Bell Canada's Door-to-Door Sales Force Is Trained to Deceive

The Toronto Star and the CBC report that door-to-door salespeople contracted by Bell Canada have misled new customers into accepting contracts for telecommunication services with false promises of price freezes and package details that later turn out to be untrue. After these stories broke, former sales rep Krys Weiss came forward to the CBC to explain that as a contracted employee, he was coached to purposely mislead potential customers about the services and pricing they would actually receive, in order to secure new signups, and receive a commission for each.

"I wasn't telling the whole truth," Weiss says. "I was only telling the small things and leaving out the big things that could be potential harm for them." Weiss lasted for two months on the job, and he feels regret for some of things he did, like selling Internet service to an elderly resident that didn’t even own a computer.

Bell is currently on a huge push to roll out Fibre to the Home (FTTH) in major cities across Canada, replacing its aging DSL technologies which cannot compete with gigabit cable speeds. The FTTH network offers the media holy grail triple-play of Internet, subscription TV, and home phone, so the opportunity to leverage additional revenue for each subscriber is significant, and necessary to pay for the new fiber build.

The challenge for Bell is to convince current satisfied cable customers to switch to thier FTTH once the fibre is ready, customers who would never consider past Bell offerings. So Bell's strategy is to employ door-to-door sales staff under contract, to add that personal touch and convince new subscribers with wonderful promises of what fiber can do. Our members have reported having "shady", "sleazy", "hilariously bad" and "aggressive" sales visits from Bell doorknockers in recent years.

Further complicating matters for Bell is a CRTC ruling that requires Bell to allow wholesale third party internet access (TPIA) over these new fiber lines. Bell fought tooth and nail in many proceedings and hearings to keep exclusive access to their shiny new fiber, but lost in the end. While there are currently no TPIA's currently available over FTTH in Canada just yet, Bell has managed to instill enough delay in the regulatory process to try and recruit as many new customers as possible to higher priced bundle packages with subscription television before TPIAs can erode Bell's potential customer base.

Shrewd customers that realize the huge fiber pipe may make traditional TV service delivered over fiber unattractive with many other competing over-the-top services, would not bode well for Bell's bottom line. Not to mention that BellMedia owns many TV stations in Canada's extremely vertically integrated media market for which they wish to generate revenue through their own craftily built TV packages.

Once a new customer is recruited, the sales agent initiates a telephone call with a Bell customer service agent, and the customer agrees to the terms of the contract verbally over the phone. But the customer never offered a copy of the contract before agreeing to those terms, and since all the discussions are verbal, the customer is not able to review the contract before signing, and there is no record of what was said at the door. Bell claims that the contract will be sent at a later date, but often never is, or blames internal system failures as an excuse as to why it mysteriously was not delivered. Strange then, that bills are always delivered to the service address.

After a few months, the new Bell customer may notice their bill has increased, despite a promise from that friendly face at the door. Then after sitting on hold waiting to speak to a customer support agent, and arguing their case, they may actually discover the truth: Bell contracts are for a promotional discount only, which means only the discount is protected by a contract, and the base price can increase whenever Bell feels like it. While these customers are shocked at what Bell's idea of a contract is, it's something that we've seen at DSLReports from Bell for over eight years.

CBC will be airing a half-hour episode of it's long-running Marketplace consumer affairs show tonight at 8PM EDT, with an undercover exposé of Bell's door-to-door sales practices.