I disagree with that point. Fido's web site doesn't give the "real" story
about this. It is a marketing web site, not a reference on how policies are implemented.

Until the year before the bankrupcy, Fido didn't cancel these accounts, nor
accounts whose service had been disconnected due to lack of payment even
though prepaid was supposed to expire x weeks after non-refilling of the
account. One of the reasons Fido's churn increased significantly the year of
the bankrupcy is that Fido began to clean up its customer list by removing all
those inactive accounts, and it appears that they are now more agressive in
terminating inactive accounts.

But that still doesn't tell anyone what the exact procedures are internally at
Fido, and whether it is possible to reactivate an account of not.

The standard entry level 4 legged furry customer support rep will tell you
that as soon as a SIM card has been disabled, it cannot be reenabled (some
will even go as far as stating that they send a signal to the card to disable
it). But if you speak to the right people, they will tell you it is possible
to reactivate a SIM card (you need to know how to access the right computer
menus to get to that, and entry level folks don't have access to those menus).

1) If the customer service rep gave the wrong information, then that
is a customer service problem.  If the customer was left with the
wrong understanding of what was being done to the account, that is a
customer service problem.  The customer told the rep that he was going
away on vacation - if the rep did not bother asking how long the
individual was going to be away before choosing a course of action or
explaining to the customer the options in light of the extended length
of their trip, then that is also a customer service problem.

FYI - none of these problems occurred in the similar situation that I
went through with Fido (as described in my follow-up post).  I wrote
down the rep's name, all the information that he gave me, and guess
what?  They still got it wrong.  I was specifically told that the
credit that would be added to my account would be for three months.  I
had the rep repeat it several times to make sure (and also took down
his name).  Luckily I checked last week on myFido and discoverred that
I was credited for only 2 months.  Another rep made it up to me and
extended it for another two months.  The fact that I went out of my
way to get as much detail as possible, had the rep repeat everything
that he said he was going to do several times, and it still ended up
being wrong should scare the sh8t out of most customers.  I shouldn't
constantly be having to double and triple check what they are doing
after they said they'd do it.  Something is broken and needs serious
fixing.

Oh and

2)Fido's website is useless.  For example, once you switch from
postpaid to prepaid, all of your online bills seem to magically
disappear, which is not mentioned on the website,as I unfortunately
found out after going away on vacation.  It was my error in judgement
to assume that Fido would do something like make my bills available to
me online to view while I was away and not receiving my mail. Want the
kicker?  I spent some serious long distance coin trying to get it
straightened out, got a rep that said they would e-mail me the bills
at the e-mail address I had registerred with myFido, and they did...
but the bill pdf was password protected with - guess what? - the
account number that I can only get FROM THE BILL (nope, it's not on
any of the myFido pages, and I checked).

Anyhow, I know that the nightmare stories are a small percentage of
all the customer service calls, but damn... when they mess up, they
mess up good.  It's not good enough to simply say that most of the
calls don't go like that, since most of the calls are of the 'ya, I
wanna change my billing address' type.  If you mess up calls that
require a little effort, then you're doing a lousy job.

Sorry for the assumption. Do you know if it is/was possible to add
voice mail ($4.00) to the $10 retention plan?

Also forgot that Fido prepaid offers call forwarding (but your prepaid
minutes are used for the minutes forwarded). This makes prepaid call
forwarding useless in my opinion.

If that many people are threatening to cancel when they call in, then
something has gone horribly wrong, wouldn't you agree?

I hadn't called in to cancel.  I had called in to switch to prepaid
before going away for a few months (I already knew about the $10 plan
and was not interested in it since I would have to pay extra for
voicemail).  When they told me they had a new policy that they had to
charge $25 to switch a customer from postpaid to prepaid, I told them
that I had done this before and wasn't charged.  Then THE REP TOLD ME
that if I wasn't satisfied with it, I could cancel.  Hey, that was an
offer (to cancel) I couldn't refuse after that attitude.  Only then
was I transferred to the 'cancellation department' (retention).  How
messed up is that?