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 Review by Flogator 
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 6.8 years, 2070 visits, last login: 2 days ago
 Cantley,QC
 $57 per month (12 month contract)
 about 4 days
 "The Internet speed is good and the connection is reliable"
 "The technical support is terrible"
 "If you don't run into technical or billing problems, Videotron is great."
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Since March 2007, I have terminated my subscription with Videotron. The service was great, the Internet access was great but they keep increasing their monthly fee every year. This time around I said enough. Why would I pay 57$/month if I can get a 20$/month service on DSL? Ok, throughput could be an answer. In the end, I was getting a throughput of 6.5Mbps/700Kbps with them which was great. With the DSL provider I now use, I only get 2.5Mbps/700Kbps (that's because I live in the country).
The truth is I wanted to try something else. With 37$/month saving, I think it is worth it. In a year from now, nothing prevent me from switching back if I'm not happy.
You may read my review on the other ISP I am using. Meanwhile, I have chosen to keep my original Videotron review after updating the monthly fee.
========== ORIGINAL REVIEW ==========
Over the past 9 months, Videotron has provided me with excellent throughput. The upload speed even got upgraded from 180Kbps to 350Kbps with no extra charge. I am living in the country, using a Linksys router and am very pleased with my Internet access. Videotron currently provides me high speed Internet (3100kbps downstream and 350Kbps upstream) through dynamic IP cable modem.
I had a few glitches with their customer support which got finally resolved at the beginning of Summer 2003. Their technical support seems to have improved since the begging of the Summer as I tried contacting them miscellaneous information which they provided me with. They no longer hang up if I mention I am using a router which is a good thing.
The only real technical issues I got with them is with their email servers. In some occasions, the email arrival or departure could be delayed up to 24h or worst sometimes simply losing them. Thankfully, this did not happened too regularly so I guess I can live with it.
Bottom line, the actual internet solution is great, the technical support is in improvement stage, the customer service (for billing for example) is nice. My statement is if you are knowledgable about networking (thus don't need too much technical support) and you are willing to follow closely your Internet bills, then Videotron provides a very good solution.
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Review by adrianchov
UPDATED: 1.7 years ago
member for 1.7 years, 1 visits, last login: 1.7 years ago
Deux-Montagnes,QC
$64 per month
"99.9 % Uptime, The speeds match the offered ones"
"100 GB Limit, Expensive for the services, Blocked ports"
"Very good ISP if you want an excellent uptime and speed"
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I was very pleased with the ISP. There was no limit, excellent speed and uptime. After an year, they changed my service to 100 GB limit. I was a little nervous, but I get used to it (didn't download so much to pass my limit  After 2 months, when the limit began to take place, they blocked the incoming traffic to port 80 and port 21 used for HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and my website got useless. The value for the money decreased. I don't like ISPs that change their contract. I didn't called the tech support yet, so I put a rating of 5 for that
For conclusion, I think that this is an excellent ISP for those who don't download many things from the Internet and run websites on their computer. The most important for me is that the connection is always up for the 2 years I'm with this ISP.
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Review by BigImp
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 2 visits, last login: 1.8 years ago
Montreal,QC
$250 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"When things work they work really well"
"Rude staff, deceptive/dirty business tactics, very expensive, unrealistic bandwidth caps"
"Avoid this ISP at all costs. ANY other ISP is better than this one."
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I've been with Videotron for several years, and I've been close to canceling on several occasions, but the last straw was imposing bandwidth caps on an already expensive service, without so much as a phone call to confirm with their customers, who could suddenly need to pay as much as $4000 a month.
Videotron's strength is that their service works great most of the time, but when things go wrong and you need to call them, it's like temporarily dying and going to hell. Other than extremely long wait times and the fact that they repeatedly put you on hold, they also constantly lie, twist truths and add charges. And whenever you need to discuss a charge you shouldn't be paying for, somehow no one at the company can help you. They tell you their hands are tied and that someone needs to call you back within 48 hours. Sometimes someone calls back (and sometimes they don't), but if they do they also tell you that they can't help you, and that they'd get someone else to call you. There was a day a few years ago when I literally spent 5 hours on the phone with them, being constantly transferred from one person to another, having to repeat the entire story again and again, and at the end still got absolutely nothing resolved.
Maybe 20% of the people who work there are polite, then there are about 20% who just do the bare minimum to communicate with you, but the vast majority are literally RUDE. I've been hung up on, I've had people use condescending tones/expressions and I've even been insulted on a couple of occasions.
One day I even did a quick test. I called from my cell phone (which is in their records), and was on hold for 15 minutes before talking to a rep. Immediately after I dialed from my phone, I also called them from my friend's phone. I was talking to a rep in under a minute! This is how Videotron sees people: Potential new customer? OH WE LOVE YOU! Old paying customer? GO TO HELL AND DIE. And if you don't like it, they'll charge you an arm and a leg to cancel.
The last time I almost left them, 2-3 years ago, it started with me calling to change my channels, and the guy who answered got angry that I didn't speak french, said "Learn french tabarnac" and just hung up on me. I called again, complained about it, and changed my channels. Two weeks later, I was suddenly disconnected. When I called, they said that I hadn't paid my bill. I told them that I was on pre-authorized payments with my VISA, to which they said that VISA called them to tell them that I was using a stolen credit card (mind you, I had been paying them with it for 3 years). I talked to VISA, and they said that my card was fine and that there were absolutely no such reports. So I called Videotron again and told them this, and they said that I had to get VISA to call them. Of course this proved to be impossible (what kind of stupid idea is that?). After at least 10 hours of talking to different people, many of whom were quite rude and treated me like some sort of criminal. They wouldn't even let me pay with another credit card, because they said that it was probably stolen too. I finally gave up and just started paying them through online banking. To this day I wish I had just canceled my account right then and there.
Even canceling the service was a major pain. Three different people told me that they had done it, but it wasn't done. I had to call repeatedly over the period of a week to finally get it canceled. They tried adding 2 months of service to my bill, and again kept lying.
Anyway, please do yourself a favor and AVOID VIDEOTRON AT ALL COSTS. I hope they lose all their customers, go bankrupt and I hope their rude staff lose their jobs and starve to death. I've never, ever, in any city I've lived in, paid a company $100 a month only to be treated like trash all the time. The bills the last few months were close to $250 each due to the bandwidth charges, by the way.
I've very recently started with b2b2c.ca (after reading many glowing reviews here), and so far I've been VERY happy with everything they've done. They're polite, helpful and they call to follow up even when they don't have to. I'll write a positive review for them in a month or two if they keep it up, but if you're looking to switch from Videotron they offer a faster and reliable service at a fraction of Videotron's prices, and more importantly they respect and value you as their customer. What a concept!
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Review by Jean_22
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 4.2 years, 125 visits, last login: 26 days ago
Quebec,QC
$38 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Speed, price (combos), stability"
"20GB CAP!!!!"
"Good if you don't need to download a lot."
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We currently have the high speed for $38 a month with the "Trio" plan. The price is good, the speed is good (can reach 750kB/s direct download). The service has usually been good but something has really became annoying in the last few years.
THE 20GB DOWNLOAD CAP!!!!
They began by boosting a bit at the same time as the download speed, wich is now 7.1mbps. However, they stopped it at 20GB. This is clearly a "you wanna download? then pay for EXTREME!!!!" 20GB cap for an high speed internet is completly unthinkable in 2008.
Game demos? 1.5GB each
MMO trials? 6GB
Game patches? 150MB-2GB
Windows patches? 400MB a month
Windows service packs? 800MB
A 5 minutes video on youtube? 25MB
Wanna try a linux distro? 4GB
20GB is now REALLY LOW for enthousiasts users. The basic service is even worst, 1GB download cap!!!! They will all bust it out with the soon to come release of XP SP3 and Vista SP1!!!!
It can be good for lots of people but if you have children between 11-20, forget abouti t, the first thing you will see is a $20 penalty at the ned of the month
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Review by InvalidError
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 433 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Saint-Leonard,QC
$38 per month (12 month contract)
about 5 days
"Fast, reliable"
"Expensive, low caps"
"Good if you value speed and reliability much more than reasonable caps and pricing"
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Over the decade I have been on Videotron HS, the service has had a nearly perfect track record apart from their early ('97-98) network's vulnerability to trivial DoS attacks, sabotage during the strikes, bad wiring and dying modems.
When I moved in 2006, the contractor who did the install could not be bothered to run a separate cable for the modem. Months later, I started having signal issues and had to have a tech come and re-do the install. When that tech came, he told me that whoever did the initial install did not bother to check the connectors and cable: the exterior cables were damaged/rotten and many connectors had mold in them. The new cables did not completely fix the signal issues: the bad initial wiring job had apparently damaged my good old SB5100. Another tech came to give me a refurb rental WebStar which soon proved to be defective so I had to have yet another tech bring yet another modem, this time a fresh SB5100 which worked fine for the remainder of my contract.
In the early days, tech support was quite decent but went down with each passing year. On the plus side, my last few calls prior to canceling service (see modem failures above) have shown that tech support appears to be slowly climbing back to decent levels.
However, as a long-time moderate bandwidth user whose usage grew to fill any cap increases within months of Videotron announcing them, I have finally grown weary of Videotron HS low caps, particularly now that it has been so many years since the last upgrade. When Videotron announced Extreme's now 100GB cap and Extreme subscribers started complaining all over the place, I started shopping around to see how this compared to what else is available and soon realized that if I could put up with ADSL's few shortcomings, I could trade some speed and latency for much higher caps (or even unlimited) and lower price.
When I received the $2 increase letter and was told there would be no cap increases or any other service upgrades in the near future, I decided to proceed with cancellation (end of contract) and ordering ADSL. I would have been happy for at least another year with +10/+10 GB (easily covered by the $2 increase) but now that my ADSL is up and delivering performance on par with my most optimistic guesstimates, it will take a lot more than that for Videotron to win me back.
When I cancelled, I made it clear I was cancelling because the 20/10GB caps and $8/GB overage (highest in the industry) no longer met my expectations from a $40/month service yet they still offered upgrades to Extreme and cut-rate HS. I laughed it out for a few seconds before declining their various offers until they finally asked me if I still wanted to proceed with cancellation. I thanked them for their offers, explained that none of them addressed both the low caps and overpriced-for-my-taste issues at once and told them I still wanted to cancel. The whole process - including the fidelity offers that failed to address my concerns - took about 10 minutes.
I used to wonder what I was going to be doing with 100GB/month but with TSI's Premium cap upgrade to 200GB/month, I can take a break from bandwidth planning for the foreseeable future.
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Review by dan69man
Posted: 1.8 years ago
member for 2.7 years, 62 visits, last login: 9 days ago
Laval,QC
$48 per month (12 month contract)
"reliable connection"
"speeds not consistant"
"happy with the service"
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videotron voip works well too
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Review by CrashD1n3r
UPDATED: 1.8 years ago
member for 5.6 years, 1286 visits, last login: a few hours ago
undisclosed location
$64 per month (12 month contract)
"Really fast and reliable internet connection"
"Low CAPS on HS package and pricey!"
"Awesome pings and speed for online players but at a price."
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The 20/10 cap is getting ridiculous for the monthly charged price. No complain on speed, pings and reliability since years, can't remember of last downtime. Also using the phone service without any problems, everything is working as it should! Digital TV service image quality could be a lot better but while there isn't THAT much HD channels, picture quality is awesome on theses.
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Review by webidrole
Posted: 1.8 years ago
member for 1.8 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.8 years ago
Trois-Rivieres,QC
$74 per month (12 month contract)
about 4 days
"Good speed"
"Price..."
"-"
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Good service, bad price
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 Review by TigerLord
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 7.4 years, 3425 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Montreal
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 3 days
"Fast and reliable high speed connection"
"Lower value for money as they keep raising fees and prices"
"Fast and reliable but shows a total disregard to coherent quality offerings"
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Vidéotron is no doubt a reliable ISP - I have experienced very few downtimes. My experience with their technical support staff has been brief but pleasant - I have not encountered idiots or fools that resemble Bell's standards of a call center, yet.
I get constant and reliable speed with good pings on US and Canadian servers. It is only extremely sad that Vidéotron is the only competitor Bell has - a pathetic exscuse for a company. Therefore Videotron has felt no real needs to maintain acceptable business practices, and judges appropriate to lower the quality of a service without adjusting its price - I am talking here of the change they recently brought to their Extreme tier service.
Formerly unlimited in bandwith, it offered a true 10/1mbit connection for the price of 80$ (tx included) per month. Not cheap - but an exclusive and reliable premium service for those who could afford it. For the supposed good of the network, a letter was sent to inform the customer base a 100GB combined cap would be enforced starting October 1st 2007.
While I believe those who do 800GB per month should be punished, putting a ridiculously low 100GB cap for such a high speed connection, without even offering monetary compensation by lowering the tier fee is simply unethical, and shows a total disregard to customer respect. To expect customers to pay the same for an inferior product than it was is simply unimaginable.
However, as I have said, their only competitor, does much worse in this area, therefore the need to uphold their standards is not required. Let's hope Vidéotron will not start throttling or shaping on top of other recent changes - they would then join the circle of idiotic supremacy. Such a shame that would be.
Now that they raised the 30$ ceiling overcharge to 40$, their offerings are less and less tempting, and I'm seriously considering dumping all my services with them at contract renewal and go with 3rd party companies just for the heck of it.
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Review by crappyisp
UPDATED: 1.9 years ago
member for 1.9 years, 0 visits, last login: 1.9 years ago
Montreal,QC
$100 per month (12 month contract)
"None. There is NOTHING good about Videotron."
"Everything. Customer service, crooked year-long contract, monitoring usage. Everything is bad about this company!"
"THE worst internet provider on the planet."
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This is the ONLY internet provider I know of that pretty much forces you to take a year long contract. If you try the service and don't like it, you're stuck. EVEN if you move to the other side of the world, you are STUCK with Videotron. You are penalized for bailing from this incredibly bad, sorry excuse of a cable company.
Why should we have to monitor usage? I'd NEVER heard of that until I moved to Quebec. That's insane.
Support [choke!] staff are rude and smarmy. They BLAME the customers ALL the time.
The people of Quebec have NO clue how bad this company is, because they don't have much to compare it to. Videotron has pretty much monopolized the entire province. If you look around and compare Videotron to other major players in Canada and the USA, you'll see how you are being taken to the cleaners - nickel and dimed every which way.
Followup comments:  
adisor19
join:2004-10-11 | Raiting pls ? I agree that they are outrageously expensive for what you get and yes, in order to save some $$, you have to get a 1 year contract..
Adi | |
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theysuck
@videotron.ca | they suck 100% on the nose...
Not only that you are stuck with a year long contract, also if you failed to notify them that you wish to discontinue with their service some time before the one year ends... you are stuck for another year. | |
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