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Review by f00dMonsta See Profile

  • Location: Canada
  • Cost: $60 per month (month by month)
Was fast (Fibe), while it lasted...
Unreliable DSL connection. Abysmal Customer service.
Seriously considering changing service provider if problems not resolved...
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

*** Update 28th July 2014:

- Concern department scheduled to call me sometime Thursday 24th July 2014. They called while I was in a meeting at 11:30am, left a voice message saying they will call the next day (I'm wondering why they cannot call again the same day)

- Friday 25th 2014: I did not receive a call all day, no messages either

- Friday 25th 2014, evening: Filed a complaint form on bell.ca

- Saturday 26th 9:00am: Complaint department rep (note: I believe it's different from concern dept) called, again after more back and forth and repeating the same information N times, a senior tech was scheduled for monday morning.

- Sunday 27th evening: Concern dept finally decided to call. Claimed that they couldn't reach me on Friday, but did not leave a message. (Nor do I have any missed calls). I told him that there is already a tech coming monday morning

- Monday 28th July 9am: Tech called to say he was coming in 45min. He came did the same things from router all the way down to IT room, but this time he managed to switch the underground cable that we were on.

- Monday 28th 1:25pm: Complaint department rep called asking if the issue has been fixed. I told her that it is an intermittent issue, and that I'm not even home. I asked her to call back the next day for me to monitor the situation.

- Monday 28th evening: As I am typing this post out, a 2nd disconnection (red flashing @ light, DSL light is solid blue) in 1hr duration is happening. Packet loss issue has *not* been resolved at the slightest.

.... It's been 1hr, I can't get a stable enough connection to even update this post...

2hrs later, now I can post...

*** Update 22nd July 2014:

- Thursday 17th July: I decided not to call this time, and went onto the bell.ca live chat support. Was passed around a couple representatives until one finally said that they will send a technician on Friday (next day) between 8-5 (wow?) to check things. I also emphasis ed to them the importance of communication, and that they should call me when work starts/ends, and I should be informed of any changes in schedule. The representative acknowledged that and claims he put it on the ticket for the technician.

- Friday 18th July: no news from Bell during the day.

- Friday 18th July (night time around 8:30pm): I finally received a call back from the Concern department from the guy who called me before. He told me that a tech (or someone else) closed the ticket at 5pm after performing a line test; and that he now needs to start a completely new ticket from scratch again... So he scheduled a technician visit for Sunday (20th July) morning.

- Sunday 20th: Tech calls me at 8:30am to say he is on his way, from Oshawa, and will take around 1hr to arrive. He arrives around 9:30am. For the first time, the tech witnesses the issue firsthand, with packetloss up to 50%, and I can't even browse the internet. He first suspects the modem, but when he performed a test directly with the line (i.e. without the modem) the issue remained. Goes to the IT room, tests there, same issue. He switches my ports, and restrips the wires; by then the issue seems to have disappeared. He also installed a port splitter at the outlet in my apartment. Finally, he says he will tweak my profile as he mentioned something about it being on "interleaved" which doesn't make sense, I do not know what profile he switched it to, if he switched it at all.

- Sunday 20th evening: One of the first nights where there was barely any problems, I suppressed my joy and enthusiasm... just in case

- Monday 21st: Concern department called, different guy this time, as the previous guy went on vacation... I happily reported that it was fine last night, but I will continue to monitor this over the week. They will call me back on Thursday (24rd). I asked for a direct phone # but they don't have one, so I'd have to call in the usual support phone line....

- Monday 21st (evening): My fears were realised, the issues are now back in full force. 30-50% packet loss for extended periods of time (between 15min and 1hr), about 3 complete disconnections (red blinking @ light, the DSL light remains solid blue).

*** Update 17th July 2014:

- Monday 14th July 2014: A technician scheduled to arrive between 9am-1pm, did not show up (was informed the next day, that the tech arrived at 12:30pm, claimed that the job was outside of his expertise and rescheduled... all without informing me)

- Tuesday 15th July 2014: My issue was risen to the complain department at night around 8pm and they called me.

- I was promised that they would send a tech the next day (16th July 2014), and that he/she would call me when they start work, and update us on the progress.

- I was promised that they would call me on Wednesday to follow up on the issue. I told them to call at *any time*

- Wednesday 16th July 2014: *crickets* No calls whatsoever, my connection has been worse than ever, averaging 20% packetloss the entire day, spiking to 50% or higher, and from what I've noticed, at least 3 disconnections (each lasting between 1min to 15min) that night.

All in all, I'm pretty disappointed with all the false promises. I can understand that hardware can malfunction, and that it may take time to diagnose the problem and fix it; that's the main reason why I'm still here talking to them; but this is sheer disrespect towards me as a customer when none of their promises have been kept.

*** Update 13 July 2014:

Somehow bell support is now going back to the beginning of the entire issue, by sending a technician to do the whole G.D. check from top to bottom *again*, and now I'm back to them sending a riser technician... for the 3rd time. This has been 3 months, and I'm really surprised that they still have 0 clue as to what the problem is... My view of their competency has gone from a 80% initially, to a 50% when they couldn't figure it out after a couple weeks, to now, almost 0... *maybe* a 1%....

**ORIGINAL POST**

Package pricing, installation process was decent when I ordered Fibe 25.

But when they first billed me, it was for a completely different customer... Who ordered the Fibe 50 package, after abit of back and forth they gave me bonus bandwidth for my toubles. After 3 months, the billing reverted back to the incorrect price... so I called them, but my package did not exist in the system anymore, so they gave me Fibe 50 but with less bandwidth, which was ok since I didn't use that much. But I had to call back every 3 months to "fix" the billing since it had to be done manually every time...

The Fibe was excellent, with only a few outages (less than 10 over the span of 1 year), each lasting less than a few minutes, discounting the power outage due to ice storm.

Then I moved to a new location, and they did not have Fibe there, and hence I was downgraded to 25Mbit DSL, but I have to pay even more... my previous discounts and bonuses were completely nullified. I considered moving to another ISP, but their "don't leave us" department called and gave me a "discount" that at least brought the price back down to what it was before. I took that and it has been 5 months since.

3 weeks ago the problems started. Randomly throughout the day (I have not discerned any pattern as of yet), it would go through bouts of massive packet loss. Ranging from the less severe ~5% up to 50%, which rendered even google.ca (you can't get a simpler web page) unreachable. It would eventually recover, sometimes it would take 5min, but most of the time it would be 15min+ before it returned to 0% packetloss.

At first I just ignored it for jitters in the system, but as the issue started appearing more and more often (today it "acted up" once every hour), and more and more severe (it lasts longer now, at a minimum of 10min, up to 30min). I called support, who after a 1hour call finally acknowledged that there *may* be a problem and ran some tests through the day to see what's up. The 2nd level tech I spoke with was very nice and actually called me every couple of hours to check in, but even though I was staring at my monitoring programs, which told me there was an issue, the tech claimed that there wasn't anything wrong. So the tech tested for another day... and called back saying that there is indication of something wrong with the switch outside, so we scheduled a technician to visit and fix the problem. Which happened, and even though the tech never showed up at our door, we got a call informing us the problem was "fixed".

It wasn't, it actually got worse. So I called again, and after another 30min of exactly the same things that I have already told the tech last time, with the additional upset tone of voice emphasising that it got worse after the last tech "fixed" it, another appointment was scheduled. This time no1 even called us, and when we called back the next day, they said the tech "fixed" it.

Again, nothing was fixed. And it appears to have worsened again (before I was able to reach pingtest.net and check the packetloss, now I can't even load the site when it acts up). Another phone call... and another "appointment" scheduled...

The only thing that I can link to the worsening of the issue is that it got hotter over the past few weeks... I read here (»Bell Canada Internet FAQ) that rain and melted snow could have flooded the wires, and if the wires were damaged in any way causing the copper to be exposed, then there would be problems. The tech is scheduled to come in monday morning, so we'll see what happens and I'll update this review.

Update:

2 days later, 2 more technician visits; again, it got worse each time. Maybe it's a coincidence and my line was degrading rapidly anyway, but Bell has not figured out what the problem is...

Update 19 May 2014:

Technician has been back a few more times, he says that he has replaces as many parts as he can on the switch outside our complex, and that the only remaining possibility is the lines that run within our complex is too old (he says it's 50 years old...) He then tried downgrading our connection to 15Mbps down and 1Mbps up. After the weekend away from home, it is still performing as bad as before...

Next step is trying to get bell to replace out lines, which will probably not happen due to the costs and that many people in the complex uses rogers instead. Not to mention the # of days it will further take to *possibly* resolve the issue... Looks like I'm up for an ISP soon, but I'll let Bell say what they will first.

Update 30th May 2014:

They said they would show up today to replace wires. Noone showed up. Connection still terrible.

Update 5th June 2014:

Still no sign of them doing any repairs. Phone number they gave me to call went to voice mail, called at noon left message, no call back.

Update 28th June 2014:

After 2 months, I am still having issues... To summarize, after *numerous* back and forth phone calls, departments directing us to each other (aka blaming each other), they have finally claimed to have found the problem... and the solution is to replace the riser cable to our unit, which they did... but they then discovered more problems, which will require replacing the cables underground.... which will take, yet again, an undetermined amount of time before work even starts.

The issue has now progressed to a state where I actually get disconnections now, I've just had 4 disconnections within 30min. And ofcourse the packetloss issue is still here... right now, I've been having a consistent 30% packetloss for 2hrs straight, plus the 4 disconnections, which took between 30s to 10min to reconnect).

I'm surprised with myself that I am still with them. *if* they ever get it fixed, you can bet that I'm going to ask for reimbursement for such bad service for 2 months in a row.

Pingtests (will keep updating this, good or bad) [Packet loss, Ping, Jitter]:

May 14th 2014 23:58 - [23%, 132ms, 252ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 6287.png

May 15th 2014 08:39 - [0%, 12ms, 1ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 5945.png

May 19th 2014 19:05 - [3%, 13ms, 3ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 1065.png (it got better as I was testing it, it was *much* worse right before the test) »www.speedtest.net/my-res ··· 11010962

May 19th 2014 23:47 - [10%, 24ms, 26ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 2963.png

May 19th 2014 23:49 - [3%, 14ms, 4ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 3019.png

May 19th 2014 23:57 - [0%, 12ms, 1ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 3340.png

May 20th 2014 08:45 - [9%, 94ms 89ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 3136.png

May 20th 2014 23:08 - [0%, 31ms, 1ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 9800.png

May 21st 2014 20:42 - [2%, 44ms, 3ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 2680.png

May 22nd 2014 00:20 - [0%, 31ms, 1ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 3602.png

May 22nd 2014 08:04 - [0%, 31ms, 1ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 8760.png

May 22nd 2014 08:25 - [54%, ~600ms, ~500ms] No image as the test was unable to finish

May 22nd 2014 08:27 - [21%, 58ms, 57ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 9928.png

May 22nd 2014 19:30 - [30%, ~600ms, ~400ms] No image, timed out

May 22nd 2014 19:36 - [29%, 163ms, 183ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 9180.png

May 24th 2014 02:15 - [13%, 183ms, 157ms] »www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 3243.png

Jun 5th 2014 11:20 - [~29% packet loss]

»www.pingtest.net/result/ ··· 9049.png

member for 9.8 years, 73 visits, last login: 9.5 years ago
updated 9.6 years ago


needsomehelp
join:2014-02-07
Canada

needsomehelp

Member

connection

are you through a direct ethernet connection, or wireless?
Can you post a trace route to google.ca?
f00dMonsta
join:2014-05-12
Canada

f00dMonsta

Member

discussion

I have a discussion going on here, so yes I've done all that.

»Serious packet loss issue