Bell Mobility phone credit mysteriously disappears

About a month ago I checked the info in my Bell Mobility account online and it showed a $100 credit with a second $100 credit kicking in on Feb. 14th, 2010 so I dropped by my local Bell store last weekend and confirmed the info. The person I dealt with at the Bell store even took the time to print out my account information and we discussed the various phones I could upgrade to on the 14th.

Today (the 14th) I show up at the same Bell store to upgrade my phone and the credit is gone. Same sales clerk who printed out my account info last week and confirmed the $200 credit looks at me straight in the eye and says "you have a $100 credit showing in your account but it's not supposed to kick in until next month".

The Bell salesperson did not give me the printout when I dropped by last week (I was told they never give out the printouts...) so I have no record of the missing credit. She would not confirm or deny the fact that last week we spent over a half hour going over the various phones and discussed my upgrade options in detail...

Now I'm supposed to fight it out with Bell customer support on Tuesday but have no written proof. I had a witness with me but all "written" documentation simply evaporated so I'm not holding my breath.

Anyone else had this happen??

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From time to time Bell does change their policy on hardware upgrades. In reality, no provider is required to give you these upgrade discounts and where it is not part of your contract they can change them as they see fitting.

It deffinatley does suck when it happens but is perfectly legit.

I agree this is not illegal but it I wouldn't say it's smart. A sales person in a Bell store told me to wait a week so I would have the full $200 credit so I followed their advice only to end up with no credit at all.

I inquired and found out Bell can periodically roll back incentives without any warning so I got caught in the middle of a roll back with no recourse. Completely legal.

Bell could simply offer to extend their incentives for a day or two to existing customers who risk losing their full hardware upgrade credit if the roll back date happens to be their upgrade "anniversary" date. Doing good by your customer is just smart business, that's all.

In the end, I was able to work something out but it wasn't easy.

Let's just say Bell needs to become a lot more customer focused.

I actually had this happen to me last summer!! Up until i read this thread, I almost literally i though I was going nuts.

I seen my upgrade credit on the online account system of $250, went in to Bell store to pick out a new phone for the wife. The sales guy confirmed the credit by looking at his computer screen. We proceeded to pick out a phone, (one of them cleos) but didn't have it in pink. He said he would get it form another store location and to come back the next morning. Next morning, I went back..

To make a long story short, the original sales guy was not working and the girl that was working couldn't find any trace of any upgrade credit on our account, but did however did find the phone that was transferred from one store to the store I was at. It didn't have any notes on the phone except for my name. I even went to the computers set up to demo the high speed internet service and logged onto my 'online account' and POOF, it was gone..
The sales girl and bell CS did however talk to one another on the phone and confirmed it was a little over 3 years since I had used an upgrade and ended up giving me the $250 credit back, plus 150 extra bonus minutes, which was only supposed to be for 3 months, but here i am a year later, and still have the extra 150 mins.

It's almost like, once the maximum upgrade credit has been achieved, you only have a set period of time to use it or loose it. Maybe not, but its a possibility that is either not advertised, or is a glitch that they aren't aware of.