It's a Sad State of Affairs, part 4: I Have a Phone Again

My replacement phone arrived today. This is good. But first let me back up a bit...

Some of you suggested I send my blog posts in to Rogers, and I was planning to. However, Rogers got to me first. Yesterday morning I received this comment under my "part 2" posting:

Hi Michael - This is Mary with Rogers.

I came across your blog and am sorry to hear about your experience. Perhaps I can help? I've sent you an email so please let me know if I can offer assistance.

Take care,

Mary

@RogersMary

http://www.twitter.com/rogersmary

as well as the following e-mail:

Subject: Your blog posts

Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 08:49:30 -0500

From: "RogersHelps"

To: mbarrick@mbarrick.net

Hi Michael - This is Mary with Rogers and I'm part of the online

communications team. I came across you blog post(s) and am very sorry to

hear about your experience.

The entry indicated that you were going to call back in on Monday. I

wanted to check on how that went and offer assistance if it's still an

open issue.

My team is not intended to replace existing lines of customer care but I

can jump in to help from time-to-time if needed. I'm happy to help here

if that's what you require at this time.

All I'd need is your full name (I assume Michael Barrick is the name on

the account?) and a contact number where best to reach you. I'll forward

to a higher level resolution team and they will call you to help sort it

out.

Again, I regret the experience you described and hope I can help put

this right for you.

Let me know if you'd like me to step in here.

Take care,

Mary

**************************************

Mary Pretotto

Community Manager, Social Media Monitoring & Engagement

Rogers Communications Inc.

@RogersMary

In both cases I directed Mary to the "part 3" entry where I was promised the replacement.

I thought this was quite interesting and I didn't think anything at all about Mary's job title until I showed it to someone else, who found the "Monitoring" part of "Social Media Monitoring & Engagement" a tad ominous. Personally I think it is just straight-up and accurate. I do the same thing for myself and my own websites using, for example, a Google Alerts that searches for my name and nic. But, Mary, if you are reading, maybe just, "Social Media Engagement" might be the way to go since, apparently, some people are creeped out by "Monitoring"?

I'd like to hear what other people think.

And now, back to the new phone, which brings me back to griping about Canada Post, rather than Rogers. I got a pickup notice today. Checking the pickup notice number online to see if it was available for pickup I noticed a line saying the postie had "attempted delivery" this morning around 11:00 a.m..  I was here, frantically working on photos from a fashion shoot last Saturday, and no one buzzed or knocked. And once again the package was sent to the wrong postal outlet (at least I looked in advance this time.) I was served by the same mostly-illiterate couple as last Saturday. They seem like very nice people, and are very friendly, but really, is it unreasonable of me to expect the people handling my mail to have better than a first-grade grasp of at least one of the official languages?

Once I got the phone home and unpacked everything went as well as expected. I had to make a couple calls to customer service and tech support to provision the new SIM card and remove the blocks on my account. Because I have a BES server there was, of course, no lost data since all of that syncs up wirelessly all the time. I had to reinstall some application (like facebook and Twitter) that I was never arsed to back up. I bought a higher capacity MicroSD card so now I have even more room for music, pictures, and maybe I'll put some video on there as well to give me something else to do on the bus.

Now the things I remain worried about:

1. I dropped the Nokia 2660 in its return envelope off at the UPS store on Davie Monday night and it still isn't showing up when I check the tracking number. UPS better not lose the damn phone, because I really don't want to end up in a argument over whether or not I returned the it when I already went though so much grief trying the physically hand the phone to someone on Saturday.
   
   [EDIT: 20100206] It's showing up in the tracking now, and therefore out of my hands - huzzah!
2. I haven't seen a bill yet. I don't have a lot of confidence that my bill won't be completely messed up and I am in wait-and-see mode.