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Review by igofman 
UPDATED: 55 days ago
member for 252 days, 32 visits, last login: 10 days ago
 North York,ON
 $45 per month (12 month contract)
 about 5 days
 "Price, if you get the phone line from Primus too. Support Level 2 is honest and helpfull"
 "Sales personnel lie about expected speed. Speed is inconsistent - drops significantly after 9 PM EST"
 "If you want consistent level of service stay away. Otherwise it can be a good deal if you are close to Central Office(CO)."
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When I was doing my research Primus sales person told me that I'm 1.5 km away from their CO and therefore speed close to 5 Mbps can be expected on my DSL connection. It was an outright lie. After I signed up, DSL modem connection was only 1.2 Mbps down. Actual Internet speed was about 900 Kbps. Two weeks of calls to Support led to some tweaking done by Support Level 2 and DSL speed down is 2.2 Mbps now. Actual Internet is 1800 Kbps at best times. Every day from 09:00 PM till about midnight speed drops to 500-800 Kbps. Primus Tech. Support also confirmed several times that I'm 4.5 km away from CO and with such distance without additional amplifying equipment between me and CO I can't expect speed above 2 Mbps. The price for unlimited 5 Mbps DSL is $25 if you sign-up for 12 month ($19 a month) of Primus Telephone (regular, not VOIP). Internet service requires no contract and can be canceled at any time - you have to buy the modem though ($35).
If you are close to Primus (Bell) CO you may get a good deal. But keep in mind that Internet speed may drop significantly in the evenings. If you are in need of consistently fast Internet, look somewhere else.
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Review by KC
UPDATED: 82 days ago
member for 1.9 years, 250 visits, last login: 1 days ago
Ottawa,ON
$69 per month
about 5 days
"Bundel is a great value, POST is good, Long Distance is Great"
"DSL, too far away from CO. Tech Support SUCKS"
"If you have working DSL, check out Primus, but you if you have trouble you are on your own!"
| Pre Sales information:
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I've been with Primus ever since they bought out AT&T Canada (10 year?) Had dial up for just as long, expect for one billing issue, it was smooth sailing.
So when they offer the Voice, Long Distance, and 5 Mbps DSL, We jumped at it. No contract, no caps, we keep our home phone number. Air Miles is a bonus. All for $70.00 a month and NO Network fee. Sign up was fast and customer service was helpful. The voice switch over happened in 5 business days, we didn't notice a thing! Got all sorts of phone feature in the bundle; my teen age daughter had lots of fun. So Voice and Long Distance is fine.
DSL is another matter. The Modem is a Speed Touch 516 (nice) which arrived 7 business days after I order. The Modem is set to bridge mode. So I had to use a PPPoE client, no problem. First off I know that the Bell CO is 4.5 km away. And I know that I'm going to take a hit in terms of speed. So when I get speed of 0.5 to 1.0 Mbps, I was not surprise. But we get periodic line drops. It was okay at first, maybe one a day. But there are days when the modem would lose sync for hours on end. Tech support is offal. Of the dozen calls; I had 2 really good operators. The last one actually when though my record and told me that they have put me on several networks, tried me on different switches. That the last line test came back and the attenuation is roughly 5.7km.
So If you have DSL that works and you are looking to save a few buck, Primus have really good bundles. But DSL support.... Spottie
Update Dec 07, It has been a year since I sign up with Primus triple bundle, and I stand by the review.... Phone has been great, Long distance has been solid. DSL has been okay with only 2 line drops since the last review. Considering my distance and line quality in my area, I consider my self lucky. And their support still sucks....
Update July 08, still going strong@ 1Mbps, the line is being throttle by Bell like everyone else, there are rumors that Primus are co-locating some of their equipment in Bell's CO if you are that lucky, then you will no get throttle. Can't comment on tech support since everything has been steady, slow and steady. KC
Followup comments:  
anon20000000000
@bell.ca
| Do not sign up with Primus PRIMUS IS THE WORST PHONE COMPANY OUT THERE!!!!
Here is my story:
I have primus VOIP for the past year. I called to cancel my service in May. They said i needed to give a months notice.. fine.
They have a modem etc that i had to send back.
Since i was moving (to another province)- i told them to send the 'send back' package to my new address. They said 'ya, no problem'.
I call 2 weeks later to confirm this new address. No problem.
The date that i was supposed to get the package came and went. I called them to see what was up. "oh- we sent it to your old address".
They agreed to send a new package to my new address.
I get the package. Send it. Get confirmation from Canada Post that they have received it Aug 1.
Aug 22 i get a charge on my credit card for $160
I call them to find out why. "We havent received your package". I tell them to go check. "Oh, we received it". I ask them to reverse the charges. They say that it will only happen on my next billing cycle.
I found this totally unacceptable (what about visa interest charges??)
I called visa to try and get something done about it. They transfer me to the "resolution department"- yadda yadda i'm back on the phone with primus.
Now the primus guy is telling me that i have to call them back on my next billing cycle to get a "charge back" on my credit card, because if i leave it to them to refund it will take up to 8 weeks.
I asked to speak to supervisors, no go. I demanded an instant refund. No go.
WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!?!
I am going to try and call visa again on monday- but i dont know what i can say to get these charges taken off.
I am trying to spread this word as much as possible.
Primus has screwed up on my account SO MANY TIMES!!
I am very disgruntled and would like to do as much damage to their business as possible. | |
| | superporky
join:2002-07-24
Burlington, ON
| Re: Do not sign up with Primus The original post was a while ago but thought I would respond anyway.
ATTENTION ANYONE SHIPPING HARDWARE BACK TO PRIMUS!!!
KEEP YOUR SHIPPING TRACKING NUMBER.
I signed up for Primus was very clear that I already have a modem and do not need one. Surprise, surprise the modem arrives a few days later. Primus sent me the return package and for some reason I photocopied the label before and stuck it on my desk. The next month I was charged for the modem. WTF!!! Auto paid to Visa, great. I called and they hadn't received the modem. The modem that I didn't need in the first place. While customer service was 'looking into it' I received another bill, no refund. At this point I calling cust support fairly regularly. But they have no record of receipt. Short story long, I remembered I kept the tracking number. It took about 3 months but I got my money back.
KEEP YOUR TRACKING INFO!!! | |
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Review by heavyduty
Posted: 93 days ago
member for 195 days, 157 visits, last login: 8 days ago
Brampton,ON
$69 per month (12 month contract)
 Bell Canada
"bundle price cannot be beat, good DSL service"
"required 12 months contract which has $100 early termination fee"
"if you want voice/fax/long-distance/dsl, this is probably the best deal around"
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- Residential mega-bundle deal
- includes analog voice + 9 features, plus free Teleguard
- includes additional telephone/ring for fax line (added $4 month)
- includes unlimited long distance Canada/USA
- includes up to 7mbps DSL
I absolutely love the Teleguard feature. Have not received any telemarketer calls for over a month. This is with the same phone number which received on average 10-20 per month telemarketers. Voice service and its features all work as expected.
DSL service is great. Unfortunately my loop is on a Bell remote so I cannot get DSL from Primus' own platform, thus the basic DSL infrastructure is similar to other Bell wholesale ISPs and the line is still subject to Bell Canada bandwidth throttling.
DSL latency and training is excellent. I'm at 4.2km according to attenuation, and am trained at 5000/800 fast-mode. Latency to google.ca is approximately ~12ms, much better than my previous ISP (another Bell partner ISP) on the same loop.
I'm online all the time, and DSL downtime has been almost non-existent. Only experienced 1.5 hours downtime in the last month.
The ST516v6 DSL modem works fine, and Primus' install CD worked even with my Mac system. Afterwhich, I just connected the modem to a switch and let it serve the entire home LAN.
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Review by xgmranti
UPDATED: 169 days ago
member for 2.9 years, 57 visits, last login: 48 days ago
Almonte,ON
$44 per month
about 7 days
Bell Canada
"Unlimited bandwidth"
"Unstable connections, high pings, bad routes"
"Slow at peak times, relatively stable, good luck with tech support."
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I would re-sign with Magma but since they were bought out by Primus I thought I would give it a try.
Day 1:
Started off by ordering online, their web page is not exactly the cleanest or well organized and quite frankly I've seen far smaller ISPs with a lot better designs. Anyways after a few form errors and a quick call to clarify some outdated information, my order was out for the new connection.
Day 3:
Being the smart guy that I am, I skipped waiting for their modem, (which due to some mailing issues took a week to get to me anyways) and used my own modem from VIF/Magma. I called in for a login, which after 10 minutes of confusion on the tech's side he finally gave one up. He wasn't too bad but needed a little coxing to get what I needed.
The line was already on a DSLAM, I figure from the first line being on Bell Sympatico, so I was already using my old Magma connection through it. When they upped my line profile things got a little unstable for the day. Since my account was taking time to activate I decided to wait until the next day.
Day 4:
Things stabilized a little better the next day but I was still having latency issues and was being routed through Toronto (instead of preferably Ottawa). Running roughly 40ms to their routers at good times and up to 1000ms most of the time. Made a quick call (30 minute wait) to tech support and asked if it was possible to be routed through Ottawa. (assuming they would have a POP since they did acquire Magma)
The tech was a bit confused and relayed my question to a level 2 tech. Ten minutes later the answer came down that they would have to speak to the network tech in order to answer my question. He then proceeded to add my email account and said they would email me when they had an answer. That was a few days ago with no email in sight.
Day 7:
Got my nice little Primus package. Decided to hook up their modem, Thompson Speedtouch, to avoid any angry techs on the other end.
Pings have now calmed down and stability has improved, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that it was a one time issue. Thought I'd still like to know if they do have a POP in Ottawa that I can be routed through. Suppose I'll call in when I have a bit of free time and remind them to send me that email.
Update:
Moved to a new place with a better line. Everything appears more stable after waiting 12 days for them to fix whatever problem there was. Sync was achieved after 3 days, line speed was upped to 5 from 3 after 5 days. After 7 days and a lot of tech support calls including an escalation to level 2, I finally got a connection on day 12.
Line is good, connection seems good then I was switched to interleave. Supposedly they couldn't do anything about it so I'm not sure how I will proceed.
Since I reactivated my old magma account for the sole purpose of being routed through Ottawa, if they give me a 1mm.primus login, I'll probably drop them for Teksavvy.
Update 2:
Well it started good, speeds are down to about a 200kb/s average. Maybe its time to give Rogers another chance.
Update 3:
Canceled both of my Primus accounts. They're decent when things are working smoothly but if anything goes wrong, good luck.
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 Review by Onthemark
UPDATED: 177 days ago
member for 5.9 years, 1589 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Gatineau,QC
$75 per month (12 month contract)
about 999 days
"None"
"Pretty much everything"
"AVOID! Or you will be here posting something similar..."
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Garbage.
I'd love to leave it there but here were the specifics. They advertised phone and internet for $34.99, which is smokin'
Called 3 times previous to signing up to triple check on hidden service fees, assured they had none.
Long story short, $34.99 turns to over 70 because they have to upgrade to a higher tier of dsl service and also charge a 4.95 service fee monthly.
And oh yes...you get to talk to white people in sales until you sign then you get bounced to Peoples democratic republic of Islamabad for any subsequent dealings. Fucking joke.
Garbage.
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Review by Tig3
UPDATED: 190 days ago
member for 2.2 years, 25 visits, last login: 165 days ago
Greely,ON
$45 per month (month by month)
about 8 days
Bell Canada
"Introductory Price"
"After sale service and support"
"Not ready for prime time"
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3 Meg DSL, $20 per month for the first 5 months, ($45.00 after that) 30 day contract.
Speedtouch modem, PPPoE
After spending two months trying to get my defective modem replaced I realize that I can get faster service for the same or less money from several other ISPs
Long term outlook for this ISP is not good.
They are not capable or willing to support the technology that generates their revenue.
Look for Primus to sell off this experiment after they ride it to the ground.
Update March 31/08
Canceled DSL service December 21/07 (gave 30 days notice)
Service disconnected January 21st
My credit card was charged for February.
I sent email asking for a refund and was told it would be cleared up next month.
My credit card was charged for March.
Sent another email. I hope I get my money back before they close the doors.
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Review by moonstarr
UPDATED: 192 days ago
member for 2.4 years, 14 visits, last login: 188 days ago
Montreal,QC
$60 per month (12 month contract)
about 15 days
"Very affordable"
"Connection is slow and unreliable most of the time."
"Primus puts the blame on Bell. Lets see if they can work it out."
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So I have a great deal with them. $60 tax incl. for an unlimited download 5meg DSL line PLUS a telephone land line (not VOIP.. well maybe on their end) with all the major features you would want on a phone plus unlimited calling in CAN/US. The contract is for one year.
They originally put me on some sort of bell / primus shared 3meg line that was horrible so I pushed them to put me on a 5 meg primus line. it took a while to get done. Primus said bell was taking forever to get to my work order.
However even with the 5 meg profile it' seems the network is super saturated. Long pings and too many hops. Primus said Bell was having major network problems and that by the end of Jan.2008 the surfing speeds might be more stable.
I can get fast download and upload speeds its just not consistent. So I'm willing to wait a month until these two companies (Bell / Primus) sort out their issues.
update: FEB.11th.2008. There has been somewhat of an upgrade but saturation is still happening. Pings and hops are down to 30ms but today and last week login problems. I'm getting fustrated ready to leave. giving it a couple more weeks
update. MAR.29th.2008. Still having problems but today it's a biggy. I'm connected but can't surf. Trust me in the fact that it's not a problem on my end. I'm 100% sure. Primus says Sympatico is still somehow involved in messing up my connection. I really want to tell everyone that the Internet service is great but it isn't. :-/ BTW The phone service is an amazing deal. Works flawlessly.
Followup comments: | | moonstarr
join:2006-05-15
Montreal, QC
 ·Primus Telecommuni..
| Re: marketplace Yeah I saw that. Thing is I was with bell before. The internet connection was pretty good but their incompetence didn't make up for it so I switched to primus. Thought I could get on an all primus network but ended up being to far from the colo. So I'm on a line managed by bell for Primus. Which sucks during peak times.
Primus says they are upgrading the bandwidth for the network I'm on by end of Jan with bell. So lets see. I'm willing to wait it out cause the price is amazing, telephone is a land line that works great and Primus support is great. | |
|
Bellundo
@teksavvy.com
| Re: marketplace Saw the whole show. That show aired before sympatico speed throttled and traffic shaped so think just how bad it must be now if they were rated dead last back then. That same 512/512 connection we saw on television has just been speed throttled to 300/300... pathetic to say the least. | |
|
Bigwig
@primus.ca
| Bell I just switched today from bell to primus..... bell sucked... speed was always slow. now on primus... speed.... is still super slow.. i dunno if i need the line card changed or something but like at 5am i'll get decent speed for an hour or so then drops back down to pure shit.... why advertise a 7meg line when it goes 1 meg if lucky... sigh.... | |
| | risingrocker
join:2008-02-20
Montreal-Nord, QC
·Acanac Inc.
| Re: Bell said by Bigwig :
I just switched today from bell to primus..... bell sucked... speed was always slow. now on primus... speed.... is still super slow.. i dunno if i need the line card changed or something but like at 5am i'll get decent speed for an hour or so then drops back down to pure shit.... why advertise a 7meg line when it goes 1 meg if lucky... sigh....
what a lot of people don't understand about dsl and cable internet is many things like:
1) if your house was built before 1995 then you don't have catagory 5 wiring and jacks or rg-59 cable in your home. you have to upgrade those wires. if your in an apartement building and the box for cable tv and telephone is in a locked room well you have no choice then to deal with what you have.
2)those cheap phine line cords from jack to the modem, cheap jacks and cheap ethernet cables from those so called dollar stores can cause problems. you need quality wires which help.
3) if you have a bad modem you need to upgrade.
4) if you are in an old area of your city then chances are that some of the cable internet and telephone lines may not be updated yet. in the new developments whether in montreal, ottawa, toronto, calgary and vancouver the lines are of today's standard.
5) in major cities these companies have one major line supplying the west end and being distributed to all the west's communities as is the same set-up for the east. now that being sad everyone thinks that "oh i should be getting 5mbps all the time" bullshit the more people are on at peak periods the slower the speed because it works like cable tv, satellite, an audio signal or even electricity that the more splits you have and evryone is using those splits at the same time then its normal for quality of speed, signal or voltage to be lower.
6) also anothing is to fight the good fight till the very last strand with your ISP and you will see sometimes you will land on a good tech who knows what the problem is and will correct it if they could on their end. but they won't if its on the customers ends which is usually due to hardware (like mentioned above) property the customer owns.
but you know what internet is not supposed to rule your life you're supposed to rule it.
| |
|
Dsl Technician
@primus.ca
| Primus I am a dsl technician and primus has but just one problem. The connection comes to a stand still about 3 times a day and I have to power cycle or reset in order to gain full bit rates. I had bell sympatico before and the connection was consistent. The obvious problem is primus. Other then having to power cycle the modem from time to time, the service is nothing to complain about for 60 bucks a month. | |
| | moonstarr
join:2006-05-15
Montreal, QC
·Primus Telecommuni..
| Re: Primus Hey, Did you get a new modem when you switched? I've got the Thomson SpeedTouch 516v6 and think that it must be better than my old speedstream 4200 that I used with bell. Amuse me and next time your connection locks up just change your ip and see if that has the same effect. Disconnect reconnect.
Yes I agree nothing to complain about for 60 bucks pls tax. The phone service is dope. But seriously you shouldn't have to reset your modem three times a day. That is ridiculous. | |
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Review by jedibones
UPDATED: 195 days ago
member for 195 days, 22 visits, last login: 168 days ago
Montreal,QC
$59 per month (12 month contract)
about 42 days
"cheap bundle package"
"slow speeds,even slower @peak times, tech support, 1yr contract"
"don't sign up, you'll be disappoint, unreliable speeds/tech support :("
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Hi, just cancelled my service with the pathetic Primus. Was bamboozled to a year long contract, finally over. bamboozled into 1 yr contract & didn't choose it, was mistake by sales agent told I couldn't get out and forced to accept,or get penalty. I've been complaining most of the year about poor speeds and accusing them of throttling me, all I got were denials. I still think I was right about that. And now Bell admits to throttling and Primus runs off of Bell I think. I still have open ticket with tech support and its been over a 100 days+.
Also had no telephone service(landline) for 2 weeks and slower than dial up speeds for a monthwhen I first signed up. Bad ... no horrible service since the beginning. It was a sign of bad news. I called to cancel and was told I had the 1yr contract deal and locked in. Had to pay penalties if I wanted to cancel. I did the mistake of staying and hoped for the best. It was the worst service ever. and I had Bell before this.
I got 2 weeks to find a new ISP. 
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Review by sta1ns
UPDATED: 220 days ago
member for 1 year, 13 visits, last login: 65 days ago
Ottawa,ON
$69 per month
about 20 days
"Connection is ok, Speeds are ok, Phone is a great deal!"
"Tech Service is Crap, Install took a month, Connection goes down daily"
"Primus is ok if you know how to deal with them"
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When I first signed up with Primus they said it was going to take about 2 weeks to get my Internet on the line. Two weeks go by and my old Internet is Canceled in 13 days, 1 day before Primus should of got my Internet up. I call Primus and ask what's up, they said that it will take bout 2 days because they don't have a C.O. in my area "Ottawa". Two days go by and I try out the modem they gave me, It's broken, I send it back and get a new one taking about 1 week. This one works, READ this because if you sign up you should be expecting this, I go to signup.primus.ca and put all my info there and all the info I got was WRONG. I call them again and they sort it out. Now I got Internet on 1 computer. When I call them up again, 3 people there said they don't support network routers. So I'm on my own, If you want to "buy a network router and you have Primus MAKE SURE IT SUPPORTS PPPoE".
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Review by appalbarry
Posted: 240 days ago
member for 3 years, 5 visits, last login: 225 days ago
Hamilton,ON
$90 per month
Bell Canada
"None"
"Anything requiring service or reliability"
"Stay far, far away."
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I "inherited" Primus when they bought my ISP Magma Communications. After being a Magma booster for many years I am hurrying to go elsewhere. As expected Magma has become yet another shoddy division of Primus, and the excellent technical support has disappeared into "maybe we'll e-mail you back some time today" mode. The final straw was two lengthy e-mail outages in two weeks.
I'm adding this note because if you type in Magma's URL you'll be taken to the Primus site and may think that they are the same. They are not.
My experiences with Primus have been uniformly horrid, both as a cel customer, and with them as an ISP and web host. In this case though they have taken what was arguably the finest ISP in Canada - I mean near 100% uptime always, and tech support that answered in moments and knew how to fix problems quickly - into an off again, on again affair with endless hold times and hours or days long waits for e-mail response.
Plus they managed to not invoice us for some eight months.
I paid a premium to host with Magma and never complained. I brought them dozens of customers. Now I'm just looking for cheap alternative.
»www.community-media.com/wordpress/?p=245
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Apparently quality of my line can be improved
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