Review by InvalidError 
UPDATED: 103 days ago
member for 103 days, 102 visits, last login: 3 days ago
 Saint-Leonard,QC
 $38 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Fast, reliable"
 "Expensive, low caps"
 "Good if you value speed and reliability much more than reasonable caps and pricing"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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Over the decade I have been on Videotron HS, the service has had a nearly perfect track record apart from their early ('97-98) network's vulnerability to trivial DoS attacks, sabotage during the strikes, bad wiring and dying modems.
When I moved in 2006, the contractor who did the install could not be bothered to run a separate cable for the modem. Months later, I started having signal issues and had to have a tech come and re-do the install. When that tech came, he told me that whoever did the initial install did not bother to check the connectors and cable: the exterior cables were damaged/rotten and many connectors had mold in them. The new cables did not completely fix the signal issues: the bad initial wiring job had apparently damaged my good old SB5100. Another tech came to give me a refurb rental WebStar which soon proved to be defective so I had to have yet another tech bring yet another modem, this time a fresh SB5100 which worked fine for the remainder of my contract.
In the early days, tech support was quite decent but went down with each passing year. On the plus side, my last few calls prior to canceling service (see modem failures above) have shown that tech support appears to be slowly climbing back to decent levels.
However, as a long-time moderate bandwidth user whose usage grew to fill any cap increases within months of Videotron announcing them, I have finally grown weary of Videotron HS low caps, particularly now that it has been so many years since the last upgrade. When Videotron announced Extreme's now 100GB cap and Extreme subscribers started complaining all over the place, I started shopping around to see how this compared to what else is available and soon realized that if I could put up with ADSL's few shortcomings, I could trade some speed and latency for much higher caps (or even unlimited) and lower price.
When I received the $2 increase letter and was told there would be no cap increases or any other service upgrades in the near future, I decided to proceed with cancellation (end of contract) and ordering ADSL. I would have been happy for at least another year with +10/+10 GB (easily covered by the $2 increase) but now that my ADSL is up and delivering performance on par with my most optimistic guesstimates, it will take a lot more than that for Videotron to win me back.
When I cancelled, I made it clear I was cancelling because the 20/10GB caps and $8/GB overage (highest in the industry) no longer met my expectations from a $40/month service yet they still offered upgrades to Extreme and cut-rate HS. I laughed it out for a few seconds before declining their various offers until they finally asked me if I still wanted to proceed with cancellation. I thanked them for their offers, explained that none of them addressed both the low caps and overpriced-for-my-taste issues at once and told them I still wanted to cancel. The whole process - including the fidelity offers that failed to address my concerns - took about 10 minutes.
I used to wonder what I was going to be doing with 100GB/month but with TSI's Premium cap upgrade to 200GB/month, I can take a break from bandwidth planning for the foreseeable future.
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