Bell messes up Daylight Saving Time in Canada after turning back clocks a week early

For some Canadians, daylight saving time randomly ended a week early on Monday, at least as far as their cell phones were concerned.

A number of Bell users are scrambling this morning after getting up an hour late because their phone clock mysteriously rolled itself back despite the fact that daylight saving time doesn't end until Nov. 7.

Bell really thought Daylight Savings ended this morning eh?? Yikes 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

— Kevin Agustin (@_kevinagustin) November 1, 2021

If your alarm was set for, say, 7 a.m., you may have found yourself getting up at that time according to your phone, only to realize it was actually 8 a.m. — an absolute nightmare for anyone who plans on keeping their job.

Of course, complaints are absolutely abounding on social media, with Bell confirming a glitch in its network last night that caused people's location detection feature to think that they were somewhere else.

For some unfortunate customers, that "somewhere else" ended up being a place where the practice of daylight savings is not observed.

It was a bell network wide glitch

— M Dvus (@dr_dvus) November 1, 2021

"Some clients may have experienced an incorrect time change on their phone this morning," the telecom giant wrote on Twitter this morning.

"Our teams are investigating the situation in order to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience."

While most people are understanably livid about the situation...

So, you guys going to reimburse people for being late/missing work?

Instead I’ll likely see a $3 increase on my bill “to maintain the highest standard of service.”

— Josh C (@JoshCarreiro) November 1, 2021

... some have managed to find the humour in it (likely those who had no pressing obligations to attend to this a.m).

This new phone is dope. Even gets daylight savings updates first! #blessed #bell

— Devon Aire (@DeeEvonAire) November 1, 2021

The snafu comes as the Government of Ontario continues to debate making daylight savings time permanent, which would mean situations like this, as well as the general confusion that comes twice a year when the clocks move, could be avoided altogether.

But there's definitely no denying the particularly poor timing of the mix-up with how close we are to clocks actually changing at 2 a.m. this coming Sunday morning.

The issue was thankfully resolved around 9 a.m., according to the Bell Twitter account.