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Review by smallj53 
member for 10.8 years, 1059 visits, last login: 71 days ago
updated 5.2 years ago
 Niagara Falls,ON
 Contract price not specified.  Bell Canada
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Review by karennewton
member for 6 years, 77 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
lodged 6 years ago
- Toronto,ON
- $45 per month
 "supposed to be cheaper" "haven't been connected" "look around before signing up here"
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Review by fdoyon
member for 8.7 years, 24 visits, last login: 6.3 years ago
lodged 7.8 years ago
- Sherbrooke,QC
- $29 per month
- Bell Canada
- CLEC party: Bell Canada
- "Cheap, no caps."
- "Unreliable, worst tech support ever."
- "Not so bad when everything works fine."
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I've had AEI high-speed 3.0 mbps internet for a little more than a week. I've also had it in the past few years, before I moved. Last fall (2004) was absolutely horrible. They did this server migration thing, which basically took the service down for at least a month. Then it worked fine for several months.
I was happy when the "ready" light appeared on my modem last friday. Everything worked fine and the download speed was decent. I went away for the weekend and when I got back on monday, everything was screwed up : 3k/sec download speed, frequent timeouts... I called AEI's tech support. As usual, they were rude and not helping at all. They said they'd look into it. On wednesday, I had no connection at all and the "ready" light on the modem started blinking again. I guess that's how they solve problems at AEI Internet. I called them again, asking about their obvious lack of progress. They said they'd call Bell and ask them to do some kind of line test. My connection briefly came back on thursday, still at abysmal speeds. AEI called me at the end of the day to ask me to reboot my modem. I did and I instantly lost my connection again.
I still have no connection as of today (saturday night). If nothing works by tomorrow night, I'll be asking them for complete refund.
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 Review by Zennith
member for 10.8 years, 158 visits, last login: 8 days ago
lodged 7.9 years ago
- Toronto
- Contract price not specified.
- "None"
- "Everything"
- "I did not like them"
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I had them for 1 month and service never worked, They took my money for that month including the $250 for the modem which was never sent to me and that was that.
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Review by bcheng81
member for 8.7 years, 7 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
lodged 8.7 years ago
- Verdun,QC
- Contract price not specified.
- "No bandwith caps"
- "Slow/no pings // Slow, unreliable connection // Tech support is CRAP"
- "If you had to choose an ISP, shop elsewhere"
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Just read my letter to their tech support department (since they never answer their phones anyway). You'll understand what is BAD SERVICE. Just notice the sarcasm in my tone and it's clear that it's been months and months of utter garbage I get from them.
==
Hello Mr. Technical Support Person,
I am in utter frustration of the quality of service you are providing me with at this moment. There are times that it would refuse to even authenticate, other times that it will authenticate slowly, and everytime I do get connected, the Internet is painfully slow, albeit, quasi-unusable. I frequently time out while uploading attachments to my e-mails, either to Yahoo mail, Gmail, or even your own SMTP servers. Your ping times are horribly slow, as I can barely play ANY online games without people kicking me out for lagging, and I even time out with lost packets when pinging common servers (such as yahoo.com or your own aei.ca). It seems that whenever my computer sends a request out, the response is somewhat lost, so my computer times out. Also, your telephone technical support department is a total load of garbage, as less than 10 agents sitting in an office is clearly not sufficient to meet your volume of customers (and I have sources telling me this as the absolute truth).
I am no idiot in computers, and I know for a fact that there are no problems from my end. I've power-cycled the modem several times (it's a Speedstream 5360), changed the modem for a different one, the Bell High-Speed Test Center called me and we ran several tests that indicated absolutely no physical problem with my line. Needless to say, as a seasoned technician, I've done the physical setup correctly with all phones filtered and the modem connected to the wall jack using a 6ft phone cord (a good quality one that I crimped myself with Gauge 22 solid copper core wire). The connection to the Sympatico test login (test@test) is very fast and smooth, and the pings to the default gateway bounce back with less that 1ms. But when connected to your AEI servers, my pings to the default gateway reach approximately 40ms. Even worse, pings to yahoo.com yielded 135ms. Both the Bell technician and me agree that the problem is on your end, and lowering my 2.5Mbps profile to 1.5Mbps is NOT going to solve the problem, so if I ever find out you've lowered my profile, I will personally come to your offices to make you understand in a more direct manner that "I AM NOT STUPID". I spoke to one of your agents there and was informed that you are upgrading your servers. But it doesn't explain to me why the service has been in this horrible state since several months.
I urge you to fix this problem ASAP, as I am at the edge of my patience. I work for a competing ISP which I will not name, and I can assure you that the ONLY factor that is keeping me from using my corporate discount for our DSL service is bandwith caps. I've been a very satisfied AEI customer in the past, as the switch from Sympatico to AEI was incredibly smooth and hassle-free. But nowadays, I only pray for the day my employer will remove the caps so I can switch over to even lower cost service that ACTUALLY WORKS.
Yours truly,
- (MY NAME)
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Review by meyer_lanski
member for 8.7 years, 4 visits, last login: 8.7 years ago
lodged 8.7 years ago
- h7w7l9
- $34 per month
- "NONE"
- "EXTREMELY slow, NO support, POOR customer service"
- "DO NOT EVEN THINK OF AEI as your ISP"
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My Order was for High Speed at $29.99 per month with AEI.ca
Oder/Install: Order was fine, I installed everything myself
I don't even know where to begin! I had their service for 4 days now and I already can't stand them!
In short, here is my experience with them:
First day of service I found I was going just as fast as a 56 K modem (literally). I called tech support and NO one answered. Left a message and no answer. It took me 3 days to finally speak to the tech (this entire time speeds remained as slow as 56k).
I was told "Servers don't have enough bandwidth to go around..... Bell is doing updates on their servers because number of the large number of new clients. I was probably re routed to other temporary servers that were very busy and the bandwidth is spliced into different people and places."
The tech solution was" wait a month and call us back at the end of September or October if you are still having this problem".
He offered no other solution! Not even the basic things such as unplug all the phones in your house and try again, or do your phones have filters.. NOTHING of that sort just "call back in a month if the problem persists"!
He also mentioned he would put a note in my account saying that my speed is slow and that I called him.
I called Accounting to demand a refund and cancel my account that same day. She said no refund could be given and as for the cancellation I had to send it through email only. She also mentioned the only way to get a refund was if there was a note from tech in my file, which she said no note was in my file.
I asked to speak to her manager and guess where she transferred me, back to tech. I called her back immediately after and no one answered (what a coincidence!).
The next day I called again and demanded to cancel, she said I had to do it by email and when I said I did already yesterday she said she did not receive anything. She therefore gave me a fax number to send it to.
I tried sending it through fax and guess what, she did not give me the right number!
I called her back and said it wasn’t the right number and she said it’s impossible that is the number.
Finally I asked her managers ext. number because I had enough of these games and she gave it to me and HUNG UP IN MY FACE!
Here is a log of what happened within the four days of service I had with them:
September 13, problem no high speed - tried to contact tech unable
September 14, problem no high speed - tried to contact tech unable
September 15, problem no high speed - tried to contact tech got explanation above
September 15, problem no high speed - Called to cancel and get refund, lady was giving me trouble asked to speak to her manager and she transferred me to tech
September 15, sent cancellation letter demanding cancellation and refund did not get any response
September 16, called and said they received no email, said wanted to cancel they said couldn't over phone have to send a fax or email would not give me a cancellation number
September 16, gave me wrong fax number called back said it was correct number asked for managers fax number and she hung up on me
September 16,sent fax
September 16, tried calling manager and no answer
THIS COMPANY LITERALLY SCAMS PEOPLE. THATS PROBABLY WHY THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CHARGE A REGISTRATION FEE OF 25 DOLLARS, BECAUSE THEY KNOW MANY WILL NOT ACCEPT PAYING FOR HIGH SPEED WHEN IN FACT THE SPEED IS AS SLOW AS A 56K.
THEY OFFER NO SUPPORT WHAT SO EVER AND HAVE EXTREMELY POOR SERVICE.
Note: There seems to only be 2 people that work in the office. During this entire time, every time I spoke to someone it was always the same two people!
NEVER EVER CONSIDER THIS COMPANY FOR ANY SERVICE THEY OFFER. I PROMISE YOU WILL REGRET IT AND YOU WILL NOT BE GETTING WHAT YOU PAYED FOR.
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Review by GirgleMirt
member for 10.6 years, 743 visits, last login: 17 days ago
updated 8.7 years ago
- Saint-Laurent,QC
- $49 per month
- Bell Canada
- CLEC party: Bell Canada
- "You can load webpages and stuff... >>>when it works<<<"
- "Unreliable connection, no tech support and recently port throttling"
- "Stay away from them. they suck."
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Some call them Awfully Erratic Internet. They are one of the worst ISP's you can get!
Well lets put things in context. I was with Sympatico for about 2 years, until they increased the price of their service AND added download and upload caps of 5 gigs. In those two years, I think I've had connection problems maybe 2 times.. each lasted at most a day... But I needed more bandwitdh than the 5 gigs they were offering, and their Ultra High-Speed was too expensive.
So I decided to join AEI, I spent 150$ on a new adsl modem, and ordered their 3.5mbit service. They had a 25$ registration fee, and I bought 25$ worth of phone filters from them.
So I registered in the beginning of september and they told me that the service would start on the 19th. On the 18th, I received the phone filters and a letter, telling me that the service started on the 15th.. So already I had lost 3 days of internet.. No big deal, I thought.. I still had the Sympatico account until the 27th. So all happy I connect with AEI, and to my horror, speeds are comparable to a 33.6k modem................. HORRIBLE speeds, a hundred times slower than Sympatico. I had to continue using Sympatico for the next week since AEI was unusable (busted my 5/5 limits because of that).
Anyway, to make a long story short, they have NO tech support... You have a problem, you leave a message on their support answering machine, and they *might* call you back, 2-3 days later...........
The only way you can talk to a human being is if you call the sales department. So I did, the salesrep told me that they were having some problems, but they were working on it, and that they should be resolved shortly. IT TOOK MORE THAN A MONTH AND A HALF BEFORE THEY WERE FIXED... During that time, I received ONE email from AEI saying that they were experiencing difficulties, and that was after 3 weeks of unusable internet. During all this time, salesrep kept repeating the same thing: We're working on it, should be fixed soon. In the meanwhile, you were stuck with a connection that consistantly disconnected, and wasn't faster than a 56k modem... And if you are a gamer and wanted to play online, forget it, pings were 200-300+.. at 49$ its VERY expensive.. But to be fair to them they credited me like 25$ for all the time the connection was unusable. BUT, only after around 3 months.. 25$ lol, considering its 57$/month and it was slow as hell for more than a month and a half..
And even today, take a look the canadian broadband forums: »Canadian Broadband
they are FILLED with people having problems with AEI.
So AEI still holds true to their nickname (Awfully Erratic Internet).
Here's an example with my current 3.5mbit (49.95$/month) connection: »/quality/nil/997449 (15% packet loss, all line quality tests failed)
»/speedtests/11···45538274 (13kBytes/sec download and 5kBytes/sec upload. It should be more than a hundred times faster....)
Its been like that for the last few days. As always tech support has been unreachable, and the people from sales are extremely rude when you call to ask them if they are aware of their problem, telling you to leave a message to the tech support, and hanging up in your face when you tell them that you've already left a message and they haven't called back: "keep your line free what if they're trying to call right now!!! *hangs up* ".
So in conclusion, I've had more problems with them in the last 6 months than I would have had with Sympatico in a life time.
2 years with Sympatico = 2 days with connection problems.
6 months with AEI = easily 60 days with connection problems. During these 6 months a friend of mine living in the same building has had not one single connection problem with Bell Sympatico......
I'm fed up with them. Time to look for another ISP.
Oh yeah, and recently a few AEI members have noticed that AEI has been port throttling (limiting speeds on certain ports used on file sharing software, like Kazaa, winMX, etc...). I emailed their tech support and about 80 hours later, they replied, saying were looking into it: In french, a very unprofessionnal message, full of mistakes: "J'ai transferrer l'information a mon superieur pour faire des verifications. Aussi tot qu'on a des informations on vais vous contactez", if you don't speak french, the equivalent in english would be something like: "I have transferd the information to my superier to make verificatons. As soon that we have informations we will went to contacted you". Its been more than 3 weeks and no change, no follow up from them. I'm not surprised one bit.
And from the forums, I thought it would be a good idea to add it here:
and I digged out a little gem I once received from AEI:
My email:
quote:
Bonjour,
J'aimerais savoir quels sont les ports pour lesquels vous limitez présentement la vitesse. (Port throttling).
Je suis abonné au service 3mbit, et depuis quelques temps mes vitesses de download passant par certains ports tel 1412 sont, tout simplement, minables.
Ex: Quand une application utilise le port 1412 et que j'essais de télécharger 10 fichiers de 10 autres utilisateurs différents, j'obtiens des vitesses telles 500 bytes/sec, 1kB/sec, 2kBytes/sec, etc..
Je redémarre l'application et continue les téléchargements (telecharge toujours des memes usagers), même chose.. vitesse totale = 6kB/sec.
Je change le port utilisé pour les transferts de 1412 a X et redémarre l'application, soudainement, les vitesses de téléchargement deviennent 50 fois plus rapide. de 500bytes/sec a 25kB/sec, de 1kBytes/sec a 76kBytes/sec, etc.. vitesses totale de 8 kBytes/sec saute a 250kBytes/sec
Il y a définitivement un probleme du coté de AEI. J'ai refait le test avec Bell Sympatico et le probleme ne survient pas.
Aussi, plusieurs tests en ligne indiquent aussi que la vitesse de certains ports est limitée.
ex: »speedguide.net:8117 indique que le RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) est 1 bit, ce qui me limiterait a 58.08 kbps (7.26 KBytes/s) @ 200ms.
J'ai deja contacté les ventes et ils m'ont répondu que AEI ne limitait pas les vitesses d'aucune façon. Par contre, tout semble indiquer le contraire.
J'aimerais bien rêgler ces problemes. Si possible me contacter au (514) 111-1111 apres 7h pm, ou répondre a cet email (***@aei.ca)
Merci bien,
quote: J'ai transferrer l'information a mon superieur pour faire des verifications. Aussi tot qu'on a des informations on vais vous contactez.
Merci,
Thank you,
*****
Support Technique AEI
AEI Technical Support
support@aei.ca
English trasnslation
quote: Hello, I would like to know which are the ports for which you limit speed at present. (Port throttling).
I am subscribed with the 3mbit service and for some time my speeds of download passing by certain ports such 1412 are, quite simply, pitiful. Ex: When an application uses the port 1412 and that I tests to download 10 files of 10 other different users, I obtain speeds such 500 bytes/sec, 1kB/sec, 2kBytes/sec, etc.
I start again the application and continues the remote loadings (telecharge always same users), same thing. total speed = 6kB/sec. I change the port used for the transfers of 1412 has X. start again the application, suddenly, speeds of remote loading become 50 times faster. of 500bytes/sec 25kB/sec has, of 1kBytes/sec has 76kBytes/sec, etc. speeds total of 8 kBytes/sec change has 250kBytes/sec There is definitively a problem of dimensioned AEI.
I remade the test with Bell Sympatico and the problem does not occur. Also, several tests on line also state that the speed of certain ports is limitee. ex: »speedguide.net:8117 indicates that the RWIN Scaling (RFC1323) is 1 bit, which would limit me has 58.08 kbps (7.26 KBytes/s) @ 200ms. I have already contacted the sales and they answered me that AEI did not limit speeds in any way. On the other hand, all seems to indicate the opposite. I would like regler these problems. If possible to contact me to (514) the 111-1111 after 7h pm, or to answer this email (* * * @aei.ca). Thanks
(that was auto-translated so is not the same quality as the original email)
Their reply, manually translated to illustrate the quality of their reply:
quote: I've transferd the information to my superier to make checks. As early as we have information we will be contacted you. Thank you, Thank you, **** Technical support AEI AEI Technical Support support@aei.ca
That was the end of the conversation, the only replied I ever got... Note: This genius of a man managed to make not one, not two, but SIX errors in his two sentences...
From the reply I got, its hard to imagine that the tech ever went thru highschool...  Totally unprofessionnal... The bitch in sales wasn't more pleasant to deal with... (bitch as in: 2 a : a lewd or immoral woman b : a malicious, spiteful, or domineering woman -- sometimes used as a generalized term of abuse or 3 : something that is highly objectionable or unpleasant). To me anyone working with the public should be held to a certain standard, but with AEI it seems no such standards exist.
They are one of the worst ISP you could ever get
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 Review by diskace
member for 11.3 years, 3071 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 9 years ago
- undisclosed location
- $29 per month
- (month by month)
 about 7 days- Bell Canada
- CLEC party: Bell Canada
- "the commercial"
- "when you became a customer"
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very bad quality isp... just very very bad.
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Review by gogh
member for 9.1 years, 0 visits, last login: 9.1 years ago
lodged 9.1 years ago
- Montreal,QC
- $30 per month
- (month by month)
- "none"
- "this isp is just... bad"
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This connection is REALLY slow, don't wast you're time with them. I'm with b2b2c now and the pain is finished
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Review by Myleftoe
member for 10.6 years, 104 visits, last login: 4.6 years ago
lodged 9.8 years ago
- North York,ON
- $32 per month
- about 6 days
- Bell Canada
- CLEC party: Bell Canada
- "cheap"
- "The words Tech Support must mean something else in french like Out to Lunch"
- "Dont expect any tech support and prey your line works the next day"
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I order the 1.2Mbps service at 32.99/month and purchased the external modem (GNET BB0050) the install process was hairy. I had to use there software because they couldnt tell me what to watchout for if I hooked up the modem to a router, I have 3 computers hooked up to this ADSL modem, but the tech support for my router couldnt tell me anything either. I figured it out my self, my D-link DI-604 was using a DHCP address of 192.168.7.1 and so was my DSL modem I changed the routers IP to 192.168.8.1 and every computer I hooked up to the router connected and I was surfing.
I 've changed these IP's since then for security reason's but the whole hookup process left me with a bad taste in my mouth about this company.I'm using PPPoE through my router, which also has a built-in firewall, 2 pc's use Windows and one uses Linux. the only thing I havent tried is setting up VPN.
If I could find an ISP that works with the same dsl modem I'd switch. I send them an email requesting info about why my service is interrupted every 3 month's. Actually I lose my connection every Sunday Night/Monday Morning at least once a week. Regular service outages demand a response from or at least a post on there web page warning about the outages. I have been contemplating legal action, class action? I have a friend in the legal industry, I'll float the idea and see if its worth my while.
I dont care if the service is $2.00 cheaper than other ISP's, that much of a difference shouldn't justify a lack of tech support/customer service. By the way I've never actually spoken to anyone of them (person to person) since I first joined AEI a year ago. Should I have to speak to a tape recorder( tech support) every month? Every week? Since October of 2002. Am I not patient? Well its worn out my patients
They have transcended into a realm of rude behavior that requires legal action. If it ment that they need to raise there rates to $34.00 a month to cover cost for real tech support would I pay? Nop because I can get local ISP's for that much cash, and if they ticked me off I can stand at there front door and demand satisfaction.
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