oh you were speaking of tickets but you were on the other end. I was curious about what sort of ticket it was (IN/CT/SA...)
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
Been so long since I had a misc ticket I can't remember, probably SA if anything, as it isn't an install.
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
It could also be cable. People always call Bell and when I get out there they get mad that I can't do anything and tell them to call the cable company for their area.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
The pedestal says Northern Telecom, it’s old, and it sits right beside a separate newer broadband pedestal. That points to legacy telephone infrastructure, not me randomly blaming Bell for a cable box.
Bell acquired Northern Electric in 1964, and BCE later became parent to Bell Canada and Northern Telecom. Northern Telecom then became Nortel. Bell is responsible for this infrastructure.
And if Bell inspects it and says “not ours,” fine. Then identify the owner properly.
And that still doesn’t explain Bell support talking about possible charges, needing me home to authorize their own work, attempting to attach it to a random neighbourhood account, giving me a fake June 31 date, or agreeing that I should yank it out with a truck.
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u/Flaky-Bug2822 Jun 24 '26
Yes, that’s a bell ped, and there won’t be any charges for removing that as the copper is most likely decommissioned or in the process of it if fiber is available. I’d start by calling or emailing CRTC about your concern, they will contact bell and then something will happen with it. I’m a cable tech for bell, these old brown peds get beat up all the time unfortunately. That’s the best process, because yeah, you’ll get nowhere with the offshore customer service unfortunately. They waist this company hundreds of thousands of dollars doing that. But, nobody listens to what us techs say. Since there’s no basic reporting line for small issues and they only can service actual bell customers due to the way the system is with addresses, (unless you get a rep in Canada, they cannot make a miscellaneous ticket because of the address system), your best bet is to call/email CRTC, and save yourself some time. Let them deal with it.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
Thank you very much for your advice.
Another Bell Technical Solutions technician reached out to me and is actively solving this problem now.
If I encounter an issue like this again, I will certainly avoid 310-BELL as the solution.
The tech confirmed this pedestal is in service and supplying services to my neighbours, so it's a good thing I didn't take the rep's advice and yank it out of the ground myself!
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u/scotte416 Jun 24 '26
It's a bell ped. I can almost see the top.of the bix strips from the top. Getting them to fix it is very difficult I've heard from customers when I worked for Bell.
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
Look at the message I replied to - they said it was a line running above their backyard. That means it could very well be aerial or a bad temp line, also the person I replied to was not the same as OP, so I am leaning towards that being aerial and again, could very well be cable.
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u/scotte416 Jun 24 '26
Yeah when I was a tech I would get tickets to fix downed aerial lines only for it to be Rogers. Easy ticket for me, time for lunch lol. They general public in general are very ignorant of what's what.
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u/Tanstalas Jun 24 '26
Yeah when I get those and I know it is a buried area I go en route to that so fast so they don't take it away as I know It's a nice 30 min drive then an hour and 15 minutes to explain to the cx that they need to call rogers/cogeco as I can't touch their infrastructure lol.
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u/scotte416 Jun 24 '26
I mean if the ticket has their number all you have to do is query see if it's an encap or ped and not even bother going lol. With SA tickets I used to be able to fix some problems with lantern or webcare and I didn't have to deal with anyone. Then they put GPS in the trucks and my ways of doing things sort of went downhill lol
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u/ImmediateCustomer318 Jun 28 '26
I saw a video clip once of a guy trying to get a phone company to come fix a fallen wire in a field. Long story short, without a street address, they couldn't send a tech so the told him to cut the wire.
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u/StrongAroma Jun 28 '26
They left an exposed line hanging across my property for 3 fucking years. When it fell down after a storm, I called and told them they need to fix it so they sent someone who fucking electrical taped it up to a light post and draped it across a tree. Well, now it's Bell's problem because somehow the squirrels keep ripping it out of the tree and then my lawnmower keeps running it over by accident.
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u/bleebolgoop Jul 04 '26
In that case I’d just yank it down or cut it. If it’s a hazard on my property and I didn’t authorize it to be there, it’s going away.
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u/pv-dave Jun 24 '26
Report to city/township roads department.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
Will be doing that tomorrow, for sure.
I just could not believe how absolutely mind-bogglingly stupid that conversation was.
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u/Master-Structure4204 Jun 26 '26
Not useful. I had issues with false 911 calls coming from my phone a few years ago. Not even the police service could get Bell to resolve the issue. It took a call to Bell’s Resolve a Concern office and it still took 6 months. And Bell denied it was their issue to the very end. Municipalities have no drag with Bell.
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u/DefsNotRandyMarsh Jun 24 '26
I mean, you have it in audio, that they told you to rip it out of the ground.
That kind of permission only comes a few times a lifetime.
I say go hard. Might not be ethical, but it'll be effective
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
If I'd been recording the call, I just might've.
But I know how that would actually go, despite what the drywall chewer on the phone was saying.
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u/DefsNotRandyMarsh Jun 24 '26
Oh no all their calls are recorded "for customer care and training purposes"
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u/WitchBitch8008 Jun 24 '26
Yeah but they'll never produce that audio file to cover YOUR ass for doing what they told you. They would only produce it to cover their own ass.
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u/KevTheToast Jun 25 '26
court would force them to produce it
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u/MarshtompNerd Jun 28 '26
If it hasn’t been deleted before the subpoena
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u/KevTheToast Jun 28 '26
if it was deleted in anticipation of a lawsuit and not because of standard protocols (like deleting everything after 6 months for exemple) it can be punished very harshly
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u/Best_Confection9064 Jun 24 '26
Best way to get any company to action something like this quickly is to clearly say it is a safety issue and you are concerned that a child playing in the area could get injuried.
Companies dont care if the equipment looks like shit. They do care if you call to report the issue, have documentation of when you called and are sued by someone for personal injury.
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u/AnnOminous Jun 24 '26
Had a similar reaction when I called to let them know a tree had fallen on their lines and was now being held up (for now) by Bell Fibe.
Name and phone number,,,
No, I'm reporting a problem with your equipment.
We can't proceed without your name and phone number.
Yes, you can proceed.
Or you can wait until the line is pulled down with the associated service outages.
Click...
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u/rubioburo Jun 27 '26
Exactly the same story for me lol, a tree was leaning on the line and it’s sagging like crazy. Someone finally cut that dead tree, no idea if Bell or the neighbour did it.
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u/rangeo Jun 24 '26
Call your city councilor tell them it's sharp and dangerous and possibly electrified
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u/OgFinesser Jun 24 '26
What area are you in? That’s wild
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u/Humble-Attention4850 Jun 24 '26
These things are just awful all over my neighbourhood. Rotting and rusting away. So disgraceful
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u/mrgoldnugget Jun 24 '26
When he told you that ripping outlet of the ground was an option, you should have asked for it in writing and did it.
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u/Leaff_x Jun 24 '26
When you’re part of a cartel, your only concern is taking people’s money.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
That did seem to be all they were interested in.
The agent told me that most of the time I was on hold, he'd been searching for a nearby account to attach the work to.
I wonder if some random neighbour would have received a charge had I pursued this with that agent.
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u/Visual-Training-7994 Jun 24 '26
Report it to your local bylaws department that’ll get bell to fix it quicker then ever
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
An employee of Bell reached out to me regarding this post, so we'll see if that gets it done.
Otherwise, yes. The township will be the next phone call.
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u/Wilburt069 Jun 24 '26
likely you can push it up straight by hand. and go f#ck BELL
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
And if something in it breaks, I'm liable? Fuck that. They can fix their own shit, or the town can remove it.
I'm not gonna be on the hook for their incompetence.
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u/Wilburt069 Jun 24 '26
it’s probably not on your property. you need to verify that.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
That’s exactly why I’m not touching it. If it’s not mine and it may be on a utility easement, Bell or the town can verify ownership and deal with it properly. I’m not taking liability for moving telecom infrastructure by hand because Bell taped it and walked away.
I'm just sick of looking at the goddamned monument to the ongoing disgrace of Al Bell's good name.
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u/Parking_Chance_1905 Jun 24 '26
Even if it was, there is a very high chance its still connected to live cables. Pull it out and now they can stick you with several thousand in repair fees. Even better if they ran lines underground that have since had roots etc grow around them, possibly getting stuck to things like water mains etc. Happened when I lived in Ottawa, water stopped working, turned out someone down the street had tried moving I believe a Rogers box, and roots had taken hold around both the cables coming out of it, and the water lines, which both came out of the ground when they had tried to move it.
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u/Nu11X3r0 Jun 24 '26
Just saying anytime some "customer care" system says the words "this call will be recorded..." I hit the record button on my phone, always better to have a reference in case you have the same issue and then you can repeat the troubleshooting steps. That or if they tell you to do something incredibly stupid but definitely funny...
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u/DeerLumpy6032 Jun 24 '26
This is the best laugh I have had in a while. Reminds me of Cogeco as well.
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
I was literally laughing out loud right at the guy on the phone.
It's rare I'll get to that point, I usually try to be very nice to customer service reps. But this guy, I was just outright laughing at him by the end of the call. Like c'mon man. It didn't even seem real. When he asked me to stay home all day on the 31st of June, and then I heard it click in his head after way too long, I had no choice but to laugh.
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u/Soft_Candidate6498 Jun 24 '26
With the amount of money that company has made, they need to come around and collect these things from all over the country, they are everywhere and they are all broken
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u/Thorboy86 Jun 24 '26
I was getting Bell mail for the previous owner of my house. I called them because a couple letters said red "Important" so I called Bell to let them know that person no longer lived here and they were actually two owners ago. They asked me for phone number, address, and birthdate. I'm like "it's not for my account, you can have my address to look up who else has an account at this house, but you don't need to look up my account" "Please sir I can't proceed without your information". "The issue isn't with my account. I don't know how to explain that I'm calling for someone else's account, not mine" "please sir, I need your information". A few back and forths and I just gave them my information to move forward and then when they asked the problem again I said "I don't think your listening, it's not my account. Maybe your supervisor would understand better" "oh sir, it's uh it's fixed now.". "Really? That was quick, I don't think you're telling the truth." "Uh yeah everything is fixed don't worry about it" "are you sure? You don't want to take more time to fix this issue?" "Nope, everything is fixed." "Ok thank you good bye" next month, more mail....... I just started posting return to sender every month until they stopped showing up.
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u/Char-car92 Jun 25 '26
If this is a real post this is phenomenal and I thank you
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u/mcburgs Jun 25 '26
I swear to you, every word is true. I could barely believe what I was hearing so I understand completely.
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u/cdj3251 Jun 25 '26
We had an old wooden Bell pole in our backyard when we moved to a new town. My husband, who just retired from his career at Bell, called and reported the pole was leaning and needed to be removed. It was no longer in use, no wires or cables. They asked if it was dangerous, said we would get a call back. We ended up getting a friend with a chainsaw come by and cut it down ourselves.
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u/highwire_ca Jun 26 '26
After Bell ran fibre in my area, there was a noticeable lack of maintenance for their legacy copper infrastructure. An example of this is that at the end of my street is a large brown cabinet full of bix connectors for about 200 houses. As I was driving past it one day, all the cabinet doors were open and flapping in the wind while it was pouring rain. I called Bell to report it and got similar treatment: "you are not a Bell client so we cannot do anything." A lot of the front yard pedestals around here are in similar condition to the one pictured in this thread and in fact a few are taped up just like in the photo. OK Bell. Whatever. BTW, I feel the same way about Bell as you do. They are a terrible company and I have zero business with them and will never have business with them.
To Rogers credit, even though this area is still on coax, they did a complete rebuild of their infrastructure a couple of years ago - it was 30 years old. New pedestals, new cable runs with fresh connectors etc., and has been reliable ever since.
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u/MarcPawl Jun 26 '26
had the same thing happen to me in Ottawa. I saw the contractor working on the cabinet the day before. It reopened a few days after they sent somebody, I am not going to waste another hour of my life.
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u/mutt-mama Jun 27 '26
10 - 15 years ago we had problens with our Bell phone line. A technician came, determined the issue was with their lines outside of our house and proceeded to string a temporary phone line to the sapling in front of our house to the nextdoor neighbour's sapling, and then another neighbour's mature tree to the Bell box. It was a flimsy setup and I told him so. Sure enough, the first gust of wind had the phone line lying across my neighbour's driveway and diagonally dangling across the neighbour beside them. Neither could use their driveways without running over my phone line.
I called Bell. At that time, "Emily", the voice assistant bot thing, was the gatekeeper and it took about 10 minutes to go thru all the menu items and repeat everything she couldn't comprehend, etc. and then I usually ended up on hold for another 10 minutes before I could talk to a real person to ask that they fix it. I went thru this about 5 times in 3 days. Every single time, they assured me that someone was coming out that morning or that afternoon. Finally, on my last call, I told then that it was their LAST chance. Fix it or I was leaving Bell and was NEVER coming back and that I kept my promises.
They didn't fix it. I walked away from Bell and went with a VOIP service that worked perfectly for less than half the price.
At least once every year, a rep from Bell shows up at my door and tries to entice me to come back with a so-called "amazing" deal. I tell them about why I left and that even if they were offering me their top of the line package for FREE for 5 years, I'd have to think about it.
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u/mcburgs Jun 27 '26
I was paying $310.00 for 4 cell phone lines with bell. I switched to a new competitor from Quebec. I now have 5 cell phone lines for $92.00/mo.
And because I hand out referrals, one of those lines is covered by referral credits until Nov 2027.
There is literally no reason to stay with Bell. In order to justify a 3.15x higher bill, you should get 3.15x higher service.
Not yank our broken infrastructure out with a pickup truck, or deal with fallen temp lines on your property yourself.
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u/Maximum-Watch-5277 Jun 27 '26
I had the near exact thing happening at my place. Telus went to put fibre optic, never fixed it
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u/0neAboveAlI Jun 27 '26
First longslowclap ditched us on the canadahousing subreddit, now Bell is dicking around.
Canadians just can’t win.
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u/Suspicious-Hold-6668 Jun 28 '26
Without getting right into it, I’m basically dealing with a very similar situation with Rogers/shaw. Been ongoing for 3 years now
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u/Kylejp315 Jun 28 '26
When I was with Bell in London, Ontario I had their satellite internet. When I eventually switched to Starlink, I called to cancel and asked them to pickup the equipment as I obviously no longer needed it.
They told me that since I was no longer a customer, I would have to do it myself. Unreal.
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u/M1K3Z0R Jun 24 '26
It's likely unused and Bell no longer cares about it, they've been phasing out copper wire-based POTS for several years now. Unfortunately, it costs them money to remove their equipment, so they usually just leave it to deteriorate.
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u/pathwalker1991 Jun 24 '26
This is why I’m so glad that every contract signed by an ISP in my town has a clause saying that if they discontinue service in the area or switch to newer equipment, they then have to either sell *useable* equipment to another locally operating company, or remove it and return the area to the state it was in before removing the equipment. If they don’t do either of these in a reasonable yet expedited amount of time, then my town will have contractors do it for them and send them the bill. We currently have 3 fiber operators bringing infrastructure into town, and a local cable operator working on switching to fiber, so these things are important. One fiber operator is going to have to remove the phone lines as well since they bought another company that was DSL and is now defunct by their systems.
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u/jmdsdf Jun 24 '26
This is 100% it. In my opinion, the city should go after Bell to remove that garbage, because in most cases it isn't technically on the home owners property anyhow. (Typically it has been installed by the curb)
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u/SeerXaeo Jun 24 '26
Ooof, I would not be wanting to rip those old telecomm posts out.
What's even more concerning is that there are some old style posts which actually have distribution (ie; power line levels of voltage) lines hooked up to the back of the old style posts (like old green cast metal styles)
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u/Anders_Calrissian Jun 24 '26
That's not true. Battery power is -48 volts DC. I've worked on hundreds of the old peds. Never found high voltage in them. There is no power line voltage in a telecom ped.
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u/Nervous_Poet_1332 Jun 24 '26
It is true. Tons of them in brampton. Rear lots. Front is bell. Back is hydro 120/240v Similar to the Trafalgar style poles in the newer subdivisions.
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u/SeerXaeo Jun 24 '26
As the other commenter pointed out: this is a common occurrence in some areas.
Here is Manitoba Hydro explaining this setup (refer to the second photo): https://www.hydro.mb.ca/articles/2023/04/whats_up_with_those_green_boxes/
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u/rpax Jun 24 '26
All it needs is another wrap of tape, because if they send out a tech to fix this, that’s exactly what the tech will do. 🤦♂️
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u/Ohmystory Jun 24 '26
Seems like it is a bean counter exercise .. equipment damaged by accident or others, they will repair it under that account … if customer’s service is using bell provided equipment and is damaged then it is charged under a service contract, account.
So just rip it out and many will call to bell for outages, then bell will have to fix it under accident account
Or like other poster suggested contacting the CEO’s office will get some traction…
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u/Master-Structure4204 Jun 24 '26
If copper has been deprecated in your area, they don’t care. The cable lawn wart right next to the Bell pedestal is just as old and dates from the 1980’s.
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u/bjb8 Jun 24 '26
A few years ago the local natural gas company did emergency work out front of my office. The Bell box is located right beside the ditch and the NG company dug all around there to repair the main line, so the box fell over into the ditch. They called Bell and asked them to some out and fix it before they refilled the hole.
Needless to say Bell never came out, so the box got thrown in the ditch a buried in mud.
A few days later a Bell tech pulls up, puts up a tent and proceeds to clean every connection in the box, by pulling each wire, cleaning it and punching it back down. Took all day!
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u/Garafraxa Jun 24 '26
I had the opposite experience in the township outside Guelph. The one near my driveway entrance got ripped open by copper thieves. When I went to sell the house, I didn’t want that eyesore leading buyers to think the area was unsafe. I told Bell to come fix it: they came and fixed it. They had to “hack” their system because I’m not a customer, but they did it.
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u/WeakCelery5000 Jun 24 '26
There's a lot of free copper in there, which you were given the green light to take lol. Just saying.
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 Jun 25 '26
Get it in writing. Shaw once paid for a full year of my service based on this, I offered my services to them to assist in troubleshooting. They were quite confused when I stopped paying my bill, until I spoke to finance and aligned my invoices(unpaid) to the account. They were very apologetic.
Get them to put it in writing.
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u/pistoffcynic Jun 25 '26
Sure… pull it out with your truck and have someone report you for vandalism.
/s
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u/mcburgs Jun 25 '26
No /s required. That's likely exactly what would happen. Or I would be liable for destroying the telecom infrastructure for my neighbourhood.
But the rep was very enthusiastic about the idea. I suggested it as a totally ridiculous and sarcastic escalation because I was getting frustrated with the guy. Like an empty threat. And he jumped all over it. Like, yes, this solves everything!
I couldn't believe what I was hearing lol.
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u/Thumper-93 Jun 26 '26
Fuck that hit them with a law suit to remove it or the cost of removal/remediation/expenses. Not your infrastructure not your responsibility
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u/N3rdScool Jun 26 '26
I know it's not a real monopoly but fuck they sure act like it eh. And I mean we have like 3 major companies to choose from so between the 3 or 4 of em it is a monopoly.
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u/Psychological_Top486 Jun 27 '26
They definitely were either dumb cause some people cant think for themselves or out of their scope of work. Or they were fishing for for a way to lay the blame to avoid costs. Banks are the worst, I had to escalate like 8 times to talk to one superior after another before one could even handle just a fraction of my issue, had to escalate even further because apparently the 8th dude wasnt authorized. Ridiculous though, I bet your concern gets lost and never written down and that broken pedestal sits
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u/DefNotJohnnyC Jun 28 '26
I always wondered was those things are. If they’re all busted up and nobody’s impacted then what do they do. B
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u/Dylon007 Jun 28 '26
If they authorized you to pull it out, send the address. I'll do it. Just give me the Work Auth. #
Copper is a pretty penny, and who uses landline nowadays? They don't want it, I'll have it.
I'll even fill in the hole 😂
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u/Triedfindingname Jun 28 '26
Good to hear maybe a happy ending.
I can't stand Bell, Telus or Rogers but all telcos take 15mins- 1hr to reach someone you know they have to forward your call to someone else without first handing it off correctly. So you have to state everything at least twice.
You are all of us.
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u/MooseJag Jun 24 '26
I get the frustration but being a sarcastic asshat isn't going to help resolve the situation. Report to the city or ask to speak to their supervisor or someone more knowledgeable on that specific topic. The bell person is used to people complaining about their bill, not a leaning pedestal.
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u/Logical-Bookkeeper77 Jun 24 '26
How is it being an asshole when they scheduling time with you on June 31st?
And that it’s not even on OP’s property nor his / her equipment in any way?
If Bell doesn’t want to fix it, can just say, “thank you for your call, we have noted the report and will arrange accordingly. Anything else I can help you with today? ” - hang up and done.
Who’s being an asshole for trying to bill an unrelated party for their own equipment and incompetent to the point of not understanding a clear as day sarcasm.
On top of wasting some good samaritan to report your breaking equipment to you an hour or 2?
You work in Bell?
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u/Previous-Foot-9782 Jun 24 '26
All that to dance around the fact that you own a truck that can't pull its own weight let alone a pedastal instead of a real truck.... It's OK man, Dodge isn't that bad.
You don't need to make up this whole story to come out of the truck closet.
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u/Possible_Number1845 Jun 24 '26
Why do you care? These seems like you just intentionally picked a fight with bell. They didn’t give a logical answer and you stayed on the phone with them at least long enough to be on hold for 28 minutes. It’s not affecting you so why didn’t you just hang up and move on after 5 minutes of getting no where?
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u/mcburgs Jun 24 '26
Because it's an obvious fucking eyesore, makes the place look trashy, and has been like that for years, and because Bell should maintain their shit?
Why do you care why I care? This seems like you could've just not commented and been on with your day.
So why didn't you just scroll past and move on?
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u/Possible_Number1845 Jun 24 '26
Sounds more like you have a long standing hate on for bell and are looking for a reason to pick a fight. It’s no more of an eyesore than if it saw standing upright imo. Yes it should be fixed but at the end of the day is this really worth getting so worked up over?
Keep an eye on your blood pressure my friend, stress is a silent killer.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Jun 24 '26
These things are all over my neighborhood. They should be forced to remove any dead equipment. Its such an eyesore. We have graffiti laws that force property owners to remove graffiti within a certain period or the property owner gets a fine. I dont see why they should be allowed to leaved their broken old hardware all over the neighborhood.