Bell - Failure as an ISP

[Schot 407]

Well this seems like an opportune time to answer your question bhj. Since... It's happening again!? Oh and it's terrible, ugh! I don't watch tv ever so getting online is my only entertainment at home. First day was absolutely mind boggling, lol. I learned how tremendous a part of my life the internet is for me. Pretty much to the point that without internet my pc is an absolute waste. There's really no purpose to my pc without it. I pray you never have to suffer the loss bhj, lol.

 

hehe glad to have you guys back

 

Ok now in your own words tel us How was it not having net for this many days ?

(iam feeling the agony creeping up on me just thinking about it)

 

 

Yes, Bell has done it again. We kicked the Bell habit about a month ago yet they still hold power of us. They always will sadly... For those not familiar, Bell has practically a Monopoly over internet sales here in Canada. They own most of the wiring that feeds internet to Canada's population and because of that have complete control. They rent out the use of their network to smaller ISP company's but no matter who your with around here your ultimately at Bell's mercy. Or much lack of... In our case Bell has access to the activation/deactivation process no matter what company we get our internet from. Supposedly, they "accidentally" cut us off even though we already had discontinued there internet services and had switched to Teksavvy. About a month ago... To make matters even worse directly after leaving Bell we discovered through our new ISP, Teksavvy, that Bell had put us on a profile that made our internet connection weaker. As part of Bell's policy, if a user uses "too much"(undefined) bandwidth then Bell will put the user into this weakened profile. We had gone over our limit on several months but since Bell sharges by the hour when we go over we did pay that $1.50/hour.

 

Oh and on top of it all, during the past month Bell has overcharged us on a HUGE scale. Our final bill was about $200+ which they "accidentally"(there's that word again...) doubled making it near $500. Though it was pretty cool seeing gogo turn several different shades of white then blue then red when he read the bill, hehe. Oh and just a few days ago we received another bill from them. This time it was a $100 cancellation fee, lol. Omg, just goin bonkers here. We knew about their cancellation fee deal. We had to cancel on exactly the day of the month that our subscription began which was the 19th. Only the 19th. Noooooo, other day. No chance. So that's exactly what we did and we were spot on. Aaaaand they charged us... gogo got it straightened out but man. How much screamin and red faces do we have to go through?!

 

Well this means war Bell. Our phone line is still with them but not for long! I'm going for an all out Boycott Bell. It's sad really. I used to be so proud as a Canadian to have such a successful company like Bell representing. With everything I've learned over the years of their practices and incompetence I've become very ashamed and embarrassed.

 

 

That said we're on dial-up again... And it's even slower dial-up than what we had to endure the last time. So we'll not be very active for a bit. I was told that it should be corrected by tomorrow but I've heard that before.

 

Be good kiddies!

[Zinsho 0]

I'm trying to get my parents to switch over to TekSavvy... sadly we're locked into a contract with Bell... because of their own incompetence.

 

Up until roughly 1 year ago Bell offered unlimited High Speed Internet for... 39.99/month (roughly speaking). Then they cancelled this, without officially cancelling (if you look up Bell Canada and such you can see that it was still in their database according to an internal memo, they just were not to offer it to anyone). So instead, you got their new "best deal" of 30gb/month for 39.99, 1.50/gb extra. For an extra 10/month you can add another 30gb, and for another 15 you can get insurance that ensures you don't have to pay more than 10/month in overages.

 

Now here's the hitch. Technically speaking they did not cancel the unlimited contract for anyone who didn't have it. However... back in March we called them because our emails weren't coming in (to the Bell email address). After much hassle the techs discovered that when they changed their servers, they forgot to configure them to allow Macintoshes to receive the emails. However, during this time on the phone with tech support they tried to offer us their new plan... yadda yadda yadda... free pc... yadda yadda... faster speed yadda yadda. We refused, since it would have been an extra 15-20/month. BUT, while doing so they adjusted our account, and thus put us on the new 30gb/month plan, WITHOUT telling us a thing. Couple months later my parents get a bill for $200 or so of surcharges because I hit 150gb that month. Of course since we had unlimited bandwidth, who cares.

 

Long story short, they changed our contract without asking, when my mother contested the charges (and got them cancelled), it locked in our contract for the next year... they've since tried to extend it by having us lock in another year by giving us another 30gb/month (at the same cost).

 

One of my mother's coworkers is still on the unlimited plan, and makes sure they don't touch his account every time he talks to them, since his son regularly hits 1.5 terabytes/month.

 

Suffice to say I'm not impressed (and that's not mentioning their throttling practices, of the copper for other companies that don't actually use their bandwidth except on the lines where they are not permitted to create new infrastructure)... or their attempt to charge 0.15 per incoming text message, regardless of the source (well apparently if they sent one out you wouldn't be charged...).

 

Oh and Schot... from everything I've gathered the 'overusers' used to be anyone over 100gb/month, even if you were on an unlimited plan. Oh and apparently most people who cancel contracts with them to go to another company get 'blacklisted' as far as being overusers... that's if they don't get blacklisted as being a number that doesn't have DSL available, which they do apparently do at times.

[FrostElfGuard 9]

Here in Winnipeg for internet we have 2 main choices:

 

MTS (phone company)

or

Shaw (cable TV company).

 

Both are now offering broadband connections... Shaw makes you share the pipe with your neighbours and MTS doesn't. In MTS's case you share the optical. Same deal.

 

Now about technical competency: techs "grow up" in MTS, getting experience... and then head south of the border for higher paying tech jobs in the warm USA. When they leave the company, they leave big gaping holes in the competency of the company. The only way to learn is by experience... and so... every now and then... we get SUPER CRUMMY SERVICE.

 

At work, we have lost our CATCHALL about 3 times now. That means our domain name mail all gets bounced. If our clients are not too technically oriented, they think WE are the problem.

 

We left MTS to go to a company called ESCAPE due to MTS's incompetance... only to find 2 months down the road that MTS bought ESCAPE. Craptacular!

 

So: I just hafta say, call the customer service lines and complain, complain complain. Most phone companies have customer service people who can waive some fees on your bill. Complain about the service often. Each person who gives you discounts/credits is only allowed so much at one go.

 

Happy credits all!

[Genenut 8]

*hugs* gogo and schot

 

*hooks up the broadband iv* There you go

 

*appllies the blindfolds * nothing to see over here ....

 

*throws water ballon that she left outside her house today at katran ...... * :-P

[Zinsho 0]

Oh, and suffice to say: you call Bell tech support (or customer support of any sort) 9 times out of 10 you get connected to a help desk in India.

 

On another note:

 

We have 2 'choices' and a half dozen other choices.

 

Bell - DSL

Videotron - Cable

 

Every single other choice uses their hardware. If they offer DSL it's through Bell lines (although some use other parties for their bandwidth once it's to the corporate office). If it's cable same deal using Videotron cable lines.

[gogoblender 3,070]

We're back!

Tek savvy rules the roost! They told us just one day and to call back at five and at just a few minutes past five, the internet, the world came rushing in.

 

Yeah!

 

 

gogo

[Wankers 0]

wow ... just wow I am shellshocked at the sheer incompetance and offer my sympathy

[Knuckles 904]

Nothing but sympathy for all you Canadian Bell users...it's amazing the amount of incompetence that comes with outsourcing and just simply being a large company. Maybe you guys should move here Have always had unlimited internet here...Seems phone companies in general are just poorly organized. I had Verizon here and had a few probs (but not many) with them. But since I've had broadband cable I've never experienced a single outage and my bill has never been incorrect.