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 Review by teddy 
member for 11.1 years, 2623 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 16 days ago
 Kingston,ON
 $72 per month "Fast!! On the Standard package." "Low caps, especially considering the price." "Good solid service, but there are cheaper options."
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Price is $71.95 + tax.
We were previously on Bell Sympatico DSL but switched to Cogeco for a 12 month promotional rate of $108 including High Speed Standard, Digital Phone, and Digital Cable Basic. It was a fantastic deal at the time, however the promotional rate did eventually end and overtime prices inevitably raised a little bit at a time.
Speed is 30/2mbps, with a cap of 175GB/month with overage charges of $1.00/GB. Speed is always as advertised.
For the price I'm paying it's definitely steep. With the option of Start Communications now I'm going to have to really consider moving away.
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Review by MysticGuitar
member for 360 days, 115 visits, last login: 1 days ago
lodged 23 days ago
- Waterdown,ON
- $300 per month
- (12 month contract)
 about 6 days- "Tech support, large On Demand selection, fantastic phone service"
- "High internet prices, high on-demand rental prices, fairly barebone television service, internet reliability issues"
- "Cogeco offers a truly amazing home phone service, but lacks with their internet and television offerings."
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My Plans:
Television: HD Digital Select 8 + Movie Network
(TV#2 same plan, but without HD)
Internet: Ultimate 60
Phone: Freedom
I'm not generally impressed with Cogeco's television services, nor am I unimpressed. They get the job done, and the HD programming has little to no visual artifacts. Cogeco offers a fairly barebone television service, one that meets all of your basic expectations, but doesn't go beyond the television medium with any kind of additional 'smart' features, such as those being offered by both Rogers and Bell. (ex. apps)
Cogeco provides a fairly significant amount of On Demand programming, even though the quality of all television shows is standard definition, most movies are available in HD, including the movies found on the 'Premium' section, such as The Movie Network content. The movies, excluding those offered in premium subscription plans, has an average rental fee of $7.95 for HD new releases. This price is higher than other internet-based rental services, such as Apple's iTunes store (which charges $5.99 for an HD rental of new releases), it is still an acceptable price for most movie-goers looking for a quick flick to watch on a Friday night with the family. Still, for heavy movie watchers, this may be a thing to consider before choosing to switch to Cogeco.
Although Cogeco has been expanding and improving their internet offerings over the years by including a higher monthly bandwidth cap, as well as increasing the speeds of the various plans that Cogeco provides. They are behind the competition in terms of upload channel speed and general network reliability. A 60 Mbps download connection coupled with a 2 Mbps upload channel doesn't justify a $100 monthly price, especially when you consider the speeds offered by the other internet service providers throughout Ontario, with Bell offering 50/10 connections at a price of $82.95, and Rogers having 45/4 for $74.99, Cogeco is simply not a viable option as an internet service provider. However, this is a very different story when it comes to the Cogeco phone services.
Cogeco, although not generally known as being a telephone provider, actually offers an outstanding phone service at prices far lower than both Bell and Rogers. Cogeco's Freedom plan is $50.99 monthly, and includes unlimited North American calling at any time of the day, a service that most other provides charge at a premium. For instance, Bell offers a comparable service with their Home phone Choice plan, which includes 5 free calling features. This plan is $42.94 monthly. For long distance calling, you must pay an additional $31.90, making your total monthly price $74.84.
I just can't stress enough how Cogeco's phone service is a truly amazing service for the price, and highly recommend Cogeco for their phone services alone. However, for internet or television, there are other far better providers out there to choose from.
When it comes to tech support, specifically phone-based support, the Cogeco agents were fairly polite and knowledgeable with their assigned departments. Although I've found myself at times being cycled between various agents before my problem could be resolved, they always treated me with respect and understanding. Cogeco has always been able to help, no matter how minor or severe the problem. That being said, one of the agents I've talked with recently did not know how to properly help me with my problem, and started to suggest I buy or subscribe to an additional package, which had absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand. This specific agent at times made all kinds of suggestions as to what may be causing the problem, none of which were at all logical, and seemed to be nothing more than rapid guessing. So, even though Cogeco support isn't perfect, they remain to be one of the better tech support services I've come in contact with, if not the absolute best.
Comments:
 | | Order To Live? Just to confirm, the 'From Order To Live' field is the amount of time it took Cogeco to set up and activate my services once my order has been filed. Is that correct? | |
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 Review by urbanriot
member for 8.4 years, 3595 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 53 days ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $129 per month
- (36 month contract)
- "NEVER goes down, 30+ day binary newsgroup support, amazing speeds, and excellent support."
- "Overage charges! Slower in denser areas."
- "Excellent ISP for web browsing, emailing, gaming, speed; Bad for heavy downloading unless you get the business package."
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I've been using Cogeco's service since before their name was attached, for maybe 15 years (I've lost track), and I've typically had a decent experience all throughout the Niagara Peninsula. The following encompasses my most recent four years with their service:
Cogeco has main flaw:
- a limited bandwidth allowance for residential accounts that charges people for overages when they could simply provide a web notification when a user is near.
Cogeco has many positive points:
- excellent torrent downloading speeds, always hitting my cap on properly seeded torrents. Cogeco employees have stated they're throttling P2P / torrent uploads, but I'm still able to obtain decent speeds and maintain ratios 2:1 ratios.
- extremely low gaming latancy with fast pings, some servers in NY and Toronto pinging as low as 9 - 16ms, faster than everyone else in the server.
- newsgroup support with at least 30 day retention, which most ISP's are no longer offering, with support for many popular binary groups.
- a strong team of employees that seem to genuinely care about their users
- local knowledgeable tech support that speak a clear and understandable English who are available 24/7
- some highly motivated, dedicated and skilled on-site techs (and some that are not so much)
- I experience minimal internet downtime, maybe once or twice a year, very rare
Cogeco's additional negative points:
- a few years back, a number of profit making changes have been made to Cogeco which seriously disenfranchised them from their loyal and long term customer base
- inflexibility in scheduling on-site support calls: if you tell them you can only get out of work at a certain time, too bad, it's an 'all day' possibility. This frustrates so many people.
- a few on-site and contracted techs who aren't so skilled (rare but it happens)
- often the phone support personal are not aware of issues that they should be aware of, to better help customers often which result in.
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- an inability to repair or diagnose issues that clearly exist outside your home and don't require service calls
- undetermined effects of upstream packet filtering (fortunately no downstream filtering yet).
- they could fine tune the package pricing on their web page just a little bit, to be crystal clear to people who don't know about the fine print. Bell's pricing structure is clearer.
- they don't appropriately alert users that they'll be nailed with overage charges before it happens. An email to an account that's never checked is not enough.
I've had so few issues with Cogeco that I haven't called them with a personal service issue in ages, but I do have experience with their support system calling on behalf of other people.
Note: If you're a heavy downloader, consider the business accounts as there's a good possibility you won't experience the overage charges that are applied to residential accounts. Hint hint.
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 Review by JB
member for 3.9 years, 953 visits, last login: 3 days ago
updated 59 days ago
- undisclosed location
- $100 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 4 days
- "Fast. 30Mb at a pretty good price."
- "Extremely low caps for this day and age. High overages."
- "A little pricey, but the internet is stable and the TV is not bad."
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Update 02/7/2013
I moved and had Cogeco set up at my new place. I got a free HD Receiver rental for 12 months for a 1 year contract, not too bad. Internet is still flawless and they managed to raise their caps since my last update. TV is still good although the HD Receiver we received seems a little slow, we'll see how it works in a couple of months.
Update - 09/30/2010
Upgraded to the 30 Mb Extreme Package w/ 125 GB cap. Upgraded the package, got a new modem, plugged it in and instantly saw great speeds. Quick and pretty painless.
Have had a couple audio dropouts on my tv recently, may look into upgrading to digital cable.
Update - 11/13/2009
Had Cogeco Classic Cable TV Installed
Install went fine, pretty good price $28 / month and this also comes with a lower internet bill. So it's a pretty good deal. I am pleased that at least their installs go fine.
I adjusted my ratings accordingly, but Cogeco still has a long way to go in their internet department.
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 Review by kim
member for 12 years, 5077 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 69 days ago
- ON
- $42 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 5 days
- "Speed baby, speed."
- "I just can't think of any."
- "Good value"
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I'm on the Express 8 Internet package for $41.95
I have my landline with them for $36.00
For a total of $ 77.95 + tax and fees if applicable.
I expect a slight increase as I just cancelled my TV service with them and this changes a 'bundled' fee.
As for the internet I am extremely happy with it. It's solid, fast and reliable.
My home phone service for $36 I'm undecided about. Cancelling that is always in the back of my mind.
TV
I returned my receivers so my average bill used to be ~$220 will now be under $100
The reason is I don't watch enough TV to justify having all these channels I don't watch. I watch movies and a few series and I watch them without commercials. Paying for standard TV I never watched made no sense.
I now have Mac TV and Netflix and I am very happy with it.
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Review by Keaters
member for 5.7 years, 734 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 83 days ago
- Chatham,ON
- $47 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 1 days
- "Great speeds and 200GB of bandwidth is good too!!"
- "Would be nice if Customer Service booked the install properly"
- "Ultimate 30 is a great service"
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I am loving the speeds, but the complete install is not finished. I am still waiting on a D3 wireless EMTA, but the D3 EMTA I have right now was for another install, so I hope their install went well today.
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Review by racer123
member for 115 days, 30 visits, last login: 3 days ago
lodged 113 days ago
- Kingston,ON
- $113 per month
- about 1 days
- "Speeds"
- "late night stability (down time), Monthly usage cap"
- "worth the money for the speed, but the monthly cap too low."
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The service is quite good. Speeds are great, upload and download are both very respectable.
However, we have noticed down times late at night, usually after midnight, which can last hours. This is fairly random. Hasn't happened in a week or so now.
Monthly cap is too low in my opinion. Coming from a DSL unlimited account to this restricted Cable, it is difficult as a consumer.
The monthly cap does not step equally with the levels of speed, so you get more speed on the higher packages, but not an equal increase in the monthly cap, so you are often close to the limit or over at the end of a month, if you utilize the speed and are a steady user on the internet.
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| | Usage Cap go with www.start.ca if you want a higher cap | |
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Review by rudeboy24
member for 10.4 years, 2229 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 124 days ago
- Welland, ON
- $70 per month
- "Connection Reliability is not bad"
- "Price is high and usage cap is low"
- "there are better options out there"
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$70 for 14 Megabit speed and 80 GB cap ....go with www.start.ca you will pay less and get more
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 Review by Gixxer
member for 4.6 years, 1993 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 150 days ago
- St Catharines,ON
- $62 per month
- "Speed, Ping, 550+ Day Binary Access"
- "Thottle, Cap, Usage Billing, Monopoly, Billing Issues, Scammers, No Retention, Expensive, Poor HD, New Price Hikes, Congestion"
- "Stay Away Unless Your Only Option Consists Of Decaying Bell Lines, Cogeco Is Bell Of The Cable World"
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07/11/2012 ***NO LONGER WITH THIS COMPANY***
Because my old review was removed by "accident" and cannot be retrieved I'm going to make this quick.
See Good points
See Bad points
See Bottom line
See »Canadian ISPs (Almost) Come Clean On Throttling
See »Usage Billing
See »Cogeco: Metered Billing 'Not About Making Money' They Insult Us
See »Cogeco Raises Rates After Charging Overages
See »Cogeco Metered Billing Goes Live, Confuses Customers Broken Meter!
See »Cogeco Tells Us They're Working On Meter Problems...
See »Comcast Usage Meter Still A No Show
See »Cogeco Still Struggling With Accurate Meters?
See »Cogeco Starts Charging For Overages
See »Cogeco User Socked With Thousands in Overages
Enjoy.
31/01/2010
Internet in my area is very unstable/congested from about 9PM - 11PM, evidence can be found in this thread. »Peak hour speed problems, POST HERE
28/03/2010
Cogeco introduces new tier, still expensive, with a low cap and very high overages. Waste of money.
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 Review by dwane
member for 9.5 years, 549 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 154 days ago
- Pembroke,ON
- $65 per month
- about 10 days
- "Nice speeds, solid connection"
- "Draconian Bandwidth Caps"
- "Good Cable internet + It's NOT BELL!!"
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I got sick of crippling lag, horrible customer service and being slaved to a 5 Meg connection with Bell. After 3 years of awful service I decided to go with Cogeco. They were offering almost 5x the speeds for around the same price, albiet with about 2/3 the monthly bandwidth cap I had with Bell. (80GB/mo vs. 120GB/mo with Bell.) See review HERE: »Review of Bell Sympatico by dwane
I ordered their Turbo 14 package, because it was the best available where I live.
14mb down/ 1 mb up/ 80GB/mo bandwidth usage for $61.
Order process was great, spoke to a real live Canadian girl from Canada.
The install process was very efficient and smooth, the installer (also a female) installed a new line from the outdoor box into my house. She did a nice neat install, she had just forgotten her staple gun to secure the cable around the perimiter of the room and told me she'd be back in after a week to secure it as she would be away from work for a week. It's not in my way anywhere so I said fine. The next day the outdoor cable burying detail came while i was at work and sunk the outdoor portion of the line. You'd never know it was there.
I have an RCA Modem DCM45.
I'm running it thru a Linksys E3200.
The whole process has been painless. They don't have contracts, tradiitonal month to month billing.
My only complaint, as above, is value for money when it comes to monthly bandwidth caps. They just increased them recently from 60GB to 80GB, which, IMHO is laughable on a 14 MEG connection.
Otherwise, I'd say it's been an overall good experience, especially knowing Bell isn't getting anymore of my money once the dust settles.
--UPDATE NOV 2012: Left Cogeco for Start. The monthly bandwidth caps with Cogeco for 80GB a month had me paying an extra $50 a month just in overages.
I switched to Start Communications and I'm not looking back.
I'm getting twice as fast internet for 50 bucks a month with 300GB cap with Start.
Comments:
dwaneI recommend Start.ca
join:2003-10-08
Pembroke, ON Reviews:
 ·Start Communicat..
 ·Cogeco Cable
·Bell Sympatico
| Month later update... Got Cogeco internet 14mb (no more bell! yay!) around Nov 1.
Had it a month without any problems.
Decided to get phone with Cogeco.
They came around Nov 28 and hooked it up, a different modem.
A huge RCA brick that looked like it had been kicked around someone's house for 3 years. (scratched and dirty.)
First night my modem had problems. Dropped calls, bad latency, slow internet. I noticed the modem kept rebooting. This was on a connection that, for the last month, had been excellent.
When it didn't stop i called and had a tech in yesterday.
He attenuated the line, then we tried it again but the modem showed the exact same behaviour.
He tried a second USED RCA modem and it couldn't establish a dial tone.
He then brought out a brand new modem out of the box from a completely different manufacturer.
It set up nicely and now is rocking and rolling. No random re-boots or bad connections or dropped calls.
At certain times I'm actually getting above advertised speeds! That NEVER happened with Bell!
I just wonder why he was seemingly forced to waste his time and energy on installing shoddy used equipment when you'd think that customers paying almost $100 a month should at least deserve a new modem.
I don't blame the tech, I blame the bean counters at Cogeco.
The tech was great, he busted his arse to make it work.
TBH most of the techs I've had in my home over the years have been dynamite.
SO if anyone else is having problems with rebooting/resetting/random power cycling modems I hope you get a new one like me!
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