I recently had the most incredible (awful) experience with Telus that I have ever had in my 45 years of running my own business. And being their/BC Tel’s customer.

The saga began with an unsolicited Junk Email from Telus promoting their new high speed fibre optic services for small business .   I had been noticing how fast other establishments credit card payment machines were compared to ours, and replied that I was very interested in a speedier way for our customers to pay by credit or debit card. I got an email reply from an employee of Telus’s, and we set up a date and a rate to fix us up.  It sounded great, as Mother’s Day weekend was arriving, and the lineups could be long. We were excited ! On the arranged morning, a very unfriendly technician from LEDCOR arrived to do the job.  It seems this is who they use.  He will never have his own talk show and certainly doesn’t do stand up comedy. A miserable zombie from a far off land.  He opened up our ‘phone boxes in a wall and tore at wires, leaving them hanging. He announced he was done. He left his card and drove away. Thirty seconds later, a customer tried to buy something. Our Visa machines did not work. Panic. Our in house’Loyalty Card’ with our points gathering reward cards did not work.  PANIC !!  A small line started to form.  I instantly phoned the tech guy and got him.  He must have only been two blocks away.  I told him the problem and said he HAS TO come back and fix things immediately.  He said he would not come back. He would need a ‘work order’ to come back.  I reminded him that everything was working that morning until he got here,  and now we were  unable to collect payment etc. He refused to return. I could not believe it. Customers were sympathetic but some had to leave their selections and said they would come back.  We were sitting on a fortune in fresh plants to sell on the busiest weekend of the year and felt helpless and doomed.  Luckily, a ‘new girl’ here said her mom knew a ‘computer geek’ who might help ? So, we called and got him to come from West Van by taxi. Tick,tick,tick… an hour goes by.  He realized that (luckily) our Internet provider was SHAW, not Telus. He and our employee  Gord went up to London Drugs and bought a ‘splitter’ device, some cable and ran our Visa etc through this new cable, bypassing Telus entirely !  It worked !! Yeah !!

Later, I noticed a strange white waffle thing screwed into our wall inside. It was about  a foot square and hooked into our phone box.  It was a completely unasked for ‘WI-FI’ gizmo that Telus put here with no permission from me.  I also found ‘FREE WI-FI’ stickers on our glass doors.  How slimy. This is all they did here, other than screw us up.  If ‘Free Wi-Fi’ was really free, would they have any interest ? I don’t think it is free . Watch your phone bill .

I contacted SHAW, our saviour, and switched everything over to them. They were amazing. Friendly and helpful. I told them in all seriousness that I would gladly do a commercial for them for free.  ’Small business’  is a huge category/revenue stream and my testimony would be true.  Watch for it !