Re: Sounds like Planet Telecom are the people you should be cross with...
In Canada, in the case of an unexplained telecom mishap assuming that Bell has the answer but won't tell you is always the safest bet. Not always true, but still statistically the safest.
That's true for home users as well as corporate ones. My BFF has been waiting for 3 month without her home internet connection because, in order:
1) Tech support told her that everything is alright from their side, datalink up and ADSL modem responding as it should, so please reboot everything and call us back.
2) (several days later, due to Bell support being mostly unreachable) tech support admits that no, the modem doesn respond someone must have made a mistake, and it's probably down to the modem, please make an appointment with the service department.
3) (several days later, due to the whole service department in town consisting of a "recycled" pizza delivery boy on his moped, working 9-5. Or so I must suppose given the delays and unpredictability of the visit): Yes, that´s the modem alright. The lights don't go blinky-blinky as they should, and let me refer that back home (appart from the fact that they rather obviously sent a sales rep to reboot her computer for her, one wonders how the no-blinky-blinky fact has been overlooked after more than 1 week of back-and-forth communication)
4) several days later, after arguing back and forth because all traces of her previous communications had seemingly disappeared, she is told that it's probably down to the power brick, because this model tends to go "poof" every so often which is a known issue, and don't worry my dear, just go to any of our salespoints in your town (of which there are many) with your faulty unit, and they will replace it.
5) several days laters, after several visits to several salespoints in town, it appears that Bell mothership had ceased to provide replacement units for the faulty model, _several month_ prior the whole kerfuffle, but that wasn't made clear to either the service dept, the customer support dept, or even the retailers (who kept sending my friends to other outlets in case they had a unit left). The solution is to mail in the deffective unit, and the replacement unit should arrive shortly after reception of the faulty one. After some arguing along the lines of "I'm not paying 20 bucks to send you back your broken stuff after several of your staff confirmed it was broken, onsite and off-site" / "tough luck then dear, we can't do anyting without it", it is agreed that the replacement be sent. With the threat of just leaving for the competition providing some, erm, lubrication. The delivery adress being set as the customer's _work_ adress, to avoid wasting to much time.
6) several days later, nothing being delivered, it appears that the customer's adress was not updated, and that the part was shipped to a previous _home_ adress, and returned to sender. Obviously. After much arguing, the home customer adress is reset and a delivery is agreeed on. at the customer's _work_ adress, again.
7) several days and a couple of delivery notices at the customer's _home_ adress later, followed by delivery to the wrong Post Canada pick-up point (the sole blunder here that is not blamable on Bell Canada), and after threats of bringing the matter to regulatory instances, an agreement is reached for reimbursment of the 2+ month of paid-for -but undelivered- internet service and termination of the contract.
And they lived happy ever after.
As also demonstrated by Trevor's story: when you suspect a problem could be down to Bell Canada, don't do chit-chat. Directly go for the official complaint. You'll save heaps of time.