Rogers call centre employees pressured to upsell customers

Photographer: Benjamin Child

Photographer: Benjamin Child

 

“Call centre employees working for Rogers Communications say the telecom company is pressuring them to try to make a sale on every call — even to elderly people who don’t understand or need certain products or services,” wrote Erica Johnson for CBC News on January 14, 2018.

Johnson continued, “In emails and interviews with Go Public, dozens of Rogers workers say they’re under “extreme pressure” to hit sales targets or risk termination.

Their claims come on the heels of Bell Canada workers revealing similar pressures to upsell customers, often at the expense of ethics.

“You’re supposed to look at a customer’s account and sell them cable, home phone, home security, a credit card — whatever is missing,” says an employee who currently works at Rogers’ major call centre in Ottawa and has asked CBC to conceal his identity to avoid retribution in his workplace

He says even when people are off sick, their sales targets aren’t adjusted unless they go on short-term disability, “so you’re at home, trying to get better, but stressing about how you’re going to keep your job.”

He admits when he is “desperate” to earn sales points, he signs up seniors for internet service, and then tells them a technician is going to come to their house “to install a modem for their TV” — modems are required for internet, not TV.”

Read the full article here. 

Canadians worried about paying bills and debt

Photographer: Michal Jarmoluk

Photographer: Michal Jarmoluk

 

“Canadians are feeling increasingly worried about their personal debt, with an increasing number close to being unable to pay the bills every month as higher interest rates start to make an impact, a new Ipsos survey suggests,” wrote Rajeshni Naidu-Ghelani for CBC News on January 16, 2018.

Naidu-Ghelani continued, “More than a third of the over 2,000 respondents to an online survey done for the MNP Debt Index said they have no money left at the end of the month after paying bills and are unable to cover their payments.

In the online survey, conducted by Ipsos in December for insolvency trustee MNP Ltd., nearly half of the Canadians surveyed — 48 per cent — said they are now $200 or less away from not being able to meet their monthly financial obligations.

The 48 per cent figure is eight points higher than the same survey in September.

Because it was an online poll, the MNP survey applied various quotas and weighting factors to the results, to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects the overall population according to census information. But because it was compiled online, it is not randomized — and as such does not have a margin of error that can be expressed like it can be in randomized telephone or in-person polls.”

Read the full article here. 

New Shingrix vaccine long-term effectiveness

Photographer: Volkan Olmez

Photographer: Volkan Olmez

 

“”It was like being wrapped in flaming barbed wire.”

That’s how Erin Bell, a 48-year-old nutritionist from Peterborough, Ont., describes having shingles,” wrote Andre Picard for The Globe and Mail on January 1, 2018.

Picard continued, “She got shingles at age 42 and the itchy, unsightly blisters that stretched across her torso faded away relatively quickly, but the nerve pain lasted for more than four months.

“The pain was undeniable and unrelenting,” she says.

Joan Robicheau, a 61-year-old Montreal teacher, agrees.

Her case of shingles appeared when she was 50 and started with a sharp jaw pain – which she initially thought was a toothache – but, within hours, she was hospitalized and placed in isolation.”
 
Read the full article here. 

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