I just got off the phone with Bell customer service.

Even though I had full internet service from Rogers last weekend, I was just too busy this week to cancel my Bell service. It probably wasn't a bad plan to have some overlap anyways - for all I knew last week, Rogers was going to blow chunks as well. So this morning, I decided to take the plunge and cancel my Bell DSL service.

Getting away from Bell was not easy.

The number they posted on their website doesn't work (310-SURF) - you think that after all the years that they've spent "encouraging" us to use area codes that they would have the courtesy to use them as well.

So I took a different route and decided to crawl their voicemail tree. After about 10 minutes of punching in digits and talking to myself (well, to their IVR system), I finally got in the right queue. Which immediately disconnected me.

I called back again to the same number - not sure why I'd expect different results the second time around. This time however, their IVR system dropped me in the right queue after only about 5 minutes of fumbling.

Next I had to endure the endless security checks. Phone numbers, names, addresses, postal codes...agh. I hate this part.

Eventually I got to the part of the conversation that I was looking forward to. "I want to cancel my DSL service".

We meandered through the why's pretty quickly. The kid on the other end was obviously trying to keep someone else other than me happy. I was almost disappointed how easy it was.

"We're cancelling your service effective April 4..." he said.

I cut him off. "Actually, I want it cancelled immediately. As in 'today' please."

I'd obviously broken a rule here. He asked me to sit on hold and came back with a rehearsed "As a front line representative, I'm only authorized to cancel your service at the end of this billing period."

No problem I thought. "Great, can I speak to someone who can?"

"That would be my supervisor."

The rest of the story is pretty lame actually. I sat on hold for two or three minutes and was off the line with the supervisor in another two or three. I was amazed that no one actually tried a rescue on my - I've been a customer since 1997 or so. Strange.

In any event, my internet runs over Rogers cable internet service now.

Next step - convincing someone's supervisor that I only want 911 and call forwarding service on my local phone loop :)