A Fido Customer Relationship Failure: “Sorry! Your request cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later.”

An example today about how an error message can make the difference between a happy end user, and an annoyed end user that is willing to blog about it – that’s me.

If you try to login to your account on the Fido.ca website, at about 11:30PM Pacific Time, you will get this error message: “Sorry! Your request cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later.”

On any other website, I would assume that there is a temporary, generally one-time, issue. Maybe the site is overloaded, or it might have a technical glitch. That’s OK. In Fido land? This error means that the website is down for it’s nightly maintenance and I should give up and try tomorrow, but earlier in the night because Fido doesn’t like people on the West Coast.

This isn’t listed anywhere – it’s something that I’ve deduced over months of using the Fido site to pay my bill by credit card. I’m not impressed that Fido’s website has a nightly maintenance schedule, especially one that seems to kick in before midnight Vancouver time, but I’m really not impressed by the wording of the error. All they need to do is follow the banks and fess up to their maintenance schedule. Something like, “Hi, the Fido.ca user site is unavailable from 11PM to 6AM PST. Please try again during our operating hours.”

As an aside, if you’re wondering what the error message is if you have entered your phone number or password wrong, it’s “No match for that phone number and password was found. Please try again… Sorry! No match was found for that phone number and password. Please retry.” in a red box right above the login boxes. I kept getting the “Please try again later” error, so at one time I wondered if I had been using the wrong password.

Is this a big enough annoyance to make me switch my cell plan away from Fido? No, but this added to various other annoyances and… well… I’ll certainly be evaluating my options when the new wireless providers in Canada start up in 2010.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

9 Responses to “A Fido Customer Relationship Failure: “Sorry! Your request cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later.””

  1. Anonymous Says:

    Thanks. Been wondering why I couldn’t log in.

  2. Benjamin Em Says:

    I have the exact same issue. Fido already is overcharging, especially for the network access fee (which we shouldn pay)

  3. Annoymous Says:

    This always happen everytime I need to refill my Fido Prepaid! FIDO: YOU
    ‘RE LOOSING LOTS AND LOTS OF CUSTOMERS IF YOU DON”T FIX THIS!!

  4. DoctorTerry Says:

    I live in Southwestern Ontario and at 10:45 I got that message from FIDO. I was trying to access my account for data update. It isn’t just the west coast; they hate us all equally LOL.

  5. leonard Says:

    Curious, I just tried to login at 11:22PM, PST, and what error did I get today?

    “Our systems are under maintenance daily between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. EST. Self-serve functionalities are currently not available. Please visit us again after 6 a.m. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

    Wow, it’s almost as if someone read my original blog post.

  6. ej Says:

    Called fido rep today. They have no idea why this has been happening for months. They just told me to pay the extra 4$ to get the invoice sent to my house. I cancelled my fido contract.

  7. Joe Says:

    Fido is complete trash, how can be pay the bills and be “eco” friendly? You can geuss the type of “Green” they care about isn’t providing a working website for us to use.

  8. Umesh Says:

    In fact the mentioned error can appear anytime and almost evertime I try to login, rain or shine – 9 out of 10 times!

  9. Anonymous Says:

    “Is this a big enough annoyance to make me switch my cell plan away from Fido?”

    You bet, in this time and age, this is unacceptable.

Leave a Reply