Millarville, Alberta
“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
– last line of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
My grandfather was a farmer, but he was also a lineman for the county. When relentless prairie winds tangled rural telephone wires, Grandpa would strap on leg spurs, climb telephone poles, and unsnarl them. The government telephone company didn’t pay him much to risk life and limb, it was a service he provided to the community.
Grandpa was an early and vital link in a telecommunications network that connected rural communities to the world.
Leg spurs similar to those Grandpa wore to climb telephone poles in the 1940s and 1950s.
Bear was also a pioneer in the communications industry. Just out of high school, she worked for Alberta Government Telephones as a switchboard operator.
Until the mid 1970s, long-distance telephone service involved making a call to an Operator like Bear, who would process the connection. The Operator would put the first caller on hold, then make a telephone call to the recipient. Once she had both parties on the line, Operator Bear would connect them using a switchboard like the one below.
AGT’s Lethbridge Telephone Exchange.
When I moved to Alberta in 1982, one of my first tasks was to request a telephone line. There were no choices to make, AGT was the only telephone service provider, and there was only one plan, the take it or leave it plan.
The phone usually worked, and when it didn’t, I simply put in a request and AGT sent somebody out to fix it. I was quite happy as an AGT customer.
Cell phones came on the market in the mid 1980s and I was one of the first to sign up.
This is the second cell phone I owned. The first one was much bulkier and had a battery life of about an hour.
Side Story: AGTs cell phone coverage area was limited to downtown Calgary, downtown Edmonton, and a few locations along the corridor, when it started.
I had meetings arranged in Red Deer and Edmonton the day after I picked up my new wireless phone and I was eager to try it out. I drove to Red Deer for my first appointment. After the meeting, I called the customer in Edmonton to let him know I was on my way. When I connected with his office, they advised me that they had been trying to reach me because the customer had called in sick.
My first cell phone business call had saved a trip to Edmonton and back! I said to myself,
“These things could catch on!”
In 1990, Alberta Government Telephones privatized, and Telus was formed. The new private enterprise phone company announced a share issue to raise money for expansion. Bear and I talked about it and decided to put a significant portion of our RRSP savings into Telus shares. We had a great deal of faith in the company and, as it turned out, the investment proved to be a good one.
Telus and I have had a love affair ever since. I have been a loyal customer for 40 years, dating back to the AGT days.
When Bear and I started our company, we made sure all of the employees had Telus phones. When the kids came of age, they got Telus smart phones and service plans. Bear and I travel extensively, (and we both talk a lot) so we have unlimited domestic, USA, and international data plans. The cost is significant, but I have always thought Telus’ service was worth it.
Until recently.
In recent years, Telus has become a behemoth telecommunications nightmare. They have joined the dystopian movement, where business-comes-first, people-don’t-matter, non-services are out-sourced off-shore. Telus has succumbed to Big Brother; they are now an organization of robot-controlled tyrants.
In the past 90 days I have had such horrendous experiences with my telecom service provider of 40+ years that I am forced to abandon them.
I posted the details of my recent conflicts with Telus in an addendum below, but I recommend you NOT read it. It is just a long-winded rant about bad service and uncaring Telus management, agents, and robots.
I spent a full day this week arranging a new family cell phone plan with Roger’s. Tomorrow I will contact a local security company and order a new, non-Telus home security system. By the end of the week, all I will have left with Telus will be our land line.
And, if they mess up our home service, I will replace Telus with one of these.
I intend to send a link for this post to Telus management, but I don’t expect any feedback, or improvement in service.
I suspect what will happen is that Telus will feed these words into a programmed robot, who will read them, ignore them, and shed a few …
… gin-scented tears.
Addendum – Dystopian Services
Telus took over our home security company, Vivint a while ago. Just before we left on holiday in early September, they sent us a notice saying that Telus would no longer support our security hardware. It is going to cost somewhere in the area of $4,000 to purchase and install compatible equipment. I didn’t have time to deal with it before we left, but I had that to look forward to when we returned from holiday.
While we were in Austria, we were using Telus data to guide our GPS, which is not a problem because I have an unlimited international plan. Except it didn’t work that way. As we were trundling down the autobahn, I got a message from Telus saying our data limit had been exceeded and they were suspending service, which they did, mid-freeway! I pulled over at a McDonald’s and used their Wi-Fi to download a map, which got us home, but I was fuming.
I contacted Telus from the hotel (after an hour-long on-hold session) and managed to get a service top-up. The agent and I didn’t speak the same language. In the confusion, I got a data top-up, but all of our other service plans were disconnected.
The day we got home, I received a message from Telus saying that our domestic data limit had been exceeded, despite our “unlimited” plan. I attempted to fix the problem on-line with a chat-bot, but again, the bot and I don’t speak the same language. This initiated another call to Telus.
The person I spoke to lived in some far-away land. She was obviously trained to up-sell products and services, not to provide technical assistance. Once she discovered that I only wanted my old services reconnected, not a new phone or plan, she lied to me. She said that there was a problem with her computer and that she would “call me back in 10 minutes”.
It has been four days. I’m Done!
Judy
Don’t worry. I’m sure you will be hearing from Telus soliciting your business now that you no longer deal with them. They might even offer you a deal! I know that Bell MTS ticked me off after being a loyal customer for over 30 years so I left them for another company for basically the same monthly amount – after my initial discounts for the first 6 months with the new company! I remain happy with them and now cut off the salespeople who call or come to my door asking me to switch to Bell MTS! I will tell you that I have been happy with Rogers for many years and hope you receive the same good service I have.