Review by vintagewino 
UPDATED: 146 days ago
member for 6.3 years, 695 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Grimsby,ON
 $32 per month
 about 1 days
 Bell Canada
 "Customer service very responsive, high quality, reasonable prices"
 "Bell refuses to look after its crumbling infrastructure."
 "Should have switched a couple of years ago. One of the better alternatives."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
I have had DSL for almost 8 years. Another option here is cable, but since it goes out or gets noisy frequently, and combining higher costs and bandwidth caps, I will not consider them.
History with old ISP's:
I was originally with Sympatico (1MB profile) for a few months, then switched to my last ISP (Look) for the last 4+ years. They kept me on the 1MB. Price went up when 3MB came through, and I was eventually put on a 1728/384 profile. Price went up again, as they said they went to a 5 MB capability. No speed change visible at my end, though. Was told my phone line was junk, & that's the best that can be done, end of story. Then features & 'perks' started disappearing. They wouldn't even talk with Bell about speed issues. This is the speed - live with it. I also had to buy their DSL modem. I prefer that. It came with their software CD, but NOTHING from the modem manufacturer -- no CD, no manual, NOTHING. And, they REFUSED to give me the password the unit. If it was a rental, I could see it. But NOT when you outright purchase it.
January of '07, old ISP's bubble burst. The DSL went out for 24 hours. When it came back up the speed was fantastic! Within 72 hours, it dropped back to the 'normal'. Queried my modem, so I bought and installed an ST516 modem. No difference. More complaints, nothing done. In October, I guess I finally got the right person, because they raised my profile to 3008/512. A week later, I got a letter from them stating fees were increasing 5% ($2) the next month. I went to cancel them, but was told I had to give old ISP a full 30 day notice. Fine. Next call was to Teksavvy to get an account activated and to try and co-ordinate as reasonably 'seamless switchover' as you can get between old ISP, new ISP and Bell. Old ISP disappeared Dec. 16th around 16:30, and Teksavvy came online Dec. 17th around 9:30 AM.
The Switch:
The speed was blazing, then everything disappeared. Seems Bell pulled the old profile about an hour later. Half an hour later, the connection was back up, but the connection has been a bit flaky, as I think the profile I'm on now is pushing the line. Very little headroom for noise. 3776/672 profile. There's still a bit of tweaking to be done to get things 'right'. The noise margins & attenuation factors aren't exactly the best due to 12000 feet of older lines between CO & home.
If you like being misled, treated like a number, fighting through multi-depth menu systems and listening to some awful elevator music for a very long time just to try to TALK to someone who won't LISTEN to you, and pay a higher price for less value, that is your prerogative, and you had better stay with your original ISP, because that is not Teksavvy's way. In about 10 calls to Teksavvy with questions, concerns, planning, my longest wait was about 3 minutes. No menus. Maybe a quick message saying everyone's tied up and to hang on. Then a real person comes on who will actually try to help you. What a concept!! E-mail queries from tech support have been answered in less than 4 hours. Oh - I forgot -- I had not gotten that inane message to go to the website for assistance as I got with old ISP.
Will update as the dust with Bell settles.
Update 12/21/07: Dust has settled. Line profile is 3008/512FP (as I expected due to less than ideal line). At least a higher speed was attempted. OK, we know now what the line can handle. Speed test: 2528/419.
Final results: great, responsive tech support, optimum speed connection, newsgroups, lower cost.
Should have done this a long time ago.
Update 3/27/08: Speeds are erratic courtesy of Bell's inept traffic shaping. Bad pings.
Update 04/22/09:
Well, beginning of March, there was some excitement. Speeds went into the dumper; horrible time keeping sync. it took me some time to ascertain the problem was not my side of the demarc. Called support March 9th. It took until March 27th before everything was resolved back to normal. What got me upset was the eager willingness of everyone just to drop my profile (originally set at 3008/512FP 12/07, and working properly) down to 1184/512 IL. After 2 no-shows, Bell repair shows up 03/14 mid-afternoon. He changed the drop from the pole to the demarc, but didn't change the 14 year old demarc. More screwing around with profiles. I was beginning to think I was on a profile-of-the-hour plan. On the 18th, checked and found another neighbour (on Sympatico) was having grief as well. On the 19th, I was put on a 2496/640 IL profile, but the speeds were still varying wildly. On the 26th, everything snapped back to normal. Same 3008/512FP profile, same occupancy, as to when I started back in Dec/07. Never did hear as to what happened. My understanding was there were a significant # of tickets opened to Bell to correct the problem.
What bothered me about the whole experience was:
(1) the eagerness between Bell and TSI just to lower the speed profile, rather than looking for the cause of the problem.
(2) everybody I talked to gave me a different distance from my place to the CO. No 2 replies were the same. One Bell person actually told me I shouldn't have DSL available as I was too far (even though everybody stated my line attenuation was 52 dB).
(3) throughout this, I was left with the impression nobody believed me when I mentioned my original profile, attenuation, SNR, RO, at Bell and TSI. This really annoyed me.
(4) I was left under the impression that as long as I had some sort of DSL, that was supposed to be "good enough". To my surprise, my direct chat was locked on March 18th, but the real problem wasn't cleared up until March 26th. However, more phone calls back and forth and an e-mail to TSI "higher up" finally seemed to get the problem resolved.
Final results are same speed what i was used to, and improved short distance pings.
Although the problem was resolved, it seemed like there was a lot of unwilling cooperation on the part of the wholesaler to get the problem fixed.
Update 6/28/09:
After almost 2 months of normal operation, the line started misbehaving again, although nowhere as bad as in March. The D/L SNR varying from 14 dB to under 6 dB (resyncing). RO varying from 73% to 100+%. Even u/l SNR changing by 2 dB. Lots of CRC's (10000+/day) D/L, few CRC's U/L (under 50). Again, pointing to a possible line problem. Ticket to check line & repair - Bell tech checks line, says found problem in my CO, fixed. Yeah, right!! He's in TO, I'm in Niagara!! He drops my profile from 3008/512FP to 2568/640_IL. As we're chatting on phone, I told him profile change not acceptable. He says will ball back in 5 mins. Never did. Left me on crappy profile. I called back to TSI an hour later, found ticket closed. I'm afraid I lost it. Reopened ticket to restore profile.
So far, status quo. No resolution with line problem. Wish there was an alternative to Bell's lousy copper. Cogeco is an alternative, but not an option.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of TekSavvy Solutions Inc. |
|
TekSavvy Solutions Inc.
(83)
(75)
(118)
(55)
(13)
·