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: cellphone, error, fail, fido, fido.ca, login, maintenance, password, user, wireless, wording
February 15th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Thanks. Been wondering why I couldn’t log in.
February 25th, 2010 at 1:10 am
I have the exact same issue. Fido already is overcharging, especially for the network access fee (which we shouldn pay)
March 16th, 2010 at 10:37 pm
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!!
March 20th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
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.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
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.
May 10th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
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.
May 15th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
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.
June 29th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
In fact the mentioned error can appear anytime and almost evertime I try to login, rain or shine – 9 out of 10 times!
June 30th, 2010 at 7:52 am
“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.
September 3rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
this is going even today (Sept 3 2010). right before the long weekend.
no ability to access your account, recharge a prepaid phone. Difficult to reach customer service. WHERE IS CRTC?!?!?!
September 18th, 2010 at 7:32 am
Thank you for this valuable information.
September 25th, 2010 at 10:09 pm
It’s September 2010 and nothing has changed. I cannot refill my cell minutes :-( Weird.
March 25th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
Still happens even in March 2011
March 27th, 2011 at 4:48 am
Still Happening in 2011 March 27th
April 21st, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Simply put, their website is complete and utter crap. Been a prepaid user for about 2 years now and always re-fill my account through their so-called website. Because of random error messages, I’ve lost my minutes several times already. As others have said, totally unacceptable nowadays and this really speaks volumes about their company. Frankly, I can’t believe this isn’t happening on purpose.
June 10th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
It’s now June. I’m in Toronto. It wass 1pm. Why the f**k does it take 5 minutes for it to realize that it [still] can’t let me see my bill. There can’t possibly be too many people on the site at this time of day. Half the time it’s unable to log me in and the other half it won’t let me through anyway. I’m getting fed up with this nonsense. Especially since it wouldn’t let me refill for a week, and that’s without using the site. I’m switching from Fido. I can’t put up with this stupidity anymore
September 24th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
same issue – can’t log in to my Fido account to refill my prepaid cell, starting about 10:20pm mountain time and ongoing to 11pm Saturday Sept24, 2011. And of course their customer service is closed until Monday. Can’t refill through my phone -Fido’s automated refill system is having ‘technical difficulties’ and tries to transfer me to a live person, who is taking the weekend off. Can’t refill on their website. Seems like a mickey mouse outfit to me, or perhaps lower on the evolutionary ladder like an invertebrate of some sort – certainly not a dog’s level of technical expertise.
November 14th, 2011 at 9:51 am
Ive been with fido since jan2000 and Ive had it also. Im definitely changing to mobilicity this week. the problem with most corporations is that they pay more for advertising than customer service. A good business model is knowing that its cheaper to keep existing customers than to go out searching for new ones.
December 5th, 2011 at 12:04 am
I’ve been trying to log into myFido all weekend, and its been down every time I’ve tried. But it seems like all other functionality on the site works. i wonder if it is really maintenance issues, or as I suspect, IT Labor cost reduction?