|
Home | Reviews | Speed Test | Tools | News | Forums | Info | About | Join |
They finally completed connection to our semi-rural area right in the middle of the transition between @home and @rogers ... so they made a dogs dinner of setting up my account, with wrong passwords, and web presence not set up properly. This was a continuation of the customer service disaster that Rogers had with their cable TV customer support. It worked from the moment I connected the NIC to the TeraPro modem at 1.2 Mbits/sec downlink 340 Kbits/sec backlink. When Rogers "upgraded" by putting in speed throttling, my upload dropped to 170 and download maxed out at 700K, but usually was in the 300-400 range. I complained and complained and complained and got tired of the run around. I found out more and discovered an interesting problem with some TeraPro CMTS/Modem combos limiting speeds to 4* the upload. I demanded to speak to a manager who agreed that there was something wrong since my download speed should not have fallen. They offered me DOCSIS, and a tech came out and replaced my modem with a PipeRider. They forgot to cap it for the first month, so the speeds were great at 3500 down! They put in the speed cap and the speed came down to about 1.1 Mbits/sec, but consistent, although spikey. Eventually, in Nov. 2002, they did a CMTS upgrade and the speeds went up to about 1.45 solid. Since the change to DOCSIS, I've not had the opportunity or need to call Rogers, except for a major outage and all I got was ignorance. So CS remains abysmal. If it was possible to give a neg. number for support, I'd give that. As for communications from Rogers ... they treat the customer seemingly as something to barely be tolerated so to show that, the pre-sales category is the only place to rate it, so it also goes to the bottom. Rogers seemed to think that they could cut speeds without telling their customers and providing a reasonable justification. Update Jul 23, 2003 - Everything's pretty much unchanged. When it works, it's great. Update Jun 2004 - I upgraded to Extreme without a lot of hassle, although as usual Rogers phone people just don't seem to know what happens in the real world and they sent me to the wrong place to pick up a modem. I changed from an Ericsson to a Toshiba 2600. Since then, I've zoomed along at speeds consistent with the new profile. Update Jul 2004 - Rogers Yahoo! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! As usual, Rogers tells the clients NOTHING until it's done and things stop working properly. All our mail is now with Yahoo! servers. I refuse to register because of Yahoo!'s "Lack of Privacy" Policy. So, I cannot manage my account. The amount of false positives on "bulk" mail was high to start with but is settling down. The accounts have got a LOT more spam since moving to Yahoo! even though it's a Rogers.com address ... go figure. I'm moving all my mail off Rogers because of this and the fact that the US Dept. of Homeland Paranoia can tamper with my email and even go so far as to put out warrants for my arrest in absentia if they find something in my mail they don't like! Sure I'm paranoid. I don't trust Rogers, I don't trust Yahoo! and I don't trust government agnecies. Update Mar 2005 - Rogers Geocities ... useless since Geocities monitor traffic by the hour. Rogers Giganews ... great retention but dreadful speeds, even for text groups. Now caps ... even though they don't affect me, they're a pain. Performance issues that yet again took invoking management to resolve. Customer service is utterly useless. Update Nov 2006 - Well, here we are over a year and a half later and nothing much has changed, although I've had the fortune to need CS only once in that time. The only mail I get through my Rogers address is some of the posts from Rogers and SPAM ... I no longer use Usenet after Rogers turned it off altogether. Speed is consistent ... the price bump for Extreme was annoying considering that we get so little more compared with Express but I upload enough that the slower speed of Express upload made me stay. Same old - same old for cable TV and internet drops - nearly daily for a few minutes. The new 74.*.*.* IP has been assigned and routings end up a little screwy. Rogers is proving to be a REASONABLE connectivity provider, but as an ISP (remember the word SERVICE) they're poor. They keep trying to get me to go with home phone "from a company you trust" every few days there's something in the mail. But they've done nothing to earn my trust and with a cost of under $1 per month less than Bell, no way. Update Feb 2008 Nothing much has changed apart from prices and the threatening of byte caps ... although that doesn't affect me. The speed is now 10/1 Mbps and my connection comes more than acceptably close. The last call to tech support to report an outage was answered by an automated system with a relevent reply and an estimated time to repair. Services ... Rogers mail ... I try not to use it since all it gets is spam. Yahoo! Launchcast Plus ... It's OK, if a bit limited for the kind of music I like. Flickr ... useful for sharing photos with family abroad. Having experienced Bell tech support, I'll lift that off the basement and give Rogers a 2. Services, I'll lift off the basement and give that a 2 ... but no higher because a lack of usenet and a horrible mail service. Update July 2009 Again, changes to the service involce speed, although not significant improvements to the Extreme service. More Rogers Yahoo cobranded services bite the dust ... this time Launchcast has been blown away. Geocities web space has gone (never used it because I have my own service - thank goodness) Due to cost several cost increases in Rogers services in the last 18 months, I've downgraded to Express. Update Mar 2011 ... No real changes since previous review. Very Occasional congestion speed sag appearing. Don't know whether this is the cable segment or the connection to/from Fallowfield ... suspect the latter since they did have a problem there and stopped taking on faster speed customers. member for 22.3 years, 10334 visits, last login: 22 days ago updated 13 years ago
|