I have been using a cell-phone for over 10 years now and have been with at least 5 different companies but never ever have I encountered a company as inept and greedy as Fido. The list of my complaints is almost endless but I won’t bore you with all of them.

However, today they did something that completely shocked me even when I have come to expect this sort of ridiculousness from Fido. And that says a lot!

I had added an option of 50 international text messages to my account a while back. They said international messages and I assumed it means “all international” messages based on my understanding of the word “international”. But I realised later that they have a different understanding of the word “international”. As they made me understand later the text messages to India weren’t being considered international and thus I decided to remove that “International Text Message” option from my account, which was the only reason I had chosen to add that option to my account. The option cost $7/month.

Yesterday though, I noticed that even when I requested this option be taken off my account, I had been charged for this option for the last two months. I was justifiably livid and called Fido today regarding this. First, I encounter a buffoon who keeps asking me when I will pay my bill, when I have been a Fido customer for 3 years now always paying my bills on time. He doesn’t want to discuss the reason for my call but keeps asking me when I will be paying my bill. I get tired of talking with this moron and hang up hoping to talk to an actual homo sapien on the next call.

Now I encounter a charming girl. She looks at my account and tells me that she has a record of me adding this option to my account but no record of my cancellation request. How convenient! I ask her if there is a possibility that the representative I talked with regarding the cancellation might have forgotten to act on the request and put a note/memo on my account. Much to my surprise, she says, “it is a possibility” but since she can’t see anything on my account, she can’t do anything about it and I would have to pay $14 for this particular option. Left with no choice and no proof – which is foolish on my part, and I realise that in hindsight, I request her to cancel that option effectively immediately. Now comes another example of Fido’s greed, for lack of a better term. The charming representative informs me that they can only take it off at the next billing cycle and not in the middle of one. I ask her, if they can add a feature in the middle of a billing cycle and she rather nonchalantly informs me that yes, they can add a feature but not remove one. I ask her if it is because adding a feature means Fido will be making money and removing a feature means Fido will be losing money. She doesn’t quite know what to say. So she just reads from the script and says that is “company policy”. How sweet!

I, though, had learnt not to trust any of the buffoons who I encounter on the other end when calling Fido and make a note of her name, time of call and the date and the nature of the call just to make sure I can quote this time and date and the rep’s name in case they again fail to respect my request for cancellation of a feature.

I am absolutely disgusted with these greedy bastards who will do anything to make money and they don’t seem to care one bit about their customers.

There are some other gripes that I have with Fido as well. Some of them:

1. I asked them once why they can’t have an updated log of the calls I make through their website. A lot of companies do that. The company I was with back in India does that. And they replied saying, it is not possible. How innovative. I told them that the company I had been with in India had about 25 million customers and was still able to do that. As expected, they replied with their canned script and apologized that Fido can’t do that.

2. Every time you call them you are asked to enter your phone number and then when you finally talk to a human at the other hand they ask for the same information again. How hard is it to link that automated system to the agent’s computer?

3. They let you earn Fido rewards for being with Fido- the one good thing about this company, but then you can’t use those Fido dollars towards your bill payment. You can only use it to pay for accessories or prepaid airtime. And most of these accessories are exorbitantly priced. Fido is making a neat little profit off this little innovative scam they are running.

All in all, Fido is absolutely the worst cellular provider I have ever had to deal with. For people who are thinking about choosing Fido a service provider, please think again. Fido sucks!!!!

Update: Fido finally called me after I sent them the link to this post and told them that I would be writing to all the major newspapers and the Canadian Consumer Affairs and agreed to credit the $14 to my account.