The offer seemed straightforward. In early January 2026, a Bell chat agent promised Vicki Sloot that if she upgraded to a new Bell Fibe TV box, she could keep all her specialty programming sports channels like TSN and Sportsnet. Plus, she’d be paying $5 less a month.

The next day, her new equipment arrived — but she was missing the speciality channels. She went back to Bell, who told her she only had a “basic starter plan” and that it’d be an extra $25 a month to get them back.

So began an eight-week odyssey through Bell’s customer service department, consisting of hours spent live chatting and on the phone with different agents, and an eventual escalation to Bell’s resolutions team.

“It’s impossible to get a single right answer that is consistent throughout each support agent,” said Sloot, who lives in Toronto.