Review by ronin1701 Location: Toronto, ON, Canada Cost: $42 per month Install: about 11 days Faster than advertised (assuming the speedtest I ran is accurate) Pre-activation co-ordination. Cheaper and faster than Rogers.

Pre Sales information: Install Co-ordination: Connection Reliability: Services: Value for money: (ratings match consensus)

Initial review, October 13, 2011:

I activated on August 2, 2011, and delayed posting my review until now so that I could have some experience of their service before commenting.

My last ISP was Rogers (included in my rental condo, so I didn't have a choice) and I'd been out of the country for several years before that. So Teksavvy wasn't even on my radar screen until I started doing some research on ISPs in preparation for my most recent move. All I knew was that I really didn't want to go with either Rogers or Bell (both of which I've used in the past). Telus isn't an option in my area.

Teksavvy's website is decent, but not spectacular as far information goes. But I was able to reach their customer service department quite easily with various questions I had on services and price plans (four calls in three days), with wait times of under 5 minutes each. All the CSRs I dealt with were knowledgeable about what I was asking (fee structure, modems available, one-time charges, etc.), so I was actually impressed with that. 3/5 for the website, 5/5 for the humans, averaging out to the 4/5 rating I gave above for Pre Sales Information.

In the end, I decided to go with their "Express Cable" service at $36.95/month + HST. Interestingly the speeds and names (Express, Extreme, etc.) of their various cable internet packages replicate that of Rogers exactly, the only differences being price and usage cap.

I placed my order via their online application form on July 22, and on July 23 received an email confirmation that my order had been received (note: only that it was received, not that it was accepted or processed).

I chose to go with the DOCSIS 3.0 compliant Thomson DCM475 modem as it's only marginally more than the other model offered (the DOCSIS 2.0 Thomson DCM425), about $25 price difference if I recall correctly. My only issue is that their online form tells you that you can only order the DCM475 if you are taking their Extreme or Extreme pro package. After speaking to CS (one of the four calls I mentioned above), they explained that they "discourage" it since a DOCSIS 3.0 modem isn't needed for the slower speed services, but that if I really wanted it, I could still buy it. Which I did.

My modem was received in the mail on Wednesday July 27. Note that Teksavvy requires that you go to the nearest Canada post outlet to pick up your modem - delivery is not to your door.

The main problem I had was with Install Co-ordination. The issue is that according to Teksavvy, I should have received an email confirmation from them of my activation date within 2-3 business days of submitting my order, but as of business day 5: July 29 (the Friday - and last business day - prior to my requested activation date of August 2 (the day after Civic Holiday Monday) I still hadn't heard back from them. Which is funny, because my credit card was charged on July 25, so obviously my order had been processed. When I called them, the CSR told me that Rogers hadn't confirmed with them yet. I specifically requested a callback (because I was losing internet access due to my move) when they did receive confirmation of my activation date, but I never received that call (or even an email).

So I waited around at home on Tuesday afternoon of my requested activation, and fortunately the Rogers guy did eventually show up. As it turns out, all he did was test the line to make sure there was an active signal. There's no real "activation" per se - so I probably could have plugged in my modem myself a few days earlier.

I gave them a rating of 2 out of 5 for Install Co-ordination. I would have given them a 1 out of 5, except that the modem was received very quickly (they said it should arrive by Friday, and I got it on Wednesday).

Other than that, everything else has been fine. In the past 2.5 months I haven't had any issues that required getting in touch with Tech Support. Hence I have left the Tech Support rating blank.

Re: download speeds, anecdotally I can say that I'm getting super download speeds, especially with torrents (my g/f is extremely jealous). But I can't give you a hard number because the speedtest I ran through dslreports.com is only showing me d/l speeds of ~3-4 Mbps, but through speedtest.net I'm consistently getting results in the 18-20 Mbps range. The advertised speed for the "Express" service is 12Mbps, so I'm not sure which speedtest to believe. But it's unquestionably faster than what I had with Rogers previously, and I'm happy with the service I've got now, so I guess that's what matters.

Other points:

- Teksavvy doesn't provide any sort of bandwidth tracker, so there's no way to know what your usage is for the current period (which begs the question of how Teksavvy knows that you're over the 300 GB usage limit??).

- If you buy the modem directly from Teksavvy, they don't include the warranty card. According to CS, if there's an issue with your modem within the 1 year warranty period, they'll take care of the repair or replacement.

- your credit card gets billed about 5 calendar days before each service period. They only accept VISA and MC.

Speedtest archive:

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»www.speedtest.net/result ··· 0426.png

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BUCKEYECOM @buckeyecom.net BUCKEYECOM Anon 2011-Oct-13 9:47 pm Speedtest cheaper for them to offload it to someone else. Although it still will NOT show you're speed as they're showing the speed from you to DSLR not what the network should handle like what MOST ISPs use now. 2011-Oct-13 9:47 pm: · hey mods ·
	ronin1701 join:2002-02-20 Toronto, ON ronin1701 Member 2011-Oct-13 11:03 pm Re: Speedtest What speedtest site would you suggest? 2011-Oct-13 11:03 pm: · hey mods ·
jj_frap join:2003-12-15 jj_frap Member 2011-Oct-14 9:09 am Well now... As far as I know, they're not enforcing the cap currently. 2011-Oct-14 9:09 am: · hey mods ·
	ronin1701 join:2002-02-20 Toronto, ON 2 edits ronin1701 Member 2011-Oct-14 9:14 am Re: Well now... My guess is that they're relying on Rogers to tell them if an account goes over the cap (i.e. Rogers bills Teksavvy, and teksavvy passes it along), which still doesn't help us any. 2011-Oct-14 9:14 am: · hey mods ·
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