how-to block ads
|
next review in page
Review by spikernum1 
member for 3.2 years, 186 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 11 days ago
 Burlington,ON
 $218 per month- (24 month contract)
 about 5 days "Easy to setup and get going. Good quality internet." "Horrible TV service. Poor pricing unless you are on promotions. Usage monitor is completely broken." "It's good for people who don't mind paying extra for ease of use."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
# The Good #
I signed up over 2 years ago with Cogeco and was very happy at the beginning. They were able to come in and setup all my services within 5 days of my initial call with them.
My initial bills were very cheap too ($150/month) and I was pleased with the cost for the services I was receiving. I was on 4 or 5 promotions at the time.
The Internet I ordered was 14 down/1 up and it was accurate to that almost 99% of the time. No significant downtimes and no connection issues throughout my entire contract.
# The Bad #
The bandwidth meter for the Internet is broken. I have my modem connected directly to my router, so all my traffic going to Cogeco goes through my router. I have traffic monitoring software setup, and the traffic that goes through my router does not match the traffic that Cogeco's bandwidth meter believes I've used.
I have two HD PVR's in my house, and neither record shows properly. It's really hit or miss. I'm not sure it is Cogeco's fault or the PVR manufacturer's fault. The entire PVR software is just a complete flop.
# The Ugly #
When Cogeco's bandwidth cap for my plan was at 60GB/month, my family constantly used 40-60GB every month. Never went over.
Once Cogeco bumped our cap up to 80GB/month, my bandwidth usage sky-rocketed to 80-90GB/month. No change in download/upload habits... but it was constantly 80-90GB/month.
My monthly bill has now reached $220/month now that I'm almost done all my promotions - and that is without any bandwidth overage. In 3 more months, my last promotion will expire and I will be paying $240/month.
# The Outcome #
As of March 2012, I am now actively searching to replace all my Cogeco services.
Their customer service did not want to help me stay with them when I told them I enjoyed their services, but not what they are giving me in terms of pricing.
It seems as though, to get a discount from Cogeco, you have to berate their customer service, be transferred to Customer Retention, and they will throw some promotions at you. My co-worker does this every 6 months to stay at the cheapest. Unfortunately, it does not work for me because I don't like yelling at someone for my own personal gain.
It is a horrible system where you have to be a terrible rude customer to get the discounts.
If you are a well mannered, kind person, who always pays their over-priced services on time... well, it doesn't matter... you are out of luck.
##### 1 Year Later #####
I moved my internet service to Start Communications. I've never been so happy...
Comments:
 | next review in page (previous review)
 Review by hairspring
member for 5.5 years, 672 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 37 days ago
- Oakville,ON
- $45 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 10 days
- "solid connection, good speed, solid support"
- "cap is too low, overage fees are way too high"
- "Caps are better but still not competitive. If you can get an alternative ISP, then do so."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Cogeco was really my only feasible option. Could have gone DSL dry loop but didn't want the hassle of dealing with Bell, either directly or indirectly.
Order was done in about 20 minutes, bundled with cable TV. Walked out with a plan, an install date, and my cable box.
Tech showed up on time for the install. Called me up and delivered an RCA modem. Up and running in about 30 mins.
Had the service since April 2009. No issues to speak of since.
The cap is a little low but I don't realistically exceed it with my normal usage. I am getting very concerned by the overage fees. My most recent bill (May 2012) charged me an extra $30 for 18GB of overuse. This nearly doubles my internet bill. As a customer that rarely exceeds the cap, I feel I should be able to bank some bandwidth in the rare circumstance I go over. I am now actively looking for another provider.
Update June-27-2010 -- Service still fine. No outages or speed issues. I'm a little concerned about the price increases. $10 more over the last year seems excessive.
Update - Nov-13-2010 -- Downgraded to High Speed Lite to save some bucks. Also downgraded my TV to basic cable. The customer service rep I spoke to was efficient and helpful. Everything happened on time. Service is still solid.
Update - Mar-14-2012 -- Service is still solid. A little slow sometimes. I would guess my node is getting busier. I still find the prices quite high considering the low cap. I had one incident that required tech support. It was a simple problem that they helped me fix right away.
Update - Apr-12-2012 -- I'm downgrading connection reliability and service each by one due to recent problems. I'm going to contact Tech Support and re-evaluate based on the result.
Update - May 12-2012 - I'm upgrading connection reliability and service back up to where they were prior to my issues. A tech arrived on time and did what he could (problem was not present at the time). He replaced my modem and re-patched the connection. No issues with the connection or speed since. I'm downgrading Value to the worst possible value based on my last bill (see note above).
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by Defiant001
member for 1.7 years, 54 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 38 days ago
- Oakville,ON
- $81 per month
- (24 month contract)
- about 5 days
- "Reliable connection, always fast"
- "Terrible policies and customer support"
- "Uptime at the trade off of abysmal customer service"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
Package: Ultimate 30 - $81.30/month
Speed: 30Mbps down/2 Mbps up/Currently 275GB cap
Term: Been signed up for just over 2 years, no contract, was always month to month
Modem: Cisco DOCSIS 3 modem
I signed up for Cogeco when I moved to Oakville from Vaughan, I was originally excited to be switching from Rogers as they were nearly unusable due to an unstable connection (I was on 28 meg at the time) and bad customer service and Cogeco seemed to offer a better connection for less money with a higher cap.
I've now been with Cogeco on their Ultimate 30 for just over 2 years and I'm switching to Teksavvy as they just became available, my issue isn't with the connection itself, that has been great. My problem with Cogeco is the customer service which seems more interested in excuses and stonewalling than anything else. Every time I call in they immediately have an attitude problem, the exception to this was one support call due to me getting half the speed I was supposed to, and the original call to order the service.
Some examples of this would be when I've called in asking about paying for a larger cap, I'm very specific about not needing the Ultimate 60 package, I just need a higher cap. They never seem to be able to comprehend this, and just recommend Ultimate 60 over and over. Whenever I inquire about a higher cap they tell me in different ways that I should just lower my usage, even though I'm sitting there ASKING to pay more money for a larger cap. Another time when I called in the rep had no idea what a "Linksys Router" was, seriously? I do a lot of uploading and this is always the target when I ask about a higher cap, they just tell me to upload less, as if thats some sort of solution.
My personal favourite was the one unique suggestion they had, which was to sign me up for a second Ultimate 30 package and I could swap out my modem every half month to use the second package/cap. Are you freaking serious? They also suggested I get the business connection, but I need a business license to get it, which I do not have, this confused them as in their minds only businesses could ever use 150GB+ a month apparently. They are also arrogant about their caps too, telling me its "more than enough" for me, explaining that I'm keeping the usage below the cap on purpose is a foreign concept to them. My usage is below BECAUSE of the cap, not because thats where it would normally be.
Some good about Cogeco would be the late night tech support. I called in once around midnight (apparently they are 24 hour support) and talked with a guy who was pretty good. I was only getting 20 megs when my connection was 30, he saw the issue right away (on their side, a junction was over capacity) and the next day I was back up to 30.
Another good point is that they do increase the caps, when I originally signed up I had 125GB a month, then the pack was upped to 175GB, and now its 275GB. This is good, but an unlimited option would be a good idea, but they don't seem to understand what that is.
However terrible customer service and the constant price hikes for now reason other than "because we legally can" were the final straw for Cogeco for me, as soon as I saw Teksavvy available I called to cancel which ironically was the most efficient and easy call I've had with them.
Overall I would say Cogeco would be fine for people who aren't overly concerned with online media or anything bandwidth intensive, the connection is stable and the supplied modem is good. The installer was friendly and knew his stuff. As long as you never have to speak to customer service about anything beyond the most basic of questions related to billing you should be fine. Otherwise steer clear and get a third party ISP in Cogeco land.
Comments:
 Reviews:
 ·Cogeco Cable
| Anyone can get a business account, you don't need a license. Just to point out a mistake you'd made above - you don't need a business license to get a business account. Plenty of people have followed similar suggestions, often made by other users, to get the business account as its not restricted the same as the residential account.
You could easily get the business account in your personal name if you wanted, it doesn't need to be a business. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
 Review by WiMax
member for 9.8 years, 78 visits, last login: 20 days ago
updated 42 days ago
- Port Colborne,ON
- $47 per month
- (12 month contract)
- about 17 days
- "It works."
- "Poor install service, low band caps, billing is 20th century archaic, prices are too high"
- "TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, high prices, low bandwidth! There are no other options. Thank you CRTC."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings below consensus)
|
TODAY (22Mar13) I am finally free of Cogeco's after 12+ years of poor customer service and continuously rising prices well beyond the rate of inflation. Thank you Government of Canada and CRTC for forcing competition and thanks start.ca for 5 star service and competitive prices!
Sep 12 - I received a fifth letter stating that prices are going up yet again?
01Aug11 I received the fourth letter in as many years stating that they are RAISING PRICES AGAIN! My costs of HSI have gone up 70% in the past 4 years.
The past year, the service has become very unreliable as an apparent result of extensive throttling (bandwidth shaping). The CRTC outlaws throttling of VOIP but that has not stopped them. They claim they are not doing it and yet Rogers said the same thing recently and got caught!
They won't install a calibrated meter at my house so I'm forced to believe them that their meters are working fine. The fact is, Cogeco admitted last year that their metering was not working properly and that's why they delayed cap enforcement. I don't believe it was ever fixed and now they are gouging.
The last three moves, Cogeco didn't bother to show up on the appointment date or even call in advance to cancel. I took time off work and waited around all day each time.
Bottom line: TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, high prices, low bandwidth, high bandwidth overcharges, their meter does not work, the CRTC has given them a license to blackmail and print money!
Comments:
| | ^ Call them. Tell them you're cancelling, and wait for 30 days. When they call asking to keep your service, thats when you negotiate your price. | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
 Review by teddy
member for 11.2 years, 2677 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 63 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."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
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.
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by MysticGuitar
member for 1.1 years, 135 visits, last login: 1 days ago
lodged 69 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."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
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? | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by racer123
member for 161 days, 31 visits, last login: 41 days ago
lodged 160 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."
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
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.
Comments:
| | Usage Cap go with www.start.ca if you want a higher cap | |
|
| |
| next review in page (previous review)
Review by rudeboy24
member for 10.6 years, 2302 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 170 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"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
|
$70 for 14 Megabit speed and 80 GB cap ....go with www.start.ca you will pay less and get more
Comments:
| next review in page (previous review)
 Review by Gixxer
member for 4.7 years, 2055 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 197 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"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings well below consensus)
|
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.
Comments:
| next page (previous review)
 Review by dwane
member for 9.6 years, 561 visits, last login: 5 days ago
updated 200 days ago
- Pembroke,ON
- $65 per month
- about 10 days
- "Nice speeds, solid connection"
- "Draconian Bandwidth Caps"
- "Good Cable internet + It's NOT BELL!!"
| Pre Sales information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection Reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
|
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!
--
"There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men." - Sgt. Zim. | |
|
| |
|
|
·
·