 Review by Flannel 
UPDATED: 257 days ago
member for 274 days, 100 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 undisclosed location
 $48 per month
 Bell Canada
 "Reliable connection"
 "Expensive, email, sevices, deceptive business practices"
 "Don't pay more for Sympatico to get less"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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I waited a while to create a review of Bell’s Sympatico ISP to avoid writing an anger driven one. So I’ll start off on a positive note by saying that Sympatico does have knowledgeable technical staff at the end of the line (highest level) and a fairly solid technical infrastructure. I was satisfied with the quality and up time of my internet connection over the 6 years I was with them. However price and a number of issues with Sympatico have added up over the years, many of them recently and this has pushed me to leave.
The only reason I can think of as to why I’m experiencing these issues is because Sympatico is cost cutting. Of course Bell (just like Rogers) is a very large corporation whose only goal is profits. They embody what is wrong with mega-corporations in the sense that overpaid executives make all decisions based on maximizing profits for the company and bonuses for themselves with little care or interest in the actual products or services they sell. The aim is to extract as much money from customers without breaking the law or excessively losing customers to the competition. This is in direct contrast to an ISP like Teksavvy that appears to be run by enthusiasts who actually care about the products and services they are providing.
The problems are evident immediately when you start shopping for Sympatico services. All pricing and services are very convoluted and misleading. Every service and price offered are accompanied with one or more asterisks for which it is often very difficult to find the reference or details. Clearly this is all misleading marketing practices that are intended to lure customers into thinking they are getting good prices or services when in fact it is bait and switch. Most of their prices only apply for a short initial period and are often based on you buying “bundles”, which are additional services at additional costs. And once you’ve signed on with Bell they continue to try to up sell you products and services regardless if they are needed or not (and in the case of higher speeds, often not even available or realistic; but that doesn’t stop them from selling them to you).
When I first signed on with Sympatico I was shocked to find out that it was impossible for me to own my own DSL modem, they simply did not allow it; it was forbidden. Instead they forced me to rent a modem from them. Of course, over the years I have paid for this modem 100X over and continue to pay for it despite it being old, slow and outdated. And now that I am cancelling my service they want it back. What a waste of money. This is clearly a way for Sympatico to gouge more money from their customers. I’m surprised the government / CRTC allows them to get away with this practice (Rogers did the same when I enquired). I moved from Quebec where I had been using (a major player) Videotron for three years with my own modem for $29/month and was very pleased with the service so I was surprised by this practice and higher prices by Bell and Rogers.
The price for my Sympatico service increased over the years and lately I’ve been paying $47.95, before tax, just for the standard service. Despite realizing I was paying more than I would for other DSL competitors I continued to use and pay for Sympatico afraid that since Bell owned most of the infrastructure my line would not be as reliable using a less expensive service.
Well in the past year my Sympatico service deteriorated to the point that I could no longer justify lazily paying more for it.
Sympatico e-mail was outsourced (probably sold for profit) to MSN / Microsoft’s Hotmail to save money. This has caused me to have a number of issues with my Sympatico email. Some emails that I send are blocked by organizations' using SPAM filters like SORBS due to the simple fact that they originate from the free-for-all Hotmail servers. The pophm hotmail server is very slow to respond and often times out (old pop/smtp have reliability issues as well). Sympatico converted some of my email accounts to Hotmail and didn’t convert others; apparently I was to soon lose my e-mail addresses that start with numbers because it is not compatible with the Hotmail servers. If I have to change my email address, why not take the opportunity to change ISP.
Sympatico also started to severely limit internet speeds on purpose without disclosure. I started getting 0.2 - 0.4 Mbps transfer speeds when I was paying for a 5Mbps service; I first noticed this when attempting a peer to peer distributed download of a Linux distro. Many other applications also started being speed limited, including VPN, most types of P2P traffic, VOIP, games, etc..
There is no reason to pay more for Sympatico when there are viable less expensive alternatives out there. With Sympatico you are paying for the inefficient bloated overhead and Bell’s bureaucratic profit hungry corporation. You are also paying for Sympatico run web sites and other value added services that are also an inefficient bloated mess and useless to most people. And lastly, Sympatico’s and Bell’s first line support is slow, very tedious to deal with, error prone and generally technically unknowledgeable. Why pay extra for all of this? It took me all these years to finally take action about my wasting money on Sympatico.
Followup comments:  
fred fink
@bell.ca
| Sympatico I have just spent one houre talking to someone in india telling me thatI am gettin 5 meg download speed when i am only getting 1300 kbps eventualy he told me that i had been putonto the slow link but they are still charging me for high speed BELL SUCKS | |
| handy
join:2005-04-03
| Hear, Hear, Flannel!! Well said, sir, well said. Couldn't agree more.You hit it on the head. Bell is just too big now, and run by a cabal of psychopaths. Their call centre system is purposefully designed to encourage the customer to give up. Their marketers created in us a lust for speed we didn't know we needed,only to crimp our massive pipes when we have the audacity to use them to their full potential, and in a manner that makes them uncomfortable(P2P carries too many potential legal complications for an isp...better to discourage it). Top it all off with service "enhancements" and upgrades that serve merely to enhance their bottom line. Textbook. Corporate. Dry. Rot.
Well, no more. I'm going to join many others and vote with my feet, and may they choke on their fibre-optic pens. Teksavvy must be loving Bellzebub's latest enhancements!
thanks again for a great write-up. | |
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