dslreports logo

Review by fefrie See Profile

  • Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
  • Cost: $44 per month
  • Install: about 14 days
Once you're issue free, it just works, and high value. Advertised speeds
There can be issues with new service installs. If so, just keep submitting tickets to push to Shaw.
The value cannot be beat and is worth the effort to switch from Shaw or Telus.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I previously had telus with phone and internet for $43 including tax. Every six months, I had to 'beg' Telus to give me the credits to make phone/internet cost viable and competitive. after their recent increase to $55 and their refusal to honor their original contract with me for phone ($17/month) it was time to move.

I tested a voip land line, and with a lot of tweaking I've made it work to the point that the quality is just the same as a land line.

My telus speed was rated at 6.0mb/s and it would on occasion hit that speed on regular internet surfing, or when downloading full speed connections.

I bought a used modem locally for $30, or you can find them online on ebay delivered easily for $35 including shipping. (Update: With Docis 2.0 becoming outdated, if you only need speeds up to 30mbps, these routers can be found for as little as $10)

I ordered the 7.5mb cable service with 300gb bandwidth cap. Previously I was unrestricted, and I would often go way over 300mb, but they have unlmited bandwidth between 2am and 8am so I will just modify my programs to work within those constraints.

The lack of an online interface that monitors on/off peak usage is a little aggravating.

Customer service is a 20 min wait by phone, but they are also responsive by email.

The installation process was a little bit of a hassle because they act as go between between the local cable company and me, which calls for 2 to 3 extra 20 mintue calls when an email would have been more appropriate..

Once the tech came and installed, Everything was fine. The modem fired up and connected without problems.

Now there is the issue with speed comparison:

Telus 'sells' a 6.0mb connection, and using 'pure' download connections like my podcaster, I would hit the max speed easily. Surfing everywhere else on the net was a so so experience, never every getting max speed on regular websites, but at the same time I didn't expect as such.

I bought a 7.5mb cable connection from teksavvy. Here are side by side comparisons:

»www.speedtest.net/result ··· 8876.png

»www.speedtest.net/result ··· 1051.png

»testmy.net/KgnH0mA.uJZ3qwr.png

»testmy.net/VcGr9n3.Jv3hyCQ.png

And Youtube reports that my speed is 2.0mb/s with telus and 7.9mb/s with teksavvy.

So I'm not sure what to beleive when it comes to what actual speeds are. Is telus undercutting me with a subpar line, or it teksavvy over delivering?

Judging by the 2 out of 3 result, it seems like telus has been gouging me for many years. Seems like they advertise a service that INCLUDES tcp overhead, but teksavvy delivers on TRUE bandwidth.

There is no phone or video on demand option, but I'm pretty sure that if you wanted something like netflix, i'm pretty sure that it would work. There is no option for live sports.

Voip landline works great.

The total extra fees to get me started on teksavvy was $79 for the installation and $30 for a modem that I got used.

With the money I saved I will pay off for this extra expense in four months.

I should have done this years ago. And with the usage of a voip phone now, moving service from house to house should the need arise is extremely simple.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------

UPDATE: June 2013. Everything is working fine. Speed test still reports DL speed as up to 15mbps, even though I only subscribe to 7.5mbs. My laptop througput monitor confirms that it's running at 15mpbs which is about the limit for my wireless g connection.

I needed to contact customer service for a seperate matter and it took 26 minutes to reach an agent to solve my problem. I expected this. This was on a Friday at 6pm pst.

UPDATE Sept 2013: Everything is working fine. It seems like Teksavvy, like any other cable company has burst incoming speeds of up to 22mbps then settles down to 7.5mbps. Everything is working so well that I have to upgrade my network from wireless g to n to take advantage of the burst speed.

I wish that if you signed up for a 1 year contract that they would waive the installation fee.

UPDATE OCT 2013: We were having router issues, so finally changed from DDWRT to Tomato. QOS is now finally working properly. As a long time user of DDWRT I was reluctant to change to Tomato, however, Tomato has more finite adjustments for Bandwidth shaping. Changed to an 'ancient' tomato compatible linksys e900 router. (Actually a downgrade from my previous router) Works in an old house with 7 users and their devices and VOIP. Tomato is the only router I have used so far that has been able to throttle torrenting properly.

With router updates and hardware adjustments and Teksavvy, I now have a network running at 7.5/512k that is more than adequate for many many users that would have needed a much more expensive service to accomodate. I now see regular burst speeds into the 14-18-22mbps range. This makes Youtube HD streaming absolutely possible. There is no buffering, and the grey bar easily outpaces the red progress bar. These are speeds that are completely unheard of when I was with telus 6. I NEVER ever saw a speed higher that 6mbps when I was with telus.

Update Jan 2014: I was having some slow internet response, so I removed QOS and everything seems to work better than ever. The internet seems to be really quick and responsive. If you are going to use QOS, you need a high quality router.

Update Mar 2014: My first connection problem. I called in at 12pm and got connected to a tech agent pretty quick. Call got disconnected, had to call back again at 2pm and waited 20 minutes on hold, continued teching. Call got disconnected, called back at 3 pm, and waited 30 minutes. As I understand it, they don't call people back on disconnects. Neither do they call if you ask them to in the Direct forum. This is aggravating.

The tech bug chasing is pretty tiring and exhausting. I had to ping test/ traceroute which is high level tech stuff for a customer/consumer to do. Restart/reboot/powercycle the modem and my two computers a million times.

I know how to do it, but I can't imagine a normal person would know how to access command window functions. I was afraid that my modem went bad so I jumped through all hoops doing the reboots and different computers and restarts needed to make sure that stuff works. They told me to change all the ethernet wires since they can go bad. Cmon, really? Copper coated aluminium cable goes bad? What about the stuff that is installed in walls and never moves?

I sort of understand that they need to make sure everything is ok before the send a tech, but they wanted me to also change the coax cable that went into the modem into the wall to see if that failed. Cmon, really? Cable goes bad? Indoor cable coax doesn't have the longevity of the same cable that has been sitting on the outside of my house for years? Needless to say, I lied and said that I changed the cable.

The problem was then acknowledged to be outside of my house with a routing issue. All in all, it was an exhausting 4 hours to check my hardware to make sure that it's fine. It's a pain in the ass. I'm dropping my connection reliability rating. Any other customer would have had a hissyfit if the tech asked them to to a ping test and tracerout and send the results to them via email on a connection that doesn't work.

The third tech megan proved to be very nice and finished up the ticket, and the problem magically disappeared as we were teching it again. It turned out to be a problem with Routing at the network.

In future, I wish the techs would just ask if I would prefer to make a note for the sysadmins to look to see if there is failure trend and call me back if I want to help diagnose or give me the option of teching for them for four hours. It was a huge waste of my time.

It's better for TS to acknowledge that the customer has a problem, see if a trend develops, than waste the customer's time to see if there is something wrong with their router, computer , or modem.

I am so tired of this episode.

Update: April 21: 11:40pm PST Second connection problem. Granted, it just happened for about 5 minutes but it still happened. Didn't reset the router, modem, and computer. It just came back. If you have a connection problem, just walk away for an hour or two, maybe four. It's not really worth calling in and losing hours of your time. Since this was a short term connection error, and things have been working really well with my upgraded router (480mhz cpu, 128mb ram) I am upgrading my connection reliability rating.

Update May 07: 930am. Disconnected for about another 5 minutes.

Update June 15 2014: Slow internet for 2 days. Tested high packet loss. Emailed support and sent another long list of 'necessary' tests. This is getting aggravating. Woke up this morning and speed seems to be better, but packet loss is still there. Is 15-20% bad? Pings to gateway have no packet loss, but pings to google.com have as high as 28%

I'm dropping Value, services, connection reliability points. I talked to another person in my area that had unending packet loss issues and his solution after months was to leave. Is this the beginning of the end for me?

Update June 19, 2014: Didn't do anything, and the packet loss has disappeared. The internet seems like it is at it's speedy normal. I am glad that I didn't waste too much time doing all the tests. I wish TS would tag me as a high functioning computer user so that when I call, they know that I've done everything necessary on my end, probably having powercycled everything 3-4 times already, and asking me to do futile things such as switching ethernet and coax cables is not necessary.

When I have issues with 4 computers in the house at the same time, and once I've direct connected to the modem bypassing the router, the issues are possibly with the modem, but more likely upstream.

Update July 07, 2014 Packet loss has come back. This time opened up a ticket. Used the direct forum and phone calls for help. The process has gone smoother since I do alot of the work before the call testing. Opened up a ticket. Packet loss is 32%. Not good.

Tech support gets upgraded two points (4/5) for making the process faster. Connection reliability gets dropped one point to2/5)

Update July 29, 2014 Packet loss Round 3. This is getting tiring. Connection reliability rating drops from 25% to 0%. I actively promote teksavvy because I would love that $1/month discount refferal, but I can't do it if I have to tech their line ever month when something goes wrong because my friends aren't as tech to winmtr the line.

Update Dec 09 2014: Terrible ping quality. It's been a continuing intermittent problem. Typically at night. I'm getting really tired of this.

Update Jan 14 2015: I expect that there will be intermittent packet loss at least 2-3 times a month. I can't drop connection reliablilty anymore, so I have to drop services to 3/5. I'm still happy with service overall. I'd switch, but I'm staying with teksavvy mostly to stick it to the incumbents.

Update Jan 25 2015: A pretty predictable pattern of 9-10pm 15-20% packet loss or ping times from 500-1000ms TSI Support has been good in responding to my forum postings and are limited in the actions they can take with incumbent. I do have a docsis 2.0 modem, so that may be the problem or the node may be oversubscribed. Upped tech support ratings, upped Connection reliablilty (not TSI Fault?), upped value for money (400/gb/month in unlimited periods)

Update Jan 27 2015: Teksavvy has been pretty good when using DSL reports for customer service. If you can wait for answers, this is the way to go. They've been pretty proactive in trying new options and making it attractive for me to try different things. I still think that the cause of the problem lies with the incumbent, and as such, I can't really falut TSI for poor connection reliabliy. I'll ukp the Value for money up one unit again.

Update March 10 2015: So a recent day without service. It was a noted issue and I finally escalated it to a ticket. Later in the day it reconnected.

Using speedtest, I get 'burst' speeds up to 30mbps for a couple of seconds then it throttles back to my subscribed speeds (prev 15mbps).

I'm guessing that sCable with it's contiued oversubscrption on my node finally upgraded. So I'm hoping that packet loss errors will not be an issue for a long while.
I should note that with the increase in speed, there is no increase in performance or a 'faster' internet, which continues to prove that the bottleneck is the internet and not my connection.

I am going to increase my connection reliability score and services score in hopes that this will be the end of service disruptions.

Update July 07 2015: Decided to upgrade to 25mbps service simply for the upload speed.

Sent in a ticket and TS sent a router to me to upgrade. The ticket was missed a couple of times to upgrade, and there was an annoying double post of ticket updates from the TS website and the Direct forum in regards to what i needed to do. I prefer to deal with the Direct forum since they tend to be a bit more 24hours.

Since March service has been 100% reliable.

Speed isn't 100% as advertised. About 22 down and 2.0 up, but for the most part it's not noticeable except for the newer upload speed to backup services.

I'm pretty happy with services and customer services. I'll up a couple of stars for service.

Update April 2016: Since last update to the 25mbps service, I've had zero issues with teksavvy. I've spoken with other new people with Teksavvy. They have problems exactly like I had and recommended that they just keep a diary of the times, and ask the TS reps to develop a script with all the tests that need to be run so that you can just email the results in or submit them to the TS direct forum to push the tickets to Shaw with as little headache as possible.

member for 11.5 years, 482 visits, last login: 4.1 years ago
updated 7.8 years ago


TSI Keith
Premium Member
join:2012-07-09

TSI Keith

Premium Member

WELCOME!

Hello fefrie,

First I'd like to thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us, we always love getting feedback from our customers! Secondly, I'd like to welcome you to the family!!

Also, we are in the midst of hiring a lot of new agents so if you need us in the future we're working hard to get the wait times down to a more reasonable level asap. Also should you need us for any reason you can also reach out to us here on the »/forum ··· avdirect forum.

There has been quite an interest voiced in us getting TV service in the future. There is nothing in the works at the moment, but who knows what the future may bring

Bear in mind, not only is usage free between 2 and 8 am but we also don't count upload traffic towards your cap!

Thanks again for your wonderful feedback and please don't hesitate to let us know if any questions or concerns come up.

Thank you,
Keith
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: WELCOME!

Could you clarify 'Uploads are free'?

Is it that uploads are free 24/7 or only free during the 2-8am period?

TSI Andre
Premium Member
join:2008-06-03
Chatham, ON

TSI Andre

Premium Member

Re: WELCOME!

Period! Uploads don't count. Downloads are not counted during those times.

TSI Ashleigh
Premium Member
join:2013-02-24
Chatham, ON

TSI Ashleigh

Premium Member

Review

Hello Fefrie,

Thank you for the update on your services!! Glad to see everything is still working as it should, and you’re receiving excellent speeds with your connection. This is fantastic!!! Please continue to keep us updated on your TekSavvy journey. If you have any other questions or concerns please let us know in the Direct Forum »/forum ··· avdirect. We are always happy to help!

Thank you
Ashleigh
TSI Ashleigh

1 edit

TSI Ashleigh

Premium Member

Updated Review

Hello Fefrie,

Thank you for the updated review. I regret to hear you have had a service issue with your connection. Our phone agents most certainly do call back when a phone disconnects as long as another call has not connected on the line as soon as the call drops. Which does happen when it’s busy, and it makes it difficult to be able to call back. I have located and reviewed your account to see about the call dropping during troubleshooting and there are notes from the tech agent you spoke to indicating they attempted to call you back when the call dropped however the call was blocked and they were unable to reach you. There are notes indicating for the next agent what troubleshooting had been completed already and what needed to be completed if you contacted us back. Again we certainly do apologize if there was no call back.

If you can post in the Direct Forum »/fo ··· avdirect a contact number where you can be reached at I can update your account to ensure we can call you back in the future if you are disconnected again.

We also require troubleshooting for all issues prior to being able to tell you what issue you are having or if you are part of an area issue. We are unable to see your connection from our side to tell you what your issue is or to tell you that your part of an area issue. Troubleshooting must be completed on all issues or we are unable to go forward with diagnosing your issue or assisting you with your connection. We understand it is frustrating to troubleshoot however we must complete it or we are blind to your connection. Fully troubleshooting all issues allows us to understand what issue you are having and what direction we need to go in to fix your service. I hope this helps you understand a little better why we troubleshoot all issues, I can assure you we are not trying to be difficult and we do want to help and diagnose your issue.

Thank you again for your updated review. If you have any other questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to message us in the Direct Forum »/fo ··· avdirect.

Thanks again
Tsi-ashleigh
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: Updated Review

It was a one time thing, and the thing that I wish happened was...

I wasn't home when it happened.

It probably would have fixed itself anyways.

If I didn't have a string of router failures, I wouldn't have been so paranoid that my modem went bad.

If I knew 100% that my modem was still fine and working, I would have just gone out for a nice walk.

TSI Jonathan
Premium Member
join:2011-08-24
Chatham, ON

TSI Jonathan

Premium Member

Re: Updated Review

Thank you for the update fefrie.

TSI Kris
Premium Member
join:2013-11-18
Chatham, ON

TSI Kris

Premium Member

Review update

Hey there Fefrie,

Thanks for your updated review! Glad you're still enjoying the service! Please do let us know if you run into any further disconnections as we want to make sure to fix any potential issue.

Thanks,

TSI Kris

TSI Andre
Premium Member
join:2008-06-03
Chatham, ON

TSI Andre

Premium Member

Update

Hi fefrie,

Thanks for the update. Unfortunately, troubleshooting is not a 5 second job so naturally when we email you steps on what we need, it will be a bit long and that could be intimidating.

My recommendation would be to call in to have our support go through the steps with you.

Can you please create a post in the direct with your contact number and best contact time so we can have support reach out to you?

Thanks,

Andre
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: Update

I created a ticket already.

I do have a question though. If I do a ping test and get 100% fine to your gateway, but get a 28% packet loss to google.com, is it really necessary that I do everything else on your exhaustive list?
Expand your moderator at work

TSI Andre
Premium Member
join:2008-06-03
Chatham, ON

TSI Andre to fefrie

Premium Member

to fefrie

Re: Update

There are only a few things we ask that are not part of our vendor's requirements that we ask to help us narrow things down however the majority is something we must as without, a ticket cannot be opened or will get rejected.

TSI Ashleigh
Premium Member
join:2013-02-24
Chatham, ON

TSI Ashleigh

Premium Member

updated review

Hello Fefrie

Thank you for the updated review. I am so happy to see the packet loss has resolved itself for you. We most certainly do know that you’re an experienced user and any troubleshooting requested is needed by our vendor. I know you know we are not trying to be difficult when we ask you to check the simple things, we are bound by our vendor’s requirements for service affecting issues.

Thank you again for your updated review. Please let us know in the Direct Forum »/fo ··· avdirect if you have any further questions. We are always happy to help you.

Thank you
TSI-Ashleigh
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

1 edit

fefrie

Member

Re: updated review

I'm probably going to have to go through a full test.

I'm at the library now, and the internet just works faster here. I thought that it was my legacy computer, but that proves to not be the case.

It could be my d2.0 router, but tech has said that the likelihood is low.

Packet loss is low (2-4%), but pings can be high in the 200-300ms.

I was willing to accept high pings as an anomoly, but at the library, the experience is noticeably faster, maybe it's the faster speed here too, but high pings will make fast seem slow too no?

Can I still upgrade up to 10 or 25mbps with my 2.0 modem?

TSI Andre
Premium Member
join:2008-06-03
Chatham, ON

TSI Andre

Premium Member

Update

Hi there,

I see that you also create a public thread and you posted in the Direct. We will have someone follow-up with you in the direct.

Thanks,

Andre
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: Update

Thanks.

I post in both threads because I want to know/show others and communicate with each other to see if there is a trend in Vancouver

TSI Milissa
Premium Member
join:2015-01-19
Chatham, ON

TSI Milissa

Premium Member

Re:Update

Hello Fefrie

Thank you for your updated review.
Please let us know in the Direct Forum »TekSavvy Direct if you have any further questions. We are always happy to help you.

Thank you
TSI-Milissa
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: Re:Update

Actually I just reordered the updates to the bottom and into chronological order.

One of the guys that I refferered to TS under the refferal program is having extreme/exact problems that I had.

Do you know why service for him would typically always cut out at 9pm?

You did tech work for him, going to the extreme length of sending him a new test router.

He's tearing his hair out right now. I'm hoping that my updates give him some hope and strategies on how to cope emotinally.

TSI Ashleigh
Premium Member
join:2013-02-24
Chatham, ON

TSI Ashleigh

Premium Member

Updated review

Hello Fefrie,

Thank you for the updated review! It is appreciated. I am happy to see you are still enjoying the service without issues. If you’d like to investigate the speeds you are receiving, we’d be happy to assist you through the Direct Forum.

Thank you again for the updated review on your services!!! Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks again,

TSI Sean
Premium Member
join:2015-10-14
Chatham, ON

TSI Sean

Premium Member

Update ...

Good Evening fefrie,

Thank you for the update, we are very happy to hear that you are enjoying your service.

We also appreciate your support and assistance with any new customers that may be experiencing issues. It is important to track issues for sure, it makes it easier to get any issue resolved.

As always if you need anything, please let us know!

Have a great night!

Respectfully,
fefrie
join:2012-08-17
Vancouver, BC

fefrie

Member

Re: Update ...

A lot of issues I'm 'coaching' people through is that I always have to warn them about the prototypical issue of 6 months in, service quality drops. Packetloss at very specific weekday times. Then something happens, then should be zero issues then onward.

Why does this almost always happen?

People almost always stop the idea of switching, but I have to coach them that the savings are worth it, the unlimited times, the zero hassle billing, the dsl forums. It's really hard to pull people out of that freak oiut that 6 months in something might go bad.

I tell them to submit tickets as much as possible.

What's really needed is a cut and paste form of network tests so that people (of tech savvy means) can do them offline, and email you in the results to avoid the long call and very slow methodology of the CSR assisted tests.

OR a simple batch/exe tool that can run with one button and auto submit/saves results to TS

In my personal experience, there was a lot of wasted time retesting issues that would have been faster if I just already did it and just confirmed a 'yes' with the tech.

ie, testing the coaxial cable or ethernet cable 'with a cable of known working capacity'

I think a lot of the tests are redundant and are only necessary because that's the script that's needed to get shaw to accept a ticket.

Other than that, most people are pretty good. Once the service is stabalized, they're pretty happy I assume. I try not to ask all the time of them, but i'm pretty sure that they're signed up still.