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Review by blablawtf See Profile

  • Location: Scarborough, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $35 per month
  • Install: about 5 days
  • Telco party Bell Canada
Excellent customer service. Best bang for buck. No caps.
Bell's infrastructure: Constant throttling, Lack of 'higher tier' tech support, Speed limitations.
If you have a budget under $40 to get 5MBps, ONLY surf in non-peak hours and can endure throttling, this one's for you.
Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:

I have been with Uniserve for the past 5 years. (Before they were called Inter.net).

For the past 4 years before all this UBB nonsense became a phenomena, I had a pretty smooth experience with this company. Great 24/7 customer service, good speeds, no throttling and consistent performance overall with 99.8% uptime (2-3 days in a year downtime? that was awesome). Best of all, NO CAPS **

**[On their website, they might say that there's a 75GB cap being implemented - but its been confirmed as of Feb 6th 2011, that caps have not been applied onto any new or old accounts]

Just recently Bell started to throttle my connection heavily. The sad disadvantage of being a wholesale customer is that there's literally nothing in their hands to stop Bell from doing this.

Current situation: my regular speed has been reduced from 4.3Mbps to 600Kbps download, while upload has been consistent on 401Kbps -- this has been going on for about 2 months now. It happens on Weekdays 4pm to 1am; then goes back to regular speed. And on Weekends 12pm to 8pm. This has driven me NUTS. Cannot stream anything at all, nor download stuff during the day. I am missing my lectures (taking online classes) and is leaving me far behind in my studies. I have to stay up late at night to perform all the browsing/downloading that should have been (and conveniently) done during the day.

My first course of action was to ask Uniserve what they can do for me. After the 'default' inspection and troubleshooting steps done on my internet, they concluded to send a service ticket to Bell for line inspection. After a day or so, Bell recommended a new modem. Uniserve sends out these modems from a brand called "Zoom" - really bad modems, but since I have been with them for ages they sent it out for free. I received a new modem only to discover that its 'the same damn modem' as my current one.

Regardless, I installed the new modem - throttling is even WORSE now. Download speed on them 'peak hours' doesn't go beyond 500Kbps while upload stays the same! I have been calling them back and forth and requesting updates on the ticket, Bell - being the lazy panzies that they are - haven't been frequently checking up or updating these tickets.

Due to lack of speed upgrades, explanations, and service from Uniserve, I have decided to move on from them to another ISP/Technology: Teksavvy/Cable.

In the end, I'd say Uniserve is a great company, just too bad they have to piggyback on Bell.

member for 13.1 years, 223 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
updated 13 years ago

gogu
join:2009-10-06
Kitchener, ON

gogu

Member

Uniserve/Yak

I've been with Uniserve for about 5 yrs now too. Haven't had too many problems with speed until the last 2-3 weeks or so. used to be around 4-5Mb, now its at around 1.5-3.5Mb.
Yak on the other hand, mmmm.

Tried switching my parents over because of the UBB. YAK will tell you anything you want to hear until you sign up, after that, you get the excuses, lies, bs, either that or they're clueless.
Ended up cancelling them real quick.
speed is not great. they said 5Mb connection, received 2Mb.
Their comments:
* You have "Old wires"
* We said "Up to 5Mb"
* we can't do anything for you unfortunately.
* You're on a 3Mb profile a higher profile would not be stable.
I replied with, please cancel the account. At which point they said, we'll look into it and call you back... call back never happen, but 2 days later speed was up to 5Mb.

They were with Teksavvy before and good thing they never cancelled them before getting YAK running...

If you're not within Yaks 10Mb reach, not worth it.
blablawtf
join:2011-02-02
Milton, ON

blablawtf

Member

Re: Uniserve/Yak

Thanks for your input!

You know I need to update my review because I tried to move from Uniserve to Yak, Yak doesn't even offer any service in my area!!!

I received the same bs about "old wires" and "if you go on a higher profile you will lose sync" from Uniserve. It's about time people realize that DSL is getting old and it won't last for long, move onto cable!

I actually moved onto Teksavvy = 300GB, and I am loving itttttt!!!!!