Despite this, even then, I knew there was something there. Why? Because just like iTunes, Steam allowed its users to accomplish all the goals of piracy (save the cost), without the piracy: download and play right there, with even less hassle than piracy! Cool… I’d be willing to pay for that. And in a few years time we were all doing it!

Fast forward eight years and Steam is the most prevalent game distribution platform around, at least most certainly for PC gaming. After the port to Mac, Steam was actually pretty decent, slowly releasing Mac titles and offering cross-platform purchase translations. I loved it! All those games I had for Windows were suddenly available for Mac without paying a penny more. But despite all this work to transition Steam for Mac, they still somehow don’t quite get what Mac users like about having a Mac; it’s in the details, always has been, always will be. So where does Steam for Mac still go wrong?

Smooth Scrolling

You’re unlikely to be using a trackpad or MagicMouse for your gaming, but these days I find myself browsing steam for new deals at least once every few months, often just purchasing games for others. But browsing in Steam is like taking a step back to my PC days back in 2004. I constantly lose track of my position because every time I scroll it behaves like the second hand of a clock; chunking its way up or down in jarring intervals.

It’s a frustrating phenomenon when all of your devices are designed for the natural smooth progression in scrolling that the Mac experience typically offers.

Aqua Widgets

Mac OS X Lion has been out for four months now and was available for developers to play around with for many months before that. Despite this, the red, orange and green buttons for window management are all still presented in Leopard/Snow Leopard style. Because of the shrinkage that was applied to those widgets in every single other app I use, this makes Steam feel completely out of place. Valve! Update those widgets already!

Snow Leopard

Lion

Overall Layout

Although dozens of critics have hated on the Steam general UI, I’m not a hater. I like it because I like different designs. But I’m also happy to admit when I see something better and this tweaked design by Cocoia is gorgeous. It’s been around for a long time; too bad Valve hasn’t hired this guy.

Gift Certificates

This one isn’t a UI complaint, but one of missing functionality across all platforms. It’s way more fun to gift a particular game to someone, but sometimes your friends haven’t filled out their wishlist. Then what? How about offering gift certificates! I can’t think of a better store that desparately needs gift certificates than a completely online-distribution system. iTunes does it, Kobo does it, Amazon does it, Netflix does it, and just about every single digital distribution system in the world, except Steam.

Still Gaming?

I may not be gaming as much as I used to, and these UI annoyances aren’t enough to take all the blame for that, but they may make up a small portion of it. It would be nice to see Valve putting a bit more thought into the work they do to get the little things right. I have a lot of respect for app developers, but only when the quality of their applications are up to snuff.

When a developer has placed his or herself in the shoes of their users, you always notice these things because they make their app the way you would make it. I’m not talking about the coding per se, but the experience of using the app. Through a great, engaging experience, you can really appreciate the work they’ve put into their application. The next time you discover a new feature and it works in a brilliantly simple and elegant way, you notice. (E.g.: pull to refresh by Atebits found for the first time in the Tweetie Twitter client). When an update comes out, making things you do every day easier than ever, you notice (e.g.: Foursquare does this regularly. Facebook does not).

I want to be engaged by Steam, to keep me coming back to play more games, but it’s entirely up to the devs to put thought into the details to make that happen.

If you recently completed the great move of 2011, from MobileMe to iCloud and your Apple ID uses a different email address than your MobileMe email, then you’ve likely now discovered the odd duality that is your new iCloud account. Following the transition, I was left with two iCloud accounts:

1. The primary iCloud account appropriately named “iCloud” which has synchronization for all options but Mail enabled (or at least the rest can be optionally enabled – Mail cannot).
2. A secondary iCloud account named myaccount@me.com which only has Mail, Contacts and Calendars enabled. This account has no storage associated with it and my Mac’s prefpane tells me that it is not my primary account.

I assumed that the move included iCloud automatically importing my calendars and contacts from MobileMe and that for whatever reason Apple couldn’t associate my @me.com account with my usual Apple ID, so it set up two different accounts. Although contacts transferred without any problems, my Calendars only existed in my MobileMe secondary iCloud account.

The oddest part is the inconsistency between the two accounts. Contacts are available in both (duplicates), while Mail and calendars are only available in the MobileMe iCloud account. Even more confusing is that in Apple Mail on Lion 10.7.2, my MobileMe account was renamed to iCloud, but in iCal, the account is still called MobileMe (in actual fact you see both MobileMe and iCloud calendars – two separate CalDAV accounts). Talk about confusing!

My objective became simplification by attempting to move everything I could to the primary iCloud account. Since moving mail over is up to Apple, and Contacts were already in place, I simply disabled contacts on the secondary account. But calendars are a different story. Here’s how to move them:

NOTE: you must use iCal on a Mac to do this. If you’re using Windows or only have iOS devices, this guide will not help you.

To begin, backup all of your calendars. Choose File > Export > iCal Archive.

To transition all of your calendars to your primary iCloud account, you need to create a new calendar on iCloud for each one you have on MobileMe. As an example, I’ll use the calendar “Personal” here.

1. File > New Calendar > iCloud
2. Right / Context click on the Untitled calendar under ICLOUD and choose Get Info. Make the Name “Personal” and change the colour to match the calendar on MobileMe then choose OK
3. Right / Context click on “Personal” under MOBILEME and choose Export. Remember where you’re saving it since you’ll probably want to remove it later, then choose the Export button
4. Choose File > Import > Import and select the file you just exported from MobileMe
5. It will then request that you choose witch calendar to import into. Select “Personal” under ICLOUD

You should now see duplicates of the calendar events. Uncheck Personal under MOBILEME to get rid of the duplicates.

Repeat these steps for each of your calendars if you have more than one. If you had any shared calendars before, you will need to reshare them by right / context clicking on them and choosing Share Calendar. If you’re comfortable with the changes, then you can go ahead and remove the MobileMe Calendars from your devices. For Mac OS X 10.7.2 here’s how:

1. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Mail Contacts and Calendars
2. Select your MobileMe account in the list (it will have an iCloud icon, but should show your @me.com account as the name).
3. Uncheck Calendars.

The process is similar for iOS:

1. Go to the Settings app and choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars
2. Select your MobileMe account (it will be titled with your @me.com address)
3. Turn the switch to “OFF” beside Calendars

Be sure that your actual iCloud account has Calendars set to “ON” otherwise your calendars will no longer appear on the iOS device.

I hope this guide manages to help others who also wish to simplify this odd duality of iCloud accounts that Apple has created for the ‘devoted’ MobileMe crowd.

These are my options:

• Factory Unlocked – I can take it with me to Mexico and anywhere else in the world and use a local carrier for cheap. Great!
• $749 for the 32GB iPhone 4S – OUCH! That’s pricey.
• Only 1 year left on my contract with Rogers, then I’m free to re-negotiate and (probably) switch carriers

• Locked to Rogers for the full three (3!) years from today
• $269 $429 ($319 + $75 Hardware Upgrade fee + $35 Administration fee) for the 32GB iPhone 4S.
• Add another two years to my contract, putting me back to three years down the road until my next phone.

Can you tell why I refuse to renew my contract? Before I get into the details of my comparison, let me first say that I paid $199 for my iPhone 3GS two years ago and that my 3GS is unbearably slow to the extent that I am unable to do most of my work on my phone. The 4S will resolve this problem.

If I were in the US, my contract would be done and I wouldn’t be paying any penalties – I would be free and clear to pay the regular $299 for the 32GB iPhone 4S and enter into a new 2-year contract. Yes it would be $30 more in the US – $30 more for 1 less year on contract? I’ll take it! Oh wait, I can’t; not an option in the great white north. 2 years is reasonable, 3 is not. As of 5 years ago, three year contracts made sense since phone technology was advancing at a roughly equivalent pace. Every three years a new slew of phones would tide you over until three years after that. But it’s a new decade: phone technology is advancing so fast that 3 years is pretty much two lifetimes for a cellphone. 3 year contracts simply don’t make any sense anymore.

Wait, why is it so much more expensive than the new contract price of $269?

Good question. I filled out a bunch of inormation on Rogers’ website and it came back with the magic number of $429. Which means it’s marked up 63% above the normal 3-year contract price even though I’m getting exactly the same thing a brand new customer of Rogers would get. AND the phone remains locked.

For an additional $320 I get the wonderful ability to renegotiate my contract in a year (or change providers) and the ability to head anywhere in the world and make use of my phone at a decent rate. By the time I’m paying $429, what’s another $320?

The results of this analysis are that Rogers is failing to recognize a few key facts:

1. 3-year contracts no longer match with the pace of innovation in the mobile device market
2. I’m more than willing to pay a reasonable premium to do an early hardware upgrade. $160 on top of the regular price for the phone is not reasonable.
3. When your upgrade premium brings the price of the phone to more than 50% of the outright purchase price, it begins to tilt the scales in favour of buying outright. This is especially true because there are two major benefits to buying outright: factory unlocked condition and the ability to negotiate a new contract with retentions (or simply walk away).

Rogers should be doing a better job keeping their customers around. It’s in their best interest to keep you upgrading your phone and renewing your contract, yet these new upgrade policies are not accomplishing that. How can they do this? Here’s a few ways.

1. Come up with a better hardware upgrade policy – especially for those at the two year mark. I would be willing to pay $50 to do the upgrade a year early. Maybe as much as $75 – but no more than that. You’ll note that $75 brings the price to only 46% of the outright purchase price – keeping the balance below that precious 50% mark.
2. Do what they did a few years ago when the iPhone 3GS came out a year after the 3G. Upgrading to the 3GS (2 years early no less) from the 3G cost only $100 on top of the phone price. That also falls perfectly into line with my $50 at year 2 suggestion above ($50 / year early).
3. Reduce the benefits of buying outright. Allow customers to unlock their phones after a few months of their contract (or immediately after the return policy is over). If I didn’t have to wait until the end of the 3 year contract to unlock my phone, I would absolutely lock-in for another 3 year contract with Rogers and save the $320.

This past Sunday I walked in to Future Shop and was informed that just a few days before, staff were able to purchase the new HP TouchPad for only $150. Limited time offer. I was sorely disappointed that I missed this great opportunity. I thought, at the time, that this was simply a great way for HP to get salespeople onboard with the product. Let them take a TouchPad home at a great price and try it out for themselves, after all, there is absolutely no better way to become familiar with something than by using it yourself.

Not a week later it all began to make sense. They were giving them away cheap to be rid of overstocked inventory – HP is jumping ship on their long-promoted tablet.

But it doesn’t stop there! Now that the cat’s out of the bag and everyone knows that HP is leaving their tablet behind in the dust, they may as well get rid of ‘em cheap! Yep cheap enough to essentially compete with your average e-book reader. In fact, cheaper than the $139 priced Kobo Touch, Kindle and Nook! The TouchPad is now just $99.99 at Future Shop.

Here’s what I find unsettling about the whole situation. I was actually a bit upset that I didn’t get to sink $150 into the (now lost-cause) TouchPad just last week. I actually wanted one… at the time. Now I can go pick one up for even less than it was last week – for no more than I spend on a few weeks groceries – and yet, I don’t want it. I have absolutely no interest in spending less money on a device I was perfectly willing to spend $150 on last week. Bizarre.

My excitement with the TouchPad has always been in what it has the potential to do – you know, with some updates, in the future, once people actually start developing apps for it. I guess HP’s excitement was not in the same place. They wanted people to be excited with it for what it was immediately upon launch and, when the immediate excitement just wasn’t there, it got dumped. Guess the annoying Russel Brandt ads just weren’t enough (shocker). Android device manufacturers are in for the long-haul and they know it; it’s too bad for the casually interested, like me, that HP didn’t think the same way.

Short Introduction to the Google+ Launch

For those who have not had a chance to try out Google+, its greatest functionality essentially boils down to a mixture of the public nature of Twitter and the real-time conversations of Facebook. There’s also a great underlying layer of privacy control in the form of a fun-to-use interface that you’ve probably heard about called circles. The reason why circles isn’t really much to talk about anymore is because once you’ve got your big chunk of initial contacts within circles, you rarely see that interface again. You kind-of forget about it.

If you already had a Google account (read a Gmail account), then you didn’t really need to do much to get signed up except agree to their terms of services and start throwing contacts in circles. The barrier to entry is so small that millions of users signed up in the first month. This bodes well for Google because what’s a social network without users? You can post all you want, but without your friends, family, persons of interest and acquaintances, you’re not following or talking to anybody that is important to you. Since Twitter and Facebook cover persons of interest and friends, family and acquaintances already, if these folks don’t make their way to Google+ (at least a large portion of them), then why would you? Thankfully large numbers of them came in droves to test out Google+ and that first couple of weeks was alight with activity.

Notifications and the iPhone app

After a while, though, the pitfalls begin to stand out. You forget to continue visiting the website and realize that your only form of notifications is their constantly annoying emails. So you turn them off. Then you really forget to visit the website. Thankfully Google did one more thing right – they released the Google Plus app for Android and iPhone. My notifications started coming through and that initial hump was overcome. But the app (at least the iPhone one) isn’t perfect. And just like with the web service, the shortcomings of the app start showing as well.

The first big problem is the way notifications work on the iPhone app. When someone sends you a message the notification shows up in the messages area, but after you’ve read it, the notification remains. To clear it, you have to not only read the message, but also visit the notifications pane and refresh all the notifications. This is a few steps too many and most certainly gets frustrating when you’re getting dozens of messages (if not more) each day.

Huddle

Huddle is Google’s response to SMS replacement messengers like BlackBerry Messenger, Kik, Whatsapp, and the myriad of equivalents. When I first got the iPhone app, I was all for Huddle, it was faster to load than all of the other messengers and had roughly the same features. I was hooked. But as with everything else related to Google+ I began to get discouraged from using it due to the unfortunate behaviour of the application. The first problem was the notifications issue I mentioned above. The second issue is that everywhere I went that had low signal (whether wifi or 3G), my messages would start refusing to send. The annoying part is that it tells me they sent, then later on they’ll show me there was actually an error. I get the option to resend, but the resend button doesn’t do that! It brings the text of the message back to the text input box and I have to click send again – why make it two steps when it could easily be one? It’s not even close to the expected behaviour compared to all other apps that do the same thing. Clearly Google didn’t actually do their homework and use any of the other applications.

The most serious problem with Huddle is in the entire concept of how Huddle works. Huddle is only available in the mobile iPhone or Android application. You cannot use Huddle from the web interface even though the web interface already has a messenger application included! Google Plus web edition has Google Talk integrated in the same way Gmail does. People love Google Talk. So why in the world would Google make Huddle completely separate?! The worst part about all of this is that Facebook absolutely destroyed them on this very point.

During the launch of Google+, Facebook developers were hard at work integrating Facebook messages with Facebook chat. Just a few weeks after the launch of Google+, out came the new Facebook messaging platform – an integration of everything to do with private messaging through Facebook. From the email-like messages to the in-browser Facebook chat to Facebook chat on mobile devices, everything remains tightly integrated and in one combined messaging system. While I have my own tiny little personal issues with the new Facebook Messaging, overall it is extremely well done and absolutely destroys Google+ and their horribly fragmented chat and messaging systems. It sets the example for what should have happened with Huddle and Google Talk – they should have been one combined service. Had they done that, they would have beat Facebook to the punch and provided all first-mover Google+ users a good solid reason to stay with Google+. No such luck.

The non-existent API

I know what you’re thinking. “Why does anyone excluding developers care about an API?” Because they do, they just don’t know it yet. The existence of an API allows just about anyone to hook in to Google+ and make apps that take advantage of it. If Google had created an Google+ API right off the bat, what kinds of features could we all be taking advantage of? The biggest ones I was craving in those first few weeks are:

1. Notifications. Yep they came on the iPhone, but I also spend my time on my iPad and MacBook – no such luck there! I am a huge fan of the beautiful Boxcar app for notifications on my iPad and MacBook, but I can’t use Boxcar for Google+ notifications because Google+ provides no way for them to hook in to do so. Damn, too bad there’s not an API for that.
2. Automatic status updating. I already enjoy updating Facebook and Twitter. I do not want to update three or more services – that’s pretty damn time consuming. Dozens of applications already allow updating Facebook via Twitter and vice versa, but despite there being a demand for it, they cannot update Google+ because there’s no API.

I’m sure there are dozens of other great ways an API could benefit Google+. Too bad they weren’t on the ball here either.

How else should Google have integrated services? Does anyone remember their last ‘failed’ social media attempt? Google Buzz integrated your Facebook, Twitter and other services into one simple stream. So why aren’t Google Plus and Google Buzz integrated in any way? This one truly baffles me. If Google Buzz were integrated with my timeline in G+, my friends that prefer to update their Facebook status wouldn’t be a problem! I would then see their status updates in my Google Plus timeline. Those who prefer Google+ could then easily stick with it without the requirement to fall back on their Facebook timeline. Survey says: not happening.

Improvements Lacking

Here we are roughly 1.5 months later. Google has updated its iPhone Huddle app once and I discovered none of my only annoyances fixed. You might be thinking, give them time! But yet in this 1.5 month period Facebook has made massive changes to their messaging system to blow Google+ away (including the addition of video chat). In today’s world of connected apps, one week is a long time, and so when roughly seven of them pass without any major improvements, I (and I’m sure many others) begin to lose interest and faith that Google has the ability to improve the platform in a decent timeframe.

Google has historically been known to be way too slow to make changes. From what I’ve read, they have a problem when it comes to snap judgements and instead choose to launch multi-month studies to make their decisions. When you’ve got time to do this, that’s a fantastic approach. When your competitors are iterating faster than you, it’s time to wise-up and change your decision making methods in order to keep pace. I have yet to see this from Google+ and my hesitation towards the service grows ever stronger.

Why, if I hate cooking, am I posting about it? My cousin, Jesse, is the master chef and, along with her Sister’s design work, I helped put the site together. Regardless of this affiliation, the food really does look amazing and, if you have even the weakest of interest in cooking, then you absolutely should check it out!

Oh and for one other reason: Jesse is finally doing what she loves and I’m proud to have been able to help her get there.

http://www.outtolunchcreations.com

The general idea: Do what you love and put your passion into it. Don’t think about how to get money from it, just do it and build your brand equity. The money will eventually come. It contains similar teachings as found in the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, a book that I refer to every single week for some 80/20 magic or motivation.

My favourite quote from this comes near the very end: “stop watching FUCKING Lost.”

So, how do you one up this toilet paper roll menace? By taking out a new roll and leaving it on the counter. I just don’t understand it. By the time you’ve delved under the sink, ripped the roll out of its packaging and placed it on the counter, why not replace the old one too? You’ve already completed more than half the work!

So now you know. To one up the empty toilet paper roll and simultaneously defy all rationality, take out a new roll and leave it directly beside the old one.

It’s only gotten worse.

With cell phones and the horrible fact that everyone thinks an immediate answer is necessary at all times, we’ve become dependant upon interruptions to go about our daily lives. In an office you’re interrupted non-stop for meetings, updates, reports, what-have-you. On your computer or tablet, you’re interrupted by notifications from Twitter, Facebook, Emails, and just about every application on your favorite device.

It never ends! Except that it can; you rule your life, whether you know it or not.

There’s a fix for every one of these problems. To accomplish this, I have defined areas where I’m OK with interruptions and areas that I’m not. First up, telephone calls.

Telephone Calls

I cannot stand telephone calls – they interrupt whatever I’m doing no matter what it is at any point in the day (or night). The call may just be a friend or family member looking for a status update while I’m trying to fix a serious issue with a server. No way it makes sense for me to answer that! If I’m in the midst of reading a rather complicated chapter of an important book (non-fiction informational typically) a telephone call could make me need to read the chapter all over again. If I’m programming, a telephone call can make me lose track of what I’m working on and start the whole section anew (wasting precious hours of my time). What to do?!

Let everyone know you don’t want phone calls. Set up your voicemail to inform others that they’re welcome to leave a voicemail, though email is preferred (email is quicker to respond to and gather information than is voicemail). Tell people to email you or text message you, but not to expect an immediate response at all times. If people understand your methods, they’re more likely to obey them.

This also lends a hand to prioritization and emergencies. If someone only calls you when its an emergency, you’re much more likely to answer the call than if they call you all of the time. You could accidentally ignore an emergency if you don’t have something like this set up purely because you’re accustomed to all of your phone calls being of the same importance level. How can you prioritize a phone call if you don’t know what it’s about? You simply can’t unless you’ve arranged the call in advance – likely by email.

People in your face

I hear people constantly joking about families that are emailing or text messaging each other within the same household – often across the hallway or room from each other. And they scoff at it. But it’s effective and efficient! And hey, it can be pretty fun too. This works exactly the same for offices. Why would you walk down the hall (or across the room) and interrupt someone’s workflow? The only time it makes sense is if there is an urgent matter to deal with immediately. In every other case, both people are benefited by emailing instead. Why? The person who gets up to go talk to you clearly has nothing better to do or is avoiding doing work. You get interrupted in the midst of whatever you’re doing, and overall the net productivity of the situation is considerably lower than if the information being passed on were simply emailed.

But I can’t describe the problem by email

Bullshit. Most people are horrible at describing things in general. But when you sit down to itemize the information you’re trying to transmit, it’s amazing how clear it can become! By outlining a description on your computer, you have the ability to actually see what it is that you are saying and realize that you haven’t been saying it very clearly all along. This happens to me all the time, and those that think they don’t need it are almost always wrong. There are exceptions. Some people are excellent at formulating thoughts (even long ones) in their heads, but most of us simply aren’t built that way. For the rest of us, there’s writing.

Next time you’re excited about telling someone something that’s rather long, instead of running up to them and describing that thing, write it down and itemize it. Put it in clear terms without editing as you go along. When you’re done, sleep on it and read over it the next morning. You will see how unclear and completely unoptimized it truly is! This is a quick exercise to see how you can improve communications with others, but I wouldn’t do this every time. After a while you can edit as you go along and come up with roughly the same effectiveness as before while improving your speed greatly. Not only do you improve your ability to communicate that thought but you improve your writing skills in general – this can only be a good thing in the Internet age.

If I don’t get back to person x, they’ll think I don’t care!

While this is certainly possible with some people these days, the people that really matter, whether in business or your person life, will not fault you for this. You would be surprised how understanding people are of simply needing a bit of time to answer a question. If these people are not understanding, are you sure you want to be doing business with them? If it’s a friend, well perhaps it’s time to space yourself just a little bit from this person – for the sake of your sanity.

Choose your weapon: prioritization on all of your devices

My computer tends to be my notification frenzy device. I typically leave a dozen apps running that notify me of things, like Facebook notifier, Twitter, Mail, Sparrow, OmniFocus, Evernote, Skype, Adium and possibly more I’m not thinking of. This means when I need to get some real work done, I need to do one of two things. I can quit all those programs and only use the one I need to be working on or I can switch to a notification free device

My iPad is my weapon of choice for no interruptions; it’s a mostly notification free device. I use it to read, write and research, all of which should be done in an interruption free environment, so I disabled notifications from anything that pops up regularly enough to annoy me. I take my iPad with me any time I need to get anything done (except programming sadly).

My iPhone is somewhere in the middle. I’ve disabled push notifications for almost everything except the most important business interruptions and key messenger programs like Kik and SMS that only really work well on the iPhone with its constant cellular connection. I have business support tickets set up for push, but NOT all emails. This way people who actually need help can get through to me immediately, while the rest can await my next free moment, at which time I will open the Mail app and take a gander.

Signal to noise ratio (SNR)

SNR comes from sound or radio communications where you want to eliminate noise and focus in on the signal. Sound familiar? It should – you’ve just been reading over 1000 words about it. You’re improving the signal to noise ratio of the information all around you by taking some or all of these tips to heart. I’ve been living with these types of adjustments to my life for roughly the past year and a half and it is completely liberating. I find when I need to get things done, they get done considerably faster than before and my stress levels remain comparatively low.

My only regret? Not realizing I needed to do this before I started university.

My friend and colleague went on vacation in Florida with his Bell Canada locked iPhone. A few days in he discovered that he had been charged $0.75 for every text message in and out, and due to his obsession for text messaging, this added up to around the $200 mark. This is unfortunate, but certainly not Bell’s problem that my friend had forgotten to obtain an appropriate roaming plan for texting in the US.

After realizing his mistake, he called Bell and spoke to a representative to arrange having a roaming package added to his account. The package details were $30 for the month to make his text messages $0.20 per text rather than $0.75. My friend expected this would take effect for the remainder of his time in Florida and was pleasantly surprised when the Bell rep informed him that he could retroactively apply the package to all previous text message charges incurred in Florida, thus negating the excessive charges on his account. Thanks to the excellent support provided by the Bell Canada representative, my friend was satisfied and hung up a happy man.

Two days later his phone was disabled.

Upon return home from Florida, with a nearly useless cellphone because Bell’s automated system had disabled it for being over a predetermined limit on the account (about $300), my friend called Bell to inquire as to what had gone wrong. Since the only way for that amount to accumulate on his account is if the rep didn’t apply the package correctly, one would assume that Bell would take care of this by fixing up the account (applying the package) and re-enabling his phone. Nope. Not even close. Here’s what really happened.

Another call to Bell revealed the following key points:

1. They have all of the notes in their system showing what the first representative had done – you know, the guy who provided excellent customer service.
2. The Bell rep and about three supervisors all claim that the notes are invalid because the rep was wrong about being able to do everything he said he could do and thus the charges are valid.
3. Although the phone being disabled was entirely the result of a poorly trained representative of Bell (in other words, Bell’s fault), nobody at Bell can re-enable his phone because the balance has not yet been paid

This leaves us with a completely ridiculous situation. To re-active the phone, my friend must pay $300+ which he should never have owed to begin with, then make a claim against Bell to have them refund the amount he shouldn’t be paying because of their error. Why would Bell ever agree to pay him back any of that money? If they’re refusing to admit that he shouldn’t owe it now, then why would they change their mind and pay it back to him after the fact? That’s just asking to get robbed.

Let’s go back and examine the real problem(s) here and see how a rational supervisor or manager might resolve this. Firstly, the Travel USA Text bundle does exist – the rep could not have been wrong about that. You can see it right here on Bell’s website with all the details as described above ($30 for $0.20 texts and 150 included for free). Thus it seems likely that the wrongdoing on the original Bell rep’s part came in the form of backdating the plan – it’s likely that this is not actually possible and that it would only apply to all text messages following the date my friend called to add the plan. Although it is certainly a problem that the rep thought he could do this, let’s say there’s absolutely no way to ever backdate a plan, such that Bell assumes my friend is lying, even though he is not. Then my friend is still on the hook for the original $200 applied up until the day that he called. What he should have absolutely no claim to pay is any fees above $0.20 per text beyond the first 150 from the day he called. Yet his bill is $100 higher only a few days later because Bell did not actually apply the plan.

The solution is simple then. Bell admits that they have terrible training issues that result in ridiculous overcharges that they refuse to take care of for their customers, re-enables the phone and removes all charges above and beyond the $200 initial charges + fair rates for all other text messages based on the Travel US roaming plan. This is the perfect compromise scenario.

Bell’s Solution

Rather than the compromise I described, Bell takes the road of incompetence. “Sorry, we don’t have the ability to re-enable your account until you pay your $300 bill”

And that’s that. Apparently they really don’t have the ability to do anything – nobody at Bell has the ability to re-enable cell phones. Nobody.

Conclusions

1. Nobody – including supervisors and managers – has control over Bell’s software system, and thus no employee is empowered to actually accomplish anything, leading to terrible customer support.
2. Supervisors at bell have no comprehension of conflict resolution, let alone the compromises that are required for this to occur.
3. Staff at Bell are not properly trained on how their software works and what they are capable of doing (and of course what they are not capable of doing).
4. My friend should stop texting so much.

Despite my distaste for Rogers’ handling of unlocking iPhones, I have, overall, had great experiences with them. Not once have I encountered a situation that their telephone reps were not empowered to do regarding my own personal account and iPhone (albeit with a few transfers to higher departments here and there). Even when I posted about my confusion and frustration regarding unlocking my Mother’s iPhone, I was met with a response providing clarity on their policies and, although I didn’t agree with one of them, I was told it would be forwarded on to the higher-ups. This may not be true, but at least they tried to help me out. I am appalled that any customer service oriented company (really that’s all cellular service is) could have such a lack of empowered employees. Clearly I will never be using a Bell service in the future, and any sane person reading this should follow suit.