Double-charged twice on prepaid bill, can't get in contact with customer service via phone.

(Weird, the site keeps changing my region to BC. Here's hoping the formatting for these posts is in html.) The AI wouldn't connect me to an agent after asking multiple times, it just gave me the contact number. I can take a hint, so I gave it a shot. After getting stuck in a one-way menu that only offered top-up options, it finally gave me an option for something other than adding credit cards to my account and let me hold for ages to some elevator music, instead. Progress. I was eventually connected to someone who said "thank-you" a lot, but I did manage to get her to laugh a bit.<br><br>

Yeah, looks like the base "Starter 10" was taking money at the same time as the automatic top-ups but was NOT adding it to my phone, just... siphoning my money into the ether for some reason. Wasn't in my bank or my phone account? No idea. We got it fixed up and I got the credit added to my phone by the nice agent, so hopefully that won't be happening again. That said, I wouldn't have known that both things were taking money from me since they're not listed in the same place on the site at all, at least in Classic mode. They're all under separate headings that require a bit of searching around to get the full scope of info for. It wasn't listed on the overview either, only the "Starter 10" plan under Plans & Add-Ons, and no displaying of how much that's taking off. Maybe adding both a "[Your Plan] = $xx.xx/mo" and a list of "[Insert Add-on/Top-Up Here] = $xx.xx/mo" under that heading together would clear up a lot of this double-bill confusion for some people, since it seems to be a common occurrence. It's concise, all in one place in the overview, and not too difficult to fetch the data for display in a list mode (as far as web design goes, since it's just a getValue kind of deal). The customer can see that two things are taking money, side-by-side! It could just be that something went funky on my machine and this is already a thing that I just didn't get to see, but if it's not then a tweak may be worth the consideration. (It doesn't explain where the money actually goes when this happens, but at least they may have a better idea of why they're being double-billed.)<br><br>

Thanks for tolerating me! Have a nice day, folks.<br><br>

P.S.: If anyone else is reading this, the Chat option is the purple text box on the bottom of the Support page, which you can get to from the top link next to the Telus logo that says Support. If it's not showing up or scrolling with the page properly, a browser setting or add-on may be interfering with it. (I have to enable some frames in uBlock to make it display correctly, for example.) The bot's AI is limited and can only say what it's been programmed to by its creators. It's not its fault, please be nice to it. 😣 The agents, too; they talk to concerned/frustrated people all day and just work there, they aren't the company itself. Chat/call early, if you can. The closer you cut it to the end, the more likely you won't get through.<br><br> The bot doesn't seem to always connect you to an agent, at least through the chat, so be prepared to call the appropriate helpline for whatever your plan is. If chatting at the correct time, the bot will provide it in the window but you can also find it on the Contact Us page under the Phone option. There should be a list of them in collapsing windows. Mine was mobile, so I used the Mobility helpline, and always provide your Telus PIN over the phone options if it asks for it. They get a lot of calls even normally, and with this virus stuff sometimes staffing is limited. They're doing what they can! It's part of why you get driven to basic FAQ questions so much; the bulk of calls tend to be stuff that is answered fairly easily around the site or by the chat AI, which takes up precious agent time from people who need things resolved by a person. Like my account crediting for the double-charge; the bot can't do that kind of stuff, only a person can. It's a real pain for customers that actually need to talk with someone, but that's the gist of it. Hope everyone else gets their stuff sorted as cleanly.