My latest adventure wasn’t quite as amusing as the move in. The battery in my Blackberry Pearl tried going union on me for a while and would only hold a charge for 12 hours, not a minute longer. It did this for a few days, beeping for power after 12 hours, like clockwork. I reformatted my phone, as the Tech at Rogers suggested, and it got a Bit better … it held a charge for a full 24 hours 0_o  Rogers was going to send me a replacement battery. Now, for Whatever crazy reason, I thought a replacement Anything would be new. I know, you’re probably thinking ‘silly girl’… The word “refurbished” only came out of any CSR’s mouth After the fact.

The fun started with trying to get the package delivered. (With a blackberry they have to send a phone as well, not just the battery. That’s just how RIM rolls right now) I rent a room at the back of the house, on the 2nd floor. There is no doorbell because the front door serves both halves of the house; there’s a solarium between the shared front door and our house door. I can’t hear knocking at the back of the house. Because of my location Rogers has to use UPS, yes “has to”. I don’t get that but whatever. I didn’t hear the knock the first day and the UPS site said the next delivery attempt would be the next business day. UPS attempts 3 deliveries before they make you go to their sort hub to get your package. I found out the drivers don’t have phones, just pagers. So to get my package I was going to have to wait downstairs so I could hear the driver knocking.

For the next delivery attempt the driver can either check a box or circle a time; the day is broken into 4 time slots. My driver had checked off and circled 2 time slots. This looked quite messy and to me wasn’t showing a clear attempt time. The day of attempt # 2 I called UPS to confirm there’d be a 2nd delivery attempt that day and was told I should start waiting for the driver very shortly. So I get some things to keep myself occupied and went downstairs to wait. When I had to use the washroom, which is upstairs, I Ran in case the driver showed up while I was occupied. At almost 5 I called UPS to see if the driver was still going to show up that day. The driver had given himself a window of 10:30 – 5 and I was told that 1) he wasn’t allowed to check off 2 time slots and 2) once 5pm hit the CSR department could make a complaint with dispatch about the driver being late. It was about 2 minutes ’til 5 at this time but I figured the driver Had to be arriving shortly so I returned to my vigil, watching my roommates come and go. At 6 a UPS truck drove past the house, not even slowing down, and then stopped at the end of the street with it’s parking lights flashing. I grabbed my cell and called UPS to let them know my driver was nearby in case he couldn’t find my house  and was trying to reach his dispatcher for directions (this only makes sense if it was a different driver from the last delivery attempt, that driver obviously knew where my house was). This ‘helpful’ CSR person told me that perhaps the driver had another delivery before mine (I told him I live on a one-way street, it would make no sense to drive Past my house when the driver would have to circle back to make my delivery – which should only be a small box). Then the CSR person tells me the driver has until 7pm to drop off my package. Um… Excuse me??? I’m supposed to be waiting from 10:30 – 7pm? I don’t fricking think so! But the CSR guy (sounded older as in “I’m old and don’t give a shit”) had No interest in helping me so I once again waited. At 7pm I went up to my room and checked online to see what the system would say when a delivery attempt wasn’t made. To my disbelief the system said that there had been a 2nd attempt at 6:40pm. I even want outside to look for the delivery notice sticker that would be on the door if the driver had Indeed been at the house. There was NO sticker!!!! I called UPS, furious. I’d waited for SEVEN bloody hours for this driver who then lied about doing his job. I immediately asked for a supervisor and explained the situation and was told the driver’s supervisor would be talking to him and that someone from dispatch would be calling me the next morning so that I could be given a more accurate delivery time than ‘any time during the day’.

The next day I did get a call, at 11:30 am, to tell me they would be getting in contact with the driver to find out an approximate delivery time. (Approximate was supposed to be a 30 minute window, not hours this time) At 2pm I had still not heard back from dispatch. I made the mistake of not asking for a supervisor this time and that was a HUGE mistake. The CSR person I spoke to (another older worker, a woman this time) shouldn’t be working customer service for ANY company that actually wants to keep their customers. She defended the poor customer service and poor work ethic I’d experience. She made SO many excuses for why this quality of customer service was acceptable. It was truly shocking. Since the system said there’d been a 2nd delivery attempt the fact that I’d been stationed at the front of the house for 7 hours and there was NO new delivery attempt sticker on the house didn’t phase her. The system was right and I was wrong. Then she pointed out that during the 7 hour vigil I Had used the washroom, thereby possibly missing the driver that way. That doesn’t explain the lack of delivery attempt sticker And she doesn’t feel a customer has the right to use the washroom in a 7 hours period. Awesome. Can you fell the love? When I told her dispatch hadn’t called me back she said that they’d done there job, that they only had to call once. The person who’d called me Said they were going to call back!! So, in this woman’s mind, not doing your job Is doing your job. I Finally got this woman to put in a request to dispatch to call me back. Dispatch called me not 5 minutes later! The driver was supposed to be there within half an hour (I was skeptical) and He showed up about 5-10 minutes after that! He was probably going to blow me off that day too (and probably lie about it again), it seemed like he was ordered to divert directly to my house so they didn’t have to deal with me anymore.

Note to self: write people’s names down!! Hard to complain about ‘that crotchety old person’.

Anywho I’d finally got my package; I went right up to my room, opened the box, and found this…

The battery was just floating around the box loose too. I guess the person who packed it up figured it was garbage anyway, why secure the battery so it doesn’t get thrown around while being delivered?

I kid you not this is Exactly what the battery looked like. My battery may not be great but NO DOG HAS CHOMPED ON IT!!! I Immediately got on the phone to the Delivery Desk at Rogers and inquired as to why they’d send me a battery that has quite literally been the dog’s breakfast, where to send it back to and where to send the pictures I’d taken of the battery. The person at the Delivery Desk (I Did think to write down his name) first tried telling me that if it was sent to me then it must have worked when they tested it. Are you fricking kidding me?? My baby probably has more gray matter and common sense than half the people I encountered during those 2 days. Rogers’ Customer Service told me to talk to the Delivery Desk about how to go about the return and the Delivery Desk told me to… you guessed it, talk to Customer Service. Awesome, just freaking awesome. As well as having explained the situation to the guy at the Delivery Desk and the people I spoke to at Customer Service I wrote a complaint via their website, to leave a nice trail of people who understood the issue with the ‘dog’s breakfast’ battery. The site said I’d get a response within 24 hours. When did I get a reply? 48 hours later. The responder assumed I’d held onto the package awaiting the ‘words of wisdom’ that the gods at Rogers had for me. I was told to include the pictures of the battery… with the battery (I’d asked where I could send the pictures – they were electronic, not hard copy. Who has actual pictures these days?) So they expected me to pay for printing pictures of a piece of hardware that was going to be physically returned to them anyway. I explained that I’d given the package back to UPS the very same day it was delivered to me, and that Rogers were cheap bastards if they couldn’t take their own damn pictures. I worked for a company that had 40 employees and They were able to afford their own digicam. I suggested that if Rogers didn’t have a digicam on the premises then they should seriously consider acquiring one. I pointed out that they should make it policy to NOT send out dog chewed hardware as replacement parts, since that obviously wasn’t currently a policy in their warehouse.

I then had an awful thought: that despite the phone and email trail I’d left of the battery fiasco, that Rogers would try to say that I’d caused the damage and that they’d sent me a good battery. The Only silver lining in this story is that Rogers didn’t eff up any further and didn’t try to charge me for their mistake. I also found out that the battery that comes with Blackberry’s likes to be fully charged, you can leave it plugged in all the time. My battery doesn’t hold a charge for a huge amount of time but with it always plugged in I won’t notice :D Ignorance is bliss :) Now if my phone does this to me Again I think I”m going to be making me some jam!!