A call for help from two Calgary neighbourhoods dealing with significant cellphone issues is finally being heard.
Numerous residents in the southeast communities of Acadia and Fairview have been dealing with dropped cellphone calls for months now, resulting in a lot of frustration.
“Whether it’s coming in or going out — calls are dropped, calls are glitchy,” Acadia resident Kayla Hoecherl told Global News. “The voices go robotic. It’s horrible.”
But her most “horrible” experience to date was a recent call to 9-1-1 for help.
“My call dropped. I called back and my call dropped. And I called back and my call dropped,” Hoecherl said. “It was just my daughter and me home and it was really scary.”
Neighbour Dana McCarty also experienced the same issue repeatedly over the past several months.
“Oh geez,” she said. “On a bad day, it probably happens about a dozen times. Fifteen times a day, depending on how much you use the phone.”
McCarty works from home and said it’s not easy when calls are constantly being lost.
“Sometimes I have to make calls back three or four times. I feel I can’t work from home because if I’m talking to a client or my head office, the calls always drop,” she added.
“Sounds like a bit of dead air,” she explained. “And then it just says, ‘Call failed.’”
Both women are customers of Telus. Hoecherl said she contacted the telecommunications giant numerous times, but didn’t get anywhere.
“They keep telling us, ‘We’re going to escalate the problem, we’ll get it fixed, someone will be in contact with you,’ and it just doesn’t happen.”
Hoecherl said she had no other choice but to get a landline installed at her house — at an extra cost to her.
“I pay $145 a month for a cellphone that isn’t reliable and now I pay for a house phone,” she said.
Numerous residents in both Acadia and Fairview have flooded social media community forums expressing the same concerns.
They echoed sentiments of feeling “ignored” by Telus and other cellphone service providers. Some of those that posted said they were told the issues were the result of an upgraded cellphone tower.
No one was able to tell them when the issues would be fixed.
“Just some sort of word, like what are they going to do to improve the service? Like really I think that’s all anyone is asking for,” McCarty said.
Global News reached out to Telus last week when we were informed about the issues. Telus told us they would look into it.
Today, we were provided with the following statement: “After hearing from some of our customers in the area, we investigated our network and quickly fixed the issue that was causing these disruptions. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and thank our customers for their patience.”
Telus went on to say while all service should be returned to normal, anyone still experiencing connectivity issues can contact them.
Global News reached out to Hoecherl to let her know, but she texted us back saying her calls are still dropping.
She’s now calling for some form of compensation.
“I just feel if we get a 50 per cent reliable phone, why can’t we get 50 per cent off of our bills?” she asked.
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