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Review by losethecaps 
Posted: 141 days ago
member for 141 days, 0 visits, last login: 141 days ago
 undisclosed location
 $150 per month
 "speed"
 "caps/customer service/price/duopoly"
 "good for gaming nothing else!"
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been with cogeco for 10 years, it disgusts me how they rape their loyal paying customers with caps and large price hikes. stay away unless all you do is game.
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 Review by KingOfPants
UPDATED: 143 days ago
member for 7 years, 3599 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Oakville,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Fast"
"Caps"
"Fast with low caps and high overage charges."
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Have had some stability issues in the past, the problem was discovered by a Cogeco Employ on the forums. Seems to have been resolved.
Cogeco is what it seems to be one of the few ISP still offering usenet access. They've had some problems with it in the past. Though recently they have outsourced it. Can usually grab binaries from 100 days back with no problem. Not the best, but free. Much improved. It would be great if they didn't count data down from usenet toward the monthly cap. The fact that the cap/overage charges and the new fixed newsserver was announced within a couple days (If I recall correctly) of each other is very suspect. Doing so would be a show of faith to loyal customers.
The caps and overage charges are outrageous and unreasonable. Cogeco seems to be making a lot of poor decisions as of late (do a news search on this site for cogeco). In all honesty, don't know if I wish to continue to support them any longer. Though, unfortunately, there are not that many other choices. Tek Savvy seems to be the best bet, but Bell is trying to enforce the same shenanigans as Cogeco, on their (BELL'S) resellers.
I wonder how management could allow such a quick and drastic change in service and opinion. Cogeco, please stop the madness.
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 Review by A Lurker
UPDATED: 148 days ago
member for 2.1 years, 427 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Burlington,ON
$99 per month
 about 14 days
"Currently fast and reliable connection"
"Bandwith caps"
"Good speeds as long as you know and control your overall usage"
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My install was approx. 8 years ago, and I remember only two things about it. 1) I had to wait at least two weeks for an appointment, and 2) I had to give the guy a NIC since his didn't seem to work and I didn't want him to leave! (since he wouldn't guarantee he would be back since it was end of the day)
We're in an older neighbourhood, although I think they ran a new line from the overhead back when we installed the digital cable. Before that we had spotty internet, since the changeover (which later included a powered booster for the cable) the connection reliability has been very good. I've occasionally considered DSL service, but would likely need to do a new drop as the phone lines are a mess inside the house.
My biggest complaint was the recent implementation of caps. Tech support kept telling me I must have received notices (which I hadn't). They're only one step above the worst because of a single rep who kept an eye on my service after it was restored (and caught that someone had manually disconnected me afterwards... and reconnected it and called me about it).
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Still not getting consistent 85% notifications. Have specifically been pushing over that level and have only received 1 in 5 month's notices (last in April).
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Review by Farnsworth
UPDATED: 149 days ago
member for 4.4 years, 462 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Kingston,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Reliable connection, high speed"
"Bandwidth caps"
"Not for you if you are a moderate to heavy downloader."
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After being a customer since the Wave days, I'll be leaving Cogeco soon due to the bandwidth cap. I hate to do it as the speed and reliability are great but it's too much of a pain to have to check my usage constantly.
Update - Canceled Cogeco today - now with Teksavvy
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 Review by urbanriot
UPDATED: 156 days ago
member for 5.1 years, 1760 visits, last login: a few hours ago
St Catharines,ON
$99 per month (12 month contract)
"Almost always available, 100+ day retension newgroup support, amazing speeds, and excellent support."
"Strictly enforced bitcaps! Issues scheduling tech calls. Slower in dense, older infrastructure areas. Usage based billing."
"Good ISP for casual browsers and email checkers. BAD for downloaders, unless they pay for the $100 business package."
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I've been using Cogeco's service since before their name was attached, for at least 11 years and I've typically had an all decent experience all throughout the Niagara Peninsula. The following encompasses my most recent four years with their service:
Cogeco has one serious, negative flaw:
- a strictly enforced, draconian bitcap of 100GB on a $70 a month pro account. What's the point of having 16 Mbps if you can only do 100 gigs in a month before you're locked out?
Cogeco has many positive points:
- excellent torrent downloading speeds, often reaching 1.6MBps on the download. There's some speculation that Cogeco is throttling P2P / torrent uploads, but I'm receiving decent speeds.
- excellent newsgroup support that's far better than any other ISP in our region; 6 day retention with subscription support for many binary groups.
- a strong team of employees that genuinely care about their users
- local knowledgable tech support that speak a clear and understandable English who are available 24/7
- a number of dedicated employees who take personal time to help people on broadband reports
- some highly motivated, dedicated and skilled on-site techs
Cogeco's negative points:
- in the past year, 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 outside of large cities
- a few on-site and contracted techs who aren't so skilled
- often the phone support personal are not aware of issues that they should be aware of, to better help customers often which result in...
- an inability to repair or diagnose issues that clearly exist outside your home and don't require service calls
- official documents have recently surfaced that Cogeco was throttling torrents since 2001, despite employees directly insisting that they were not utilizing such hardware. They now claim the hardware was used for monitoring and not throttling. It's unknown what the real truth is.
- Usage based billing if you go over your cap, which is ridiculously low.
Followup comments:  
DrDog
VIP
join:2006-07-28
Fort Erie, ON | on site techs have you had someone around other than me? I don't try and miss calls. If you are booked and in my lineup, you will get looked at | |
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urbanriot
join:2004-10-18
St Catharines, ON
 ·Cogeco Cable
| Re: on site techs I'd actually written the above long before you came out; previously I'd had horrible experiences with calls and scheduling. I had to leave for a family emergency for 10 mins once, and while I was on my way back, the guy couldn't wait when I was 2 mins away. The Cogeco representative told me, "Sorry, he's in a rush and can't wait." And I'm thinking, "what rush, if I wasn't there, he would have been working on my problem not rushing wherever he had to rush to."
I'll re-read and correct when I get home tonight, I'd hastily edited it to include my recent frustrations with the newly enforced bitcap so it might have some old review. | |
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urbanriot
join:2004-10-18
St Catharines, ON
·Cogeco Cable
| said by DrDog :have you had someone around other than me? I don't try and miss calls. If you are booked and in my lineup, you will get looked at Updated my review. No, you're one of Cogeco's best assets and it definitely wasn't directed at you. Unfortunately, I went through a few other people before you were able to fix things up and I might have kept my digital cable TV if the other guy was able to fix the picture dropouts last year. | |
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 Review by wopr
UPDATED: 160 days ago
member for 8.9 years, 2174 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Belleville,ON
$47 per month
about 2 days
"Fast"
"Caps"
"If you can't get a provider that doesn't implement caps, you should try Cogeco."
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Had Sympatico DSL for over three (3) years, stuck at the 1 mbit limit because of the distance to the CO. Now I have Cogeco Cable and 6 times the speed for the same price. Nice.
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2009. With all the prices changes and now bandwidth caps, I would not consider them competitive anymore. I sure hope my power company doesn't start implementing caps.
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Review by jokach
Posted: 160 days ago
member for 160 days, 1 visits, last login: 154 days ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
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Beware - 12 days to have someone come inspect poor lines
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Review by a_large_rock
UPDATED: 163 days ago
member for 6.3 years, 924 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Markham,ON
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
"It works soemtimes"
"Horrible service, packet loss, crippling caps, outrageous usage fees, crappy HD"
"Its stepping back 10 years in technology; but with an extra cost"
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Horrible service, packet loss of %15 is acceptable, crippling caps, outrageous usage fees, high price, customer support is useless, crappy HD quality, audio cuts out all the time
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Review by dgorgan
UPDATED: 165 days ago
member for 6.9 years, 37 visits, last login: 73 days ago
Kingston,ON
$55 per month
"High speed"
"Cripplingly low bandwidth caps, Painful billing once caps are exceeded"
"Avoid Cogeco!"
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Cogeco has several high-speed packages, but they have recently implemented usage caps and billing on their plans.
The plan I'm currently subscribed to (High Speed Internet Standard) has a ridiculously low cap of 60gb up/down a month. Beyond that, you'll pay $1.50 per gigabyte transferred. There's a stated limit of $30 of charges for usage over the cap, but there are still questions about having service cut off after exceeding the cap.
If my hard drive were to crash, I would need at least 40gb to re-download all the content (Steam purchases) and patches (WoW, Windows security updates) that I have today, and that number is going up. That would block out any use of the streaming video I would want to watch or buying any downloadable software using digital distribution.
Simply put, the transfer cap is too low to keep up with the future of the online marketplace. Avoid Cogeco if you plan on actually using your InterNet connection.
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 Review by neko
UPDATED: 166 days ago
member for 3.3 years, 527 visits, last login: a few hours ago
St Catharines,ON
$57 per month (month by month)
about 7 days
"Fast speed, very reliable uptime."
"Download caps limit your ability to enjoy your fast connection."
"If you watch video podcasts, download TV/Movies then beware of the bandwidth caps on the service."
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[EDIT: June 21st, 2009]
So Cogeco are now instituting overage charges, of around $1.50 per GB, that you go over the low cap of 60Gb per month. And you will be disconnected until the end of the month if you go over that cap, as well as being charged.
I am still so happy that I decided to ditch Cogeco, & go with the best Internet provider in Canada: Teksavvy.
[/EDIT: June 21st, 2009]
I got Cogeco cable installed when I moved into my new apartment a few months ago. I ordered high speed standard which has 10Mbit download speed. I get around 9Mbit actual speed from newsgroups & servers. I am happy with the speed. I had a billing issue, but it was resolved quickly & without incident to my satisfaction. Haven't needed tech support.
I thought I had a fast unlimited connection: I was wrong. Cogeco has implemented bandwidth caps at 60Gb for high speed standard. There is the option to upgrade to a higher speed tier with 16Mbit download speed & a 100Gb download cap, but I find that I do not need 16Mbit speed & 100Gb is way too low a cap, what with the digital media available on the internet, Itunes, Joost, Miro, Audible.com, Azureus Vuze, High Def video podcasts, mefeedia.com, Audiobook downloads, etc.
The only option for more bandwidth is to upgrade to a commercial/business tier, clearly not aimed at residential customers; I think this is ludicrous that there is no higher capped service other than high speed pro, for residential customers.
So if you check your e-mail, surf some websites & don't do much downloading, then Cogeco cable service is fine. If you use new media & download TV shows/Movies from Itunes, Joost, Miro, High Def video podcasts, etc, then you may hit the bandwidth caps.
Followup comments: metrotitan
join:2008-11-21 | Disconnect? >> And you will be disconnected until the end of the month if you go over that cap
Are you sure about that? | |
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neko
All Hail Canada
Premium
join:2006-08-11
canada
 ·Callcentric
·Cogeco Cable
·Future Nine Corpor..
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Disconnect? I got that information directly from the users on the Cogeco Forum, discussing the issue; but, yes. That's the policy.
If you go over X amount bandwidth per month, you get shepherded to a web page telling you you have gone over allotted bandwidth, & to call in to customer support.
Even after paying overage charges, you will not be able to get back to normal, & continue downloading lots. You may get 1GB or so just to surf. You option is to either upgrade to a higher tier with higher caps, or accept it.
After the month ends, the meter gets reset, & you are online again.
I would say, go ask in the Cogeco Forum, the users there will give further information on the exact procedure.
--
...virtue gives you heraldry. | |
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