Review by InvalidError 
UPDATED: 27 days ago
member for 104 days, 102 visits, last login: 3 days ago
 Saint-Leonard,QC
 $31 per month
 about 5 days
 Bell Canada
 "Great value for the price"
 "Bell started throttling their wholesale side"
 "Good choice if you value high caps over insane speed"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
2008-04-20: Bell's throttling has come back to haunt my line for the last four days now... of course, I am not exactly surprised. I hope CAIP's reply to Bell's evasive responses will get the CRTC to quickly act in our favor in the near future.
2008-04-03: Looks like Bell's throttling experiment in my area has been suspended: I was able to download torrents at 200-250KB/s yesterday and 300-350KB/s today which is about on par with what I used to get in the weeks prior to Bell admitting wholesale throttling. The end?
2008-03-25: Bell's throttling has taken full effect on my line today and my torrenting is now hitting the outrageously low 30K/30K ceiling so I knocked my service score down one notch until this crippling nonsense is resolved.
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Pre-sales: the TSI site is lacking several details about billing, bandwidth accounting, miscellaneous features and other details as evidenced by the periodic creation of new threads covering these topics. The DSLR FAQ answers some of these questions but I firmly believe it is the ISP's duty to post all relevant and frequently requested information on its own site in an easily locatable area rather than somewhere on some third-party site.
Coordination: this should actually be an N/A since the service was activated on an existing line and no tech visit or anything else was required. I was a little surprised that a TSI tech went out of her way to call me and ask: "Your line was activated two days ago and we still have no activity on your account, are you having any issues setting up your access?"... well, yes: the local store I planned to buy my modem from was fresh out of ST516.
Reliability: got 5M/800k sync from day-1 (or day-5 including the out-of-ST516 issue above) but service cut off a few times for no apparent reason and without losing sync, indicating that those outages were due to something between the DSLAM and TSI's ERXes. (Bell upgrading their GAS firmware to implement throttling?)
Support: half of my eMail support mail had to be sent twice before getting a reply, quite unexpected from a company whose claim to fame is superior tech support. However, most of these were trivial issues which I did not really care about how soon they would be replied to.
Services: I was getting around 400KB/s on torrents during the first weeks from activation but lately, torrents struggle to reach 200KB/s with 150KB/s being a more typical steady speed. While this may be Bell's fault, the fact still is that it is somewhat disappointing. Thankfully, I start most of my torrents before going to sleep or going to work so I do not care much about speed as long as my downloads are done by the time I wake up or come back from work.
Value: I canceled Videotron HS because I was sick and tired of watching the 20GB download limit worrying about the insane $8/GB overage charge. TSI Premium costs $10/month less for 6X the aggregate cap which is practically unlimited as far as I am concerned. No longer needing to watch my upload/download caps, no longer having to worry about insane overage charges and saving $10/month in the process is an excellent value in my book.
Overall: TSI Premium offers a generous 200GB cap, highly competitive $0.25/GB overage charges, no-strings-attached internet access for $30/month. The only real black clouds on the TSI-scape are Bell's new wholesale throttling and the usual distance from DSLAM.
Followup comments:  |  | InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
 ·Videotron
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by Kareeser :Seeing as the throttling isn't teksavvy's fault (» Indie ISPs Eyeing Legal Action Against Bell Canada, and that Rocky, the co-owner of TekSavvy, is doing everything in his power to represent the customers, I think your score is wildly inaccurate. As a paying TSI customer, I have the right to be unhappy with being throttled when part of the reason I signed up with TSI was thanks to TSI stance against throttling.
If the throttling was TSI's fault, I would have readily dropped most of my ratings to 1/5. Fanboism aside, can you seriously say that 30KB/s throttled speeds actually warrant even a 3/5 rating? I used to be on unthrottled cable readily doing over 600KB/s, TSI is now 20X slower than what I was used to, 10X slower than what I was expecting out of ADSL and well below what I consider to be the absolute minimum acceptable speed of 100KB/s.
I never thought I would consider going back to Videotron's crappy caps after quitting them for TSI but unless the throttling situation is resolved to my satisfaction in the not too distant future, I might end up doing exactly that. How long I may be willing to wait depends on how vigorously resellers will fight Bell. | |
| | | Cand 6 2 1
join:2007-07-29
Windsor, ON | Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... But the bottom line is Rocky's doing everything he can to stop it..  | |
| | | | InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by Cand 6 2 1 :But the bottom line is Rocky's doing everything he can to stop it.. I downgraded my review to reflect the TSI service I am getting now thanks to Bell's throttling VS the TSI service I used to get before Bell's throttling. Once this saga is resolved to my satisfaction or at least sufficiently improved, I will update my review.
If I had no expectation that Rocky&al. along with us, subscribers, would duke it out with Bell, I would have already written "F**k that, I'm going back to Videotron" but for now, there is enough momentum behind the outrage to guarantee regular news updates and hopefully fast-track the outcome. | |
| | | | | Sash55
join:2007-12-13
Brampton, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... Yes, good post. Many people want to defend TekSavvy, and I do defend them, but don't point the finger to Bell.
Purpose of this website is to review individual ISP's for the performance we receive, compared to what we paid for, what we expect, and what new customers need to know.
The review I did, has 2.1 average mark, and that is in my opinion the correct value for the situation as it is.
So, treat each ISP individually for service they provide, don't be biased in favor of TekSavvy just because they are one of the best still, and trying to help their customers.
I am very fond and appreciative of this fact, and have offered to help in any form I can via petitions, or writing to Parliament on anti-trust, or monopoly laws.
But, that said, the service as it is deserves a downgrade. Good job on downgrading yours in your review. New users need to be aware of the service as it is, not what it was, or what we'd like it to be. | |
| | | | | | InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by Sash55 :The review I did, has 2.1 average mark, and that is in my opinion the correct value for the situation as it is. Although we now have to live with the fact that Bell may randomly enable and disable throttling on our lines and it seems TSI has issues with keeping track of eMail support requests, an average under 3.0 seems excessively harsh. Glad to see you came to your senses afterwards and bumped your average up!
said by Sash55 :Good job on downgrading yours in your review. New users need to be aware of the service as it is, not what it was, or what we'd like it to be. Thanks for confirming that I am not the only rational person around here.
We pay for service from one company. If that company's providers mess up, my service provider has to be ready to take the heat and put pressure on its providers to make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately for both us and TSI, TSI does not have that much leverage to pile up pressure on Bell and no viable competing providers to use as bargaining chips. | |
| | | | | | | tranceduden
join:2007-05-16
Mississauga, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... Wow, that is harsh. It's not TSI's fault. And regarding responding to emails, I would imagine their support team is overwhelmed with support emails regarding this very issue we've all been having for the past 2 weeks. TSI is doing their bit to fight Bell on this, if anything their ranking should go up not down. | |
| | | | | | | | InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by tranceduden :Wow, that is harsh. Reality can be harsh, get used to it.
While I may be glad that TSI&al. are taking the fight to Bell, it does not change the fact that my service totally sucked for a week. Since I am not a Bell customer, I do not have a legitimate official complaint channel direct to Bell. However, I can still blame TSI for not having a clause in their contracts explicitly preventing Bell from pulling such stunts. Now we have to wait and see what the lawyers/CRTC will determine to be implied in the Tariffs.
On a different note, I have yet to see any obvious signs of throttling or other speed issues on my line at any time of day since my last review update. Whatever happened, I hope it will last. | |
| | | | | | | | | tranceduden
join:2007-05-16
Mississauga, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by InvalidError :said by tranceduden :Wow, that is harsh. Reality can be harsh, get used to it. Now you are being just ridiculous. Let me put it to you in a way you can maybe comprehend.
Say you had your favorites gas station, and all of a sudden there was canada wide gas shortage. And all gas stations were handed a directive by the oil companies to only allow 1 car to fill up 10L of gas per day.
Would you hold your gas station liable for this or the oil company ? Sure you pay your money to the gas station but they would be held to circumstances beyond their control.
This is EXACTLY the situation TSI is dealing with, they have no control over this and people blaming TSI and ranking them poorly because Bell decided to f*ck with all ISPs has nothing to do with them. | |
| | | | | | | | | | InvalidError
join:2008-02-03
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Videotron
| Re: Not TekSavvy's Fault... said by tranceduden :said by InvalidError :said by tranceduden :Wow, that is harsh. Reality can be harsh, get used to it. Now you are being just ridiculous. Let me put it to you in a way you can maybe comprehend. If my favorite gas station will allow me to get only 10L and I need 20L, I'll just go get the other 10L elsewhere. If the gasoline shortage is hindering my daily business, I would have to consider hybrids and alternative fuels. If my friend's garage still only does gasoline by the time gas becomes prohibitively expensive, sucks to be him.
As I said in one of my previous posts, had Bell's throttling of TSI persisted, I would have seriously considered going back with Videotron even though Videotron costs $10/month more and has a ridiculous 30GB/month cap. If a provider repeatedly fails to deliver the minimum service level I expect for whatever reason, I will search for and switch to one that can. | |
| | | | | | | | | thefifthlord
join:2006-11-25
Nepean, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Unfair review. I find this review to be ridiculous, first of all, ITS Bell's fault, there's no reason you should be holding TSI liable for this. Secondly, Videotron is a cable service, you cannot compare cable with dsl as they are different services and have different issues. Thirdly, if you were with any other ISP in the country that offered DSL you would still be throttled, bell owns all the lines, they own the network. Fourthly, TSI is doing all they can to fight bell on this issue, when all other ISP's would rather be bell's b***h and let their customers suffer.
And i want to stress again the fact that Videotron is a cable service; when the previous person showed the gas example, and you said that you'd simply go to another one. Consider cable to be diesel and DSL to be gasoline. | |
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