Hello there!  I'm Matt Chadwick at the business desk and as part of our commitment to keeping you abreast of various types of consumer complaints, and problems between consumers and companies, I'd like to tell you about a growing problem that's taking place right in our backyard. 

For the last month we have been receiving several emails from Canadian consumers complaining about a long distance company called Telehop.  According to the general comments, this company continues to place commercials on both radio and TV advertising very low rates to such places as:  India, the Philippines, the Caribbean, England, various parts of Europe, and of course to America and Canada.  We sent our investigators to look into this and here's what they came back with.

Telehop has several radio and TV commercials advertising their low rates to these places and they use a general theme of "Call the world for less than a dollar."  The commercials are very attention grabbing and many people have signed up for Telehop's services.  However, several of them have been complaining that the services are very poor. 

It appears that Telehop is using very low grade lines of communication and when someone makes a long distance call to places outside of Canada, the communication is extremely poor.  Persons are unable to hear their parties and in return those being called are unable to hear their callers.  Several emailers have told us that when they complain, no one responds and even when they leave phone messages for the customer service supervisor he never responds.  

In addition to this, we have persons telling us that some of the customer reps at Telehop don't seem able to communicate efficiently in English, and this is very disconcerting because when a person calls they are offered the option of choosing service in either English or French and if they choose the option of service in English then they should be able to receive appropriate service in English and not from someone who is unable to communicate proficiently in English.  

Our investigators went a step further and tried finding some sort of consumer affairs or consumer advocate group to take these complaints to and to their surprise they were unable to find any.  They centered their investigation in Toronto Ontario and one government of Ontario consumer hotline blatantly said that they were unable to help.  

I don't think that these types of problems are uncommon.  As a matter of fact, these complaints are quite commonplace right here in the United States.  It appears that Telehop is providing sub standard service at very low rates and that their customer service for the most part is lacking in courtesy and responsiveness.  It is up to the consumer to help themselves and they can do this by simply switching to another long distance provider.  This may not be acceptable to many but based on our investigation I don't see what else can be done.  However, if consumers feel that they have been mistreated then the by word of mouth method can surely help.  If you're one of those unhappy Telehop customers then tell your friends and family about it.  Tell others and sooner than later Telehop is bound to get the message. 

 

I wish you a pleasant day and I'll leave you with some useful info.

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