Review by tablo  - Location: Edmonton,AB
- Cost: $120 per month
Good "Fast speeds, good PQ, fair prices, modem easily bridged,"
Bad "Some rude CSRs, mediocre ping, shared nodes, bandwidth limit"
Overall "Can be expensive, service quality is subjective"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
These rate increases are too much. I have been a Shaw customer for 5 years now. I had BB50/PTV/Home Phone Basic for around $110, but few months ago the grandfathered rate increased $10. On top of that, they called in and bumped me up to BB100+ because of my usage this month. That cost me $30 more each month. So I had to pay $190 this month in total because of the rate increases. That's almost twice as more compared to last month. (Looks like the current rate is around $50 more than my grandfathered rate too)
I called into Shaw customer service and asked if there was anything wrong with the bill. Guess there wasn't anything wrong. I then asked to cancel, and was transferred to retentions. I compared the price with Telus. Negotiations aside, the CSR was straight up bashing Telus and even trying to give me a lesson why Shaw is better than Telus. It was to the point where I had to ask her if she was gonna cancel my plan or not, because she was clearly trying to tell me BS. I finally got to cancel with a month's notice. I didn't appreciate these CSRs' b**chy and rude attitude.
I called retentions before too (more than a year ago), to see if there's anything they can do. I told the CSR about the Telus 15/15/15 promotion. The guy yelled at me how I'm not getting a deal. I posted it about it on dslreports and shawsean asked for my number. I got phone calls by customer service but didn't feel like answering it because they weren't going to negotiate anything anyway.
Other than that, I was pretty satisfied with Shaw.
TV: Got a free DCX3200 (HD STB) as part of the Personal TV promotion when Shaw was trying to get people to switch to that. Select specialty channels (HGTV, History, Food) and sports channels (TSN, SNW, SN1) on basic cable. SD time shift. HD PQ compared to telus: more MPEG2 blocking, but "sharper". Overall more detailed due to the higher bandwidth. I prefer Optik's UI but Shaw's UI is easier to navigate with less options. Also has a clock on the STB which is nice.
Internet: I got mediocre pings, 40-50ms. I had BB100+ but I think I only got 70mbps max, even wiring in directly to the bridged Cisco modem with a gigabit network card of course. Never really had luck with speeds over 50mbps. Speed does fluctuate. They might call you for usage. I never got contacted for bandwidth usage before. But in June I got a call because I was using almost 900GB on BB50 which has 450GB (50GB extra from Shaw Friends). Maybe my node was saturated. They then bumped me up to BB100+. Turns out they didn't bother to actually bump the speed, so I had to chat with tech support to actually get 100/5 instead of 50/3. It's nice that the modem can be easily bridged by customer support compared to Telus. I bridged the DPC3825 and used my RT-N16 instead.
Telephone: Nothing special. Audio quality is worse than Telus of course. Rarely got noise and indiscernible "ghosty" voice when calling internationally to South Korea. Other than that pretty reliable. Long distance rate is a cent cheaper than Telus for landline.
member for 2.2 years, 241 visits, last login: 1 days ago
updated 68 days ago
Comments:
 | | rate increases The only way ISP’s can increase revenue is by either UBB or rate increases. Even if a corporation makes record profits one year if the next year it makes less then the previous year its seen as zero growth. This doesn’t keep share holders happy.
They thought their buddies in the CRTC would give them UBB. Usage based billing is much more lucrative. They almost got this until public backlash started demanding change and a serious look at the CRTC. That shut them up because it may threaten their monopoly.
They have fully penetrated the market so we can all look forward to never ending rate increases with little to no improvement in services. Until a significant portion of the population gets fed up and demands a serious overhaul of the communication industry and its supposed oversight we will be getting the shaft. So bend over and smile while you are being raped. | |
|  | tablo
join:2011-06-30
Edmonton, AB Reviews:
 ·Shaw
| Re: rate increases Oh yes, UBB. I actually went and called in Shaw to get those data packages when they were trying to implement it. Went through several reps but of course they couldn't even add those data packages. I can see why Shaw is taking data usage more seriously now trying to bump people up, but I just had to take the 15/15/15 offer from Telus. | |
|
| |
|
