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 Review by PseudoNIMH 
UPDATED: 124 days ago
member for 138 days, 204 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 undisclosed location
 $34 per month (36 month contract)
 about 7 days
 "A for effort"
 "Enough for me to advise against using them"
 "YMMV"
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Firstly, they are not exactly Canadian despite how they portray themselves. The are wholly owned by Primus Telecommunications Group which is an American Company headquartered out of McLean, VA.
Tried Primus twice, here are my experiences:
The Cell phone contract was back in 06 when they had just opened shop under Rogers umbrella. There were some teething issues, but the efforts made by the Primus staff to correct them were superb. I even received several calls from management to ensure the issues had been corrected. The billing issues however led to a falling out and a dispute over the termination fee. In the end, they simply reached into my checking account and withdrew what they deemed fair. No warning, no recourse. Be aware for those who use preauthorized checking.
The DSL service was a farce, landline and internet for an unbelievably cheap price of $35! Of course that never happened, very shortly after signing up and transferring over the dreaded call came that my line was too distant for the lower tier being offered and an upgrade was mandatory. Old deal out, new deal at substantially increased cost in. It was during these periods I ended up more than once talking to India, as did my better half as well. To be fair, we never paid Primus a dime for the fiasco and they didn't charge a dime either.
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Review by btqt
Posted: 344 days ago
member for 344 days, 0 visits, last login: 344 days ago
Ottawa,ON
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 45 days
"None"
"Ridiculously slow download speed"
"Do Not sign up with Primus"
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Primus can't provide the service they advertise.
I get a max download speed of 1.3Mbps when paying for "up to" 7Mbps. This has been going on ever since I signed up in Sept 2008. They have admitted they have a "saturation problem" in my area, are working on it, but can't estimate when the problem will be resolved. They have also stated other people in my area have the same problem.
Since they won't release me from my contract without penalty and will not warn you of the service problems when you sign on, all I can do is try to prevent others from making the same mistake. Primus advertises "up to" 7Mbps downloads and believe there is nothing wrong with providing less than 25% of what was promised and are not interested in keeping their customers happy. I believe Primus will go out of business in the near future as current customers leave and potential customers are educated about Primus lack-of customer service.
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Review by wonkaman2002
UPDATED: 1.1 years ago
member for 4.2 years, 44 visits, last login: 167 days ago
St Catharines,ON
$30 per month
about 25 days
"Prices are good .... they seem to be anyways"
"Mediocre Customer Service, Agents who can't speak English, the list goes on"
"STAY AWAY IF YOU CAN. Will be ripped off for nothing."
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I saw the advertisements for Primus and thought why not give them a try ! at least they're not bell. Got the equipments fairly fast but guess what? the power adapter for the VOIP router is from India. It doesn't plug into any wall socket and I found out from the internet that it's used in India and UK. Also the modem doesn't work at all ; no power comes into it no matter what I tried to do. I tried talking to Tech support , I didn't understand them at all and they didn't know what to do. I wanted to also change my address, they put me on hold because they "Don't know what to do" and after 30 minutes of hold I get hung up on. THREE TIMES. I emailed support and they said they never do that it might have been me. No apologies no nothing. Their agents need alot of training and work to speak better english and have better customer service skills.
So I been waiting at least 25 days if not more , and nothing. NO INTERNET NO PHONE. I talked to them several times and no apologies no nothing. The agents are even snippy with me and get hung up on. I asked for credit because they charged my bank account for nothing. They copy pasted some bullshit from their terms and conditions that weren't relative and said therefore they can't credit me. I talked to my bank and I filled an application saying the charge was unauthorized and got my money back plus I am taking further actions against Primus at this point. So much for trying anything with them. My personal advice, don't go with them they're not reliable and theives.
P.S==>To teksavvy guys, please don't advertise your service all over my post telling me to go with you guys. I know you guys exist thanks for coming out. I will try it if I feel like it.
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Update:
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Still waiting for my internet and phone. Submitted two BBB complaints and they didn't even have the decency to reply to them. I submitted an article in the newspaper about them , and within 48 hours they called saying they "just" received my complaints "which is a lie". So now they're "looking" into it , but that been said 5 times before with no results since June. I been using wireless and cell phone which Primus agreed they'll pay for as a compensation. Go figure.
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Review by danf
Posted: 3.7 years ago
member for 4 years, 550 visits, last login: 2 days ago
Abbotsford,BC
$24 per month
about 9 days
"Cheap DSL, fairly reliable"
"Abysmal tech support, insane overuse charges, requires CC, 30-day disconnection wait"
"Incompetent management - avoid at all costs!"
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In April 2005 I signed up for Primus DSL as they stated unlimited downloads. They mailed out a D-Link DSL-300I modem and related cabling. The system went live about 9 days after I signed up, with advertised speeds of 1.5mbit/512kbit.
The download speed was a little under the advertised speed - I saw an average of 130KB/sec downstream.
In November 2005, I was issued an email notice that I was to be disconnected with about 10 days warning, citing abuse of the system. The CSRs informed me it was MY fault for downloading too much on a connection that was supposed to be unlimited. The disconnection date was removed on the day of disconnection until they could 'sort out' what they were doing. In December 2005 a new message was sent informing users of a 50GB transfer limit and a $3/GB charge for going over it. At this point I cancelled the service, and found out while they can disconnect you in 10 days, you have to wait 30 days before they act!
Given the confusion that their management caused handling this issue in an inappropriate manner, plus the new caps that affected users that had joined 8 months prior, I really can't recommend Primus to anyone at all - avoid them at all costs.
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Review by mshuleman
Posted: 6.6 years ago
member for 6.6 years, 0 visits, last login: 6.6 years ago
Arlington,Tarrant,TX
 Business customer
$130 per month
 Southwestern Bell
CLEC party: Covad
"none really"
"misleading contract, terrible support and service, outages"
"one to avoid"
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I had 144kb IDSL from Primus DSL via Covad and SW Bell.
Their technical support people and their customer service people both share remarkable quality: they completely refuse to listen to the customer.
Part One: my DSL service died in January. The Primus-supplied router was the obvious reason: I could not ping it and the _power_ light was blinking. It took something like 12 calls to their tech support and 8 people to explain this fact. They insisted on testing the line first, then lied to me that line was tested; they lied to me that they would call back; they lied to me that replacement router was shipped. Total outage lasted 10 days.
I used that line for business and god knows how much I lost during those days.
Part Two: In February, frequent outages began. They seem to become the worst during rainy weather. Again, support was useless. I finally called them around Feb 15th to close the account. I switched to Comcast cable and it was ok so far.
You think this is it? Part Three: I keep getting bills and then harassing letters, emails and phone calls from them demanding me to pay. Finally the lady from billing told me that I was supposed to provide them my cancelation letter in writing (they did not tell me that in February when I closed my account!) so it is still open.
Other people already mentioned their predatory contract practices.
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Review by lynn
Posted: 6.7 years ago
(review was emailed from domain ashleys.net)
Arlington,Arlington,VA
$113 per month (12 month contract)
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"Tech Support"
"Sales"
"Study the contract VERY carefully - it may bite you in the ass!"
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Here is a description of the installation nightmare:
»a-tech.net/dsl/
Below is a copy of the text which I sent to the
Virginia State Corporation Commission and to the
Fairfax County Consumer Affairs Office to register
complaint against Primas Telecommunications, Inc of
McLean, Virginia:
On 7 October 1999, I subscribed to iDSL service from Digital Select which later become Primus
Telecommunications, Inc. of McLean, Virginia. I understand that iDSL (a variant of ISDN, also
using a dedicated line) comes under PSTN telephone tariffs.
The service was activated on 15 December 1999. The service contract was for one year. I failed
to note a provision of the contract which provided: "At the end of the service commitment this
Agreement shall be automatically renewed for successive one (1) year periods on the same terms
and conditions contained herein". I had incorrectly assumed that like all other utility
services I have ever had, it would revert to month-to-month after the first year.
At none of the three anniversary renewals did Primus ever advise me that the contract had been
renewed for an additional year. If they had notified me in the past of these renewals, I would
have been aware of the yearly, rather than month-to-month provision of the contract and could
have planned the have the service terminated on the anniversary date.
On 14 February 2003 I faxed a letter to Primus at 800-432-0520 asking that the service be
terminated on 15 March. When I heard nothing by 24 February, I sent an email asking about the
termination. I heard nothing and received a regular monthly invoice on 10 March. I contacted
Primus at by telephone at 866-615-4288 on 11 March. I was told by Irine (ID: IP3632) that I
must pay the remaining nine months ($909) of the renewed contract, even though I have had the
service for more than three years. I told Irine at that time NOT to process the service
termination.
I feel that Primus' actions are designed to deliberately mislead and are a form of fraud. That
they failed to notify me when the automatic renewals occured should nullify that provision of
our contract.
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Review by philg00
Posted: 7.5 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 2 visits, last login: 7.7 years ago
Damascus,Montgomery,MD
$196 per month (12 month contract)
CLEC party: Covad
"Overall good connection quality; helpful tech support personnel."
"Absolutely disgraceful customer support and billing department."
"If you use their service, EXPECT to be screwed in the end - and it will hurt."
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Avoid Primus DSL
In 1999, we began receiving business class DSL service from a local Covad reseller (DigitalSelect). They were later purchased by Primus (primusdsl.com). Since the install was done by another company, I won't comment on the pre-sales or install details.
On February 8th, 2002 we contacted technical support and requested an ISP release form in order to change ISPs. This was done quickly and efficiently by a very helpful person in technical support. He informed us that he would not actually do the disconnect until we confirmed we were set up with our new ISP.
On March 5th, our ISP changeover was complete and I spoke with the same technical support person over the phone as well as by email. He reminded us that since our contract required 30 days notice before billing would end, that we would be liable until April 5th (30 days later).
On April 4th, we still hadn't received a final bill from Primus. I called their billing department and explained all of the above, and asked them to fax us a final bill for service through April 5th. They agreed to do so and asked me to fax them a written statement detailing all of the above. I did.
Three weeks later (April 26th) we *STILL* hadn't received a final bill. I called again, and this time billing said that we would be liable for charges through May 3rd because they were considering my courtesy fax as the "30 days notice". The billing employee was either unable or unwilling to correct the error. I eventually settled for leaving a voice mail message for her supervisor.
Her supervisor returned my call about an hour later and was absolutely unwilling to correct the problem. I (again) explained what happened and offered to forward all of the email documentation I had to her; she responded by threatening to send my account to collection.
Finally I decided that the extra $200 this pathetic company was trying to extort from me wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with a collection agency and getting my credit smeared.
I advise everybody, in the *strongest* possible terms, to avoid Primus DSL »www.primusdsl.com/ - if you are currently one of their customers, get out now.
If this is how they treat a 3 year business class DSL customer, just think of how they might treat "mere" residential customers.
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Review by elmegil
Posted: 8.7 years ago
member for 9.2 years, 332 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Oak Park,Cook,IL
$49 per month (12 month contract)
about 20 days
Ameritech
CLEC party: Covad
"install was mostly painless (I credit Covad for this though)"
"connection has been unreliable, and tech support is the pits"
"I'm stubborn so I'm sticking with it. If I had it to do over, I'd have someone else."
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When I originally planned to move to Oak Park, DSL availability was a priority. I also wanted to support a local ISP if possible. I heard reasonably good things about 3planets.com and decided to go with them.
They did tell me that they didn't actually provide DSL, but rather resold Primus/Covad DSL. But I still wanted to support them even if indirectly, so I went ahead. My order was placed on 9/28.
The installation was fast and almost flawless; I had Covad connectivity by 10/14. I should have been concerned though, that the only glitch in the installation was that Primus had not bothered to build me out at the time Covad came to hook me up, and when the Covad Tech called to check on why, he was told that the DSL guys didn't work weekends. But they did have the build done by 10/17, so I let it slide.
The installed equipment was a SpeedStream 5260 bridge modem, 608/128 kpbs, $49.95 a month. I have a linux firewall in front of a handful of machines, running windows, linux and Solaris.
Initially, the throughput was very pokey. Nowhere near the promised 600kbps, and my first hop ping times were outrageous. I complained through 3planets, and got some improvement overall, and some excuses from Primus that there was a Covad issue. Possibly true.... But I was put on a "global" trouble ticket about the issue and have not heard one thing more about it since. Not very reassuring. But then the throughput went up to where I expected it, the ping time got better (though it still is significantly higher than I expected, it's not a major burden), so again, I let it slide.
Since then, I've been through several outages. It doesn't seem like a week has gone by without at least one outage, sometimes for several hours. I suppose that is probably an overstatement, but if I review the outages I have logged, I see:
10/19 traceroute problems
10/21 net outage
12/5 net outage (and note that there were several during the previous week or two)
12/6 still down the next day
12/24 net outage, back up next day
12/25 net outage again, back up next day
12/28 mailserver outage
1/5 net outage
1/10 mailserver outage
1/24 net outage
1/30 net outage
2/2 net outage
2/3 brief net outage
2/5 net outage that lasted until 2/7!
Since my service was actually verified as working on 10/17, that would be 17 weeks, and 14 outages. If we discard the mailserver and traceroute outages, but add a random number for the ones not logged, we end up somewhere around the same. So my estimate of one outage a week is a small bit overstated, but not much.
What makes it worse, is in the last outage, I kept getting repeated excuses about 1) "we had an atm switch outage and have to reprogram it by hand" (say WHAT? What happened to REDUNDANCY and BACKUPS?) 2) we'll have it up probably in X hours only to completely miss the target. Completely miss meaning by 12 to 24 hours miss it.
Repeatedly, I have called tech support, left a message on the machine (it won't let you stay on hold) and never gotten a call back from such messages.
I have called and spoken with a human who has said a tech would call me back, again, almost never getting a call back. I think I can remember three calls I've gotten returned from Primus tech support, and two of them were on the same ticket, after I had already called back in myself to check status and find that the problem was resolved.
Repeatedly, I have called, explained that I am a computer professional, I have my box up and trying to ping the first hop gateway and it is not getting any ARP replies from the gateway so that it can't even initiate the ping, and gotten basic "did you reboot everything" questions. When I try to patiently assure them that indeed I have, I get "we'll have a tech call you back". See previous note about rarely getting a callback from a tech. Sometimes I get "but I can ping the gateway", which is ridiculous--I don't assert that the gateway is down, usually it appears that the link BETWEEN my DSL router and the gateway is the problem. Perhaps that's Covad's responsibility, but I am not paying Covad, I'm paying Primus to deal with Covad, and besides no one has ever indicated that Covad is the problem. I eventually get ping to work and the network is back up and I never hear from Primus about closing my call or any questions about my satisfaction (except the time noted above, where I got *two* calls back *after* I had called in myself and verified that it was fixed; and those calls were saying essentially "we're not sure when it will be back up". Hello?).
I will say I've had two positive responses--during one outage (I think the only other one I got a call back on) I actually talked with a tech who worked with me despite the fact that my normal configuration is a linux firewall and linux is not supported (my own opinion is that ping and arp work the same on all OS's so it shouldn't matter at that level, and I appreciated his agreement on that point). And the other was when I accidntally discovered that I could ftp the password file with no shadowing and was upset that 1) people could presumably crack my password and 2) my phone number was in the password file for any other user on the system to see, the system administrator worked with me directly to resolve my concerns about the situation and acted very rapidly to fix the problems.
But those two positive experiences have done little to reassure me that I will have network connectivity at any given time, given the large number of outages and the typical lackluster technical support.
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Review by nocares
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 1 visits, last login: 8.9 years ago
undisclosed location
$58 per month (month by month)
about 45 days
CLEC party: Covad
"None"
"Terrible problems with billing and account management, rude service people"
"I would NOT recommend this ISP"
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AVOID PRIMUS!
When I moved from the MD area, I switched ISPs and I will NEVER go back to Primus. I closed my account in September and just last week (December) I received a threatening letter about how my account was closed for non-payment of services and that they were going to attack my credit rating. Previous to this letter I had cancelled my account in September and called them numerous times to resolve the bills I kept receiving. I called their collections department several times and NEVER heard back. Finally I called long distance and talked with someone there and they claim the account is closed and credited appropriately, and that they will send me a letter stating it is closed with a $0 balance. We'll see. I don't have time to deal with poorly managed businesses like Primus. Most of the people I dealt with in resolving this issue were extremely rude. The beauty of our capitalist society is that we have choice. Make yours wisely by choosing a more reliable, trustworthy ISP.
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Review by besposito
Posted: 8.9 years ago
member for 8.9 years, 2 visits, last login: 8.2 years ago
Sterling,Loudoun,VA
$106 per month (12 month contract)
about 90 days
Verizon
CLEC party: Covad
"None"
"Services goes down almost daily - has been down for 5+ days several times during the year"
"They have an unreliable network with circuits that Covad has told them are bad, but they fail to fix."
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I have IDSL 144 with Primus. I have had this for over a year. My circuit goes down almost daily. Every time I call tech support it is the same: Wait on hold, then told that I have to leave a message and they will return my call, I leave a message, about 50% of the time they return my call.
My problem is two fold:
(1) They have a network that seems to constantly be down for 15-30 minutes at a time.
(2) I have a bad circuit. My line has been down several times in which PrimusDSL failed to do anything intially, but to dispatch COvad....5 days later Covad sends out a tech, they spend 2 hours testing the line, they determine that the problem is with PrimusDSL and my ciruit...PrimusDSL rebuilds my circuit and I am up again. COvad has stated that they have informed Primus of the problem with my ciruit, but to my knowledge they have done nothing.
Why havent I left PrimusDSL? I can't. I have tried several times to switch, but it is impossible. I have been told that there are no more lines available to my house in my neighborhood. In order to switch service, I would first have to cancel my service and line with PrimusDSL, then apply for new service, wait 90+ days and hope no one else takes my line that I just gave up. No thanks.
As soon as I can find an alternative (2-way cable, 2-way satelite, another DSL provider) I am leaving PrimusDSL for good.
There service continues to go from bad to worse.
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PrimusDSL
Still outsourcing to India, despite their claims
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