1. TL;DR Here are the lessons I learned the hard way, so you don’t have to: 1. Lesson 1: 1. Switch your Fido landline to a prepaid mobile line before attempting to transfer 2. Lesson 2: 1. Go to the Freedom store to switch (do not try to do it over the phone) 3. Final Thoughts I know I’ve been moaning about the challenges I’ve had switching away from Fido over the last few weeks. Despite the hassle, I’m glad I made the switch. It’s going to save us a lot of money and I will no longer be giving money to Rogers, a company I do not like. We had four lines with Fido: a “landline” and mobile lines for me, my husband and my mum.1 I switched our 3 mobile lines from Fido to Freedom and our landline from a Fido “landline” to Fongo. ## **TL;DR Here are the lessons I learned the hard way, so you don’t have to:** ### **Lesson 1:** #### **Switch your Fido landline to a prepaid mobile line _before_ attempting to transfer** This is a very specific instruction that only applies to anyone using a Fido or similar service with a cell phone to landline adapter. I got myself all signed up for Fongo and submitted my request to have my number transferred late one evening. The next morning I got a text from Fido stating that a number associated with my account had requested to be transferred to a different service and I needed to reply to the text sent to that line. The problem is: LANDLINES CANNOT RECEIVE TEXT MESSAGES. _Fido landlines are a bit weird. Technically it is like a cell phone line without data or texting and the SIM chip goes into a device that you can plug a landline into._ I tried calling Fido, but just went circles with their AI voice bot until finally I convinced them they could **_not_** help me and they offered to schedule a call back… the soonest was four days later! In the meantime, Fongo kept sending me messages about failed attempts to port my number over and that I needed to approve the transfer with my carrier. If I had too many failed attempts, I would get charged a fee. Fongo does not have a way to reach them by phone. Their email correspondence is pretty good, but they didn’t seem capable of helping me to troubleshoot how to port over the Fido line. They just suggested getting a 72 hour authorization window. Finally the day for the call back came and someone actually called. He was adamant that Fido was not preventing my line from being transferred and said the other carrier needed to submit a different request. I asked if I could get a 48-72 hour authorization window, but he wouldn’t help. I was beginning to think I’d never be able to get away from the Fido landline until I had the idea to switch it to a pay-as-you-go line. Back to the Fido store I went (I had to go there for my mum’s phone, see below). I didn’t want to say what my end goal was, in case the Fido rep wouldn’t help me, so I just said I needed to be able to receive text messages on this number because so many places (like doctors offices) send text messages to confirm appointments now. He said it could be tricky to switch from Fido monthly to Fido pre-paid, so he helped me switch to Chatr (another Rogers company). That transfer was not smooth either, but thankfully he was able to help me reach people sooner and eventually I was transferred to someone who could help me authorize the transfer. The catch was I needed to answer the phone… and I was not at home. I had to call my husband away from a work meeting to get him to go in the house to answer the phone, but I got it done. By this point I was pretty burnt out by the whole experience and wanted a break from it all. I was also worried that I wouldn’t be able to port the number again so soon after porting it, so I reached out to Fongo and asked if we could schedule the port for over a week later. The night before, I made sure the SIM was in an old cell phone so that I could reply affirmatively to the authorization text. Then it just took a few more days for the number to be ported over. That happened this morning and I’m happy to report that it works!! I also checked to make sure the Chatr line was disconnected and it’s showing no service now. Hooray! ### Lesson 2: #### **Go to the Freedom store to switch (do not try to do it over the phone)** I live approximately 15 km away from the nearest store so I thought I would simplify my life by doing it over the phone. It did the opposite. First of all, something glitched when transferring my Mum’s number and she got stuck with a temporary number for a week while I tried to figure out how to re-associate her number with a phone. In an effort to figure out why my mum’s number hadn’t transferred, I tried calling Fido again. As before, I got the AI voice bot and eventually was able to make an appointment for a call back and it was just a couple hours later. Unfortunately, no one called. During the time I was waiting for the call back I received not one but TWO calls from their “Win Back Team”. I told the second person I was waiting on a call back that never happened and asked them if they could help me with an account issue. They said no, but they transferred me to a different number line. I can’t remember if I had to chat with the AI voice bot again or not but I wasn’t forced to make an appointment, I just went straight to hold (so much hold music2). I was still at my mum’s place and, after over an hour on hold, I had to start to make my way back home. I wore my headphones as I biked over to the ferry terminal, so I wouldn’t miss it if the person answered. Not too long after I got to the ferry terminal someone picked up, but he said he couldn’t hear me and told me to move to a different location. I biked back up to the top of the hill, but no luck. I asked if he could put me on hold for another hour so I could get to a different location, but he couldn’t. So I had to give up on that call. I ended up going to the Fido store and getting the salesperson to add her line to my phone. Then, a few days later, I took her to the Freedom store to have the number transferred to her phone. Second, I wasn’t able to complete the credit check over the phone so they said I could prepay for the first month of service for my line and my mum’s. This was fine with me because I know that cell plans usually bill you for the month in advance anyway. What I only gathered in retrospect was that they actually put us on a prepaid line and then cancelled the prepaid line once our numbers were transferred to the monthly plan. I did not realize this until our first bill arrived and it didn’t show the pre-payments I’d made. Thankfully, after a lengthy phone call, I was able to get them to credit my account for the payments I’d made. If I had gone to the store, this wouldn’t have happened because they can do the credit check more easily in person. ### **Final Thoughts** I was about ready to file a complaint with the CRTC about how impossible it is to reach a person at Fido. I probably still will. It is honestly awful. The AI texting bot on their website and the AI voice bot over the phone are incredibly frustrating and then having to wait days for a call back, is just the worst. I’d been with Fido for over 25 years. They used to have exceptional customer service. It’s been rapidly worsening, but I think even as recent as last year I was able to speak to a person when I called in (they weren’t always the most knowledgeable about the products, but at least it was something). Now it’s next to impossible to reach someone and when you do, it feels like they’re intentionnally trying to be difficult. Freedom, at least for now, does have real people who answer the phones and you don’t have to wait long or jump through AI voice bot hoops to get someone. Since switching, my mum had some dropped calls, which is concerning. After talking to a friend and the Freedom rep it could be due to a few things, including the fact that her phone is quite old. Apparently Freedom has free roaming, so they suggested turning that on in case she’s in an area that doesn’t get great Freedom reception and Wi-Fi calling can also help, when at home. I was able to turn on roaming and will try to get the Wi-Fi calling set up at her house tomorrow. Hopefully that solves it all, but a friend has also kindly offered her a newer phone, as hers may not be able to connect to the newer networks. We’ll see how it goes with Fongo, which is a VOIP service. It is a quarter of the price of what our Fido landline was costing. There’s no phone number to call to get support (but calling Fido’s number for support is just frustrating, so it’s still better than that), and thankfully Fongo’s email support seems pretty decent. They also have some interesting features. For instance, it looks like I’ll get voicemails sent as attachments by email. I used to have this with my Shaw landline and I loved it, I often forget to check for voicemails since we lost that. There is also a call forwarding option where, if you don’t answer after X number of rings, it can forward it to another number. I think this could be really useful. I don’t always know which number people have for me and I’m often not home. We don’t get a lot of calls on our landline, so I don’t think this would be obtrusive. I plan to test it out. Maybe I’ll write an update in a few months to report back on how satisfied we are with the new service providers, but for now that is all I have to say on it. :-) * * * _This post was written quickly and without a lot of proofreading - please excuse any typos and/or grammatical errors. :-) I might come back to it at some point, but I if I don’t publish it now, I may never get back to it. Thank you for reading! <3_ * * * 1. Almost a year ago now we added her as an extra line to our account. She had been with Telus and did not have data on her plan. She kept getting charged ridiculous fees any time she used even the smallest amount of data. Plus, the plan she was on was more expensive than the plan we could get her on that included a lot of data. ↵ 2. I was on hold for so long that the hold music kept getting stuck in my head for a week or so after. I kept thinking, ‘what is this catchy tune I’m humming?’, and then I’d remember and try to switch to a different song - often I’d switch to this Tori song. ↵

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