I've got a question....

I'm having problems with my phone line and Bell has determined that problem is between the connection room in the basement of the building and my home, i.e, outside their area of responsibility.

If the problem is in the wiring outside my apt, but somewhere within the building, is the bldg mgmt responsible for this repair? I would think so, but how do I approach this? The bldg super is trying to get out of it....

Bell says they will charge, since the location is not covered by them, which seems reasonable.

Any ideas on how I can handle this?

I ran into the same situation a while back. I think it may depend on the nature of the repair. In my case, the issue was the my apt. buzzer was not working, the phone line was fine otherwise.

I finally managed to resolve it by writing a pretty angry letter to my building management in which I stated that regardless of whose reponsibility it was, the bottomline is that a resident of their building is being inconvenienced. It was the building management's responsibility to help me out in a situation like that. and so on and so forth.....

After I sent the letter, the issue was fixed by the building mgmt. at their cost in a couple of days.

If in your case however the issue is phone reception or stuff like that, you should write the letter to Bell instead. First talk to a service rep and ask him/her to transfer you to their Customer retention dept. And them ask them how interested they are in retaining your business. If you don't get anywhere this way, write a "to-the-point" letter expressing your frustration.

Good luck and let us know how it works out...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Are you there?

Now that you mention it, my apt. buzzer has been acting weird too. I will also mention this to them and see if I can get them to do something.

Thanks for the tip....

I think Bell's "Wirecare" plan takes care of such issues. But its a shame we have to pay for this...its Bell, what do you expect?

Ok, I'm not sure that the problem is a 100% resolved but I'm up and running again. Turns out there was a wiring problem within my apt.

I ended up switching my phone and internet to Rogers from Bell, and the Rogers tech repaired some wiring inside the apt that got the buzzer working again. The apt guys also came by to see what the problem was; I didn't talk to them but it seems they couldn't find a problem outside.

I said not 100% because now my phone (has a built in answering m/c) does not cut off immediately when an incoming call hangs up; I tested this with my cell. Happens whether I have my Bell or Rogers phone line connected - kinda weird.

But, anyways, to make a long story short - Bell was also hiking my Sympatico charges (1 yr promotion over) so I switched both my phone and internet to Rogers - no contract, but still cheaper than my Bell bill. After the repair my Bell line also started working. So that saved me close to $100 in a repair bill, which Bell would've charged. I did call their customer retention but they couldn't match Rogers' monthly charges so I didn't see the point in staying with them.

Rogers internet is also faster than Sympatico - again, not very important because I;m not heavy into torrent downloading. I've heard Rogers also throttles torrent downloads - for anyone who's looking to compare the two services.