This has got to be one of the strangest business practices I have ever seen. Ever since I have been helping my parents with their phone issues I have kind of concluded that this carrier called iTalkBB has for whatever reason disabled the number or they have lost control of it. So after talking to the customer service where they mentioned they would get back to me it seemed like they simply don’t know what to do.
As I went to the store at first the people there assumed it must have been something on my parent’ s end such as blaming their internet connection. But I brought the modem to their store to test and sure enough they couldn’t get it to work either. This was the odd thing. Now for most businesses the best practice would be to help find out what is wrong. But as the sales person looked in the system they apparently couldn’t even find the number.
So the iTalkBB worker suggested the easy way to deal with the situation would be for me to phone in the customer service line and cancel the service. At the same time, my parents can sign up for a 1 year plan where she will get a new box and number. Plus she will be given 3 months of free service. My immediate thought was that makes absolutely no sense.
For one thing, that would essentially be allowing the company to in a sense violate a service contract agreement if they did indeed do something with the number. The other odd thing is that my parent’s phone plan is currently month to month and the person’s offer would now essentially tie her up in a contract. It felt shady too where my assumption is the store gets say maybe commission or a bonus of sort for signing up people for contracts. In that regards this offer seemed insincere where it felt like the person was more interested in making a sale.
Can you imagine if a cell phone carrier did that to you where your number suddenly doesn’t work and then they suggest to you a fix would be to cancel your own service and then sign up for a new phone plan with the salesman? I was thinking too, if the company messed up in this case and cannot fix it then why wouldn’t the same thing happen later? This iTalkBB company sure has a strange business culture.