My letter to the president of Saskt*l

I have been prompted to email you because of a situation that I have been dealing with. I have been a Sasktel customer for almost 2 years and have never been late on my account. I feel customer loyalty is something that should be valued by any company, and I do not feel that has been in my situation. I have a Blackberry Pearl Flip that up until the last 2 weeks I have been very happy with. Within the last 2 weeks I have had many problems with the phone and called Customer Care to find out what I could do. Initially I spoke with a representative who escalated the call by saying "there is nothing *I* can do for you" when I explained my situation (my phone was not working and very unreliable, as I live in a northern community and rely on this when I am travelling on the highway, so I wanted to replace the device). Of course, when she said that it prompts any customer to say " I would like to speak to someone who can help me". I spoke with a supervisor named Chris who advised me to speak with the technical department to see if there was any programming within the phone that could be fixed, and if not to call him on his direct number to discuss replacing the phone. I called him today because although I did go through the troubleshooting steps with the technical department the phone is still freezing up, displaying error messages and not receiving calls. I left him a message today but did not hear back from him, which prompted me to call back tonight to customer care to start this all over. I was advised that Chris had left for the day and would not be back until Monday (I'm sorry, that is horrible customer service not to return phone messages before leaving). The representative tonight, although she was very nice told me the only option would be to either buy out the Blackberry Contract (210.00) and switch to a basic phone (Samsung 79.00) or to play 320.00 which is the difference between the 3 year and the 2 year contract price of the Blackberry Pearl I currently own, then I would be eligible to buy another phone and extend my contract. As I am sure you can appreciate, neither of these options appeal to me. Here is why I am so upset. I am told that I am not eligible to upgrade my phone until July 2011, which is 8 months from now. I pay on average 70.00 per month on my cellular service, and I am a very light user. So, what you customer service and manager on duty tonight are saying is that if I pay to the company $560.00 in service, (70.00 a month for the next 8 months), I will be eligible to upgrade my phone at that time without it costing hundreds of dollars, unless I want to buy the exact same phone for $125.00. Phones are being practically given away to new customers. I am aware that the price of the phone is recovered by the monthly service paid by the new customers, but it really feels like unless you are a new customer, your business doesn't matter. That is the impression I am getting from customer care. I calculated that it would cost me $610.00 to cancel my service right now, which without having a reliable device I may as well do and then purchase a prepaid phone with another company to use when I am travelling, which is really the only time I use the phone.

I am not even sure that anything can be done at this point, according to your customer service department I have been given all the options. I am just really not happy with any of these options. I am not looking for one of the new fancy phones, that really doesn't appeal to me. What I need is a device that works and that is reliable, which is something I do not have right now, and I get the impression of your company via your customer service department that unless I want to pay hundreds of dollars, I'm out of luck. Unless of course I want to find a used one somewhere like kijiji, which is the advice the first representative gave me.