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Review by mhinc1 See Profile

  • Location: Niagara Falls, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $51 per month
  • Install: about 9 days
  • Caps of 150 gigabytes/month
Great tech/sales staff, reliable, $25 referel credit, all as advertised
Not a thing!
Finally some competition for Cogeco in the Niagara Region!

I had been wanting to sign up with Start for some time. But because I worked from home, I was a little worried about doing so, even after all the amazing reviews. I was laid off, so I no longer had to rely on internet from home to work. So I finally took the plunge. Cancelled those AWFUL idiots at Cogeco.

Singed up for the unlimited package at first, 6mb down 1.5mb up. But was too slow for my liking. So for the same price I upgraded to the 20mb down and 2mb up. For 50 bucks after tax I think this is amazing. I get 150gb of anytime usage, and the fact I have unlimited between 2am and 8am is PERFECT! I just up my torrent programs scheduler for only between 2 and 8 and away I go. And heck if I need things through the month outside that time frame I still have 150GB which is a lot!

If you are stuck with Cogeco, you are over paying by far. Get out of that loop and deal with a great company using their lines Start has been fantastic from day one. Sign up went well, transition was flawless and seamless, speeds as promised. They even called the day of the transfer to make sure i got their modem running and was good to go.

I have nothing bad to say about Start, not one single thing.

I noticed there was 1 unhappy review. And I had to laugh when reading through it. The guy was oblivious. Rocca, the CEO of start did everything, bent over backwards to help this guy and all the customer did was make things difficult. It's pretty amazing when a CEO jumps on a forum and messages and call your personally. You can't get much better than that.

AND to top it off, referral credits! $25.00 for each person. And START doesn't make you wait 90 days! You get it on your next bill and I have had 2 so trust me it's seamless as well!



member for 10.3 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 10.3 years ago

dra6o0n
join:2011-08-15
Mississauga, ON

dra6o0n

Member

Reality of CEOs and Company sizes.

Lots of common ISP companies are rather small, and their offices are worked by manpower or less than 20 or so people sometimes.

A company at minimum can be as small as 1 person.
but a corporation is a group of companies, so it's more a surprising factor if you had a Corporate CEO visit the forums to follow up on it's company's customers.

Review by scrouse See Profile

  • Location: Greely, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $60 per month (month by month)
  • Install: about 7 days
  • No Cap
Extremely customer friendly, $10 to upgrade to unlimited
By far the best company I have dealt with in a long time
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Value for money:

I have been with Start now for almost 2 months and have had to have numerous dealings with them to get support for infrastructure issues so I feel I have a pretty good working knowledge to write a solid no BS review.

I live in a 115 year old house that is located at the far edge of cable availability. My spouse and I both work with computers and communications and as a result we are pretty tech savvy and have numerous computers and are heavy media users. Our 6mb DSL line just wasn't handling our needs anymore and no upgrade of speeds were on the horizon. I have no love for either Bell or Rogers so we did our shopping and the reviews here on DSLreports pushed me towards Start.

I ordered my service online without phoning at all. Simple and easy. Within 24 hours I received a phone call from sales confirming my order and my installation date. Friendly and polite and well organized. Off to a great start. 24 hours after that I get an e-mail, modem has been shipped and here's your tracking number - sweet. Modem arrives all looks good. Big red truck shows up at exactly the time given to me, he comes in, cleans up a few connectors installs the modem and a speed test shows a solid 35/3. I'm a happy man. He leaves, 10 minutes later his supervisor shows up at the door and asks to look at the work. Certainly! He looks around doesn't like the ground and replaces it. I'm thinking "hey maybe big red has finally got their act together". Supervisor leaves and about an hour later Start phones - "hows it all look?" Wow, follow up from the company. "Looks good - thanks a lot".

After 24 hours I start noticing that I'm having lots of modem reboots and something doesn't seem right. T3 errors and the connection is just crap. The first part of the saga can be seen here - »[Cable] The Dreaded T3 Disconnect - My Solution and Fix

Unfortunately the problems continued, although the issues were not as bad, so there definitely was an EMI problem and once I moved things it did improve. I continued to phone and work with Start who never insulted me and were very interested in hearing my thoughts on what might be going on. They respected my background knowledge of RF and how equipment works. They documented everything to make a case. They typed and typed, I must have a book on their file by now. They encouraged me to send in screen captures of the modem levels (when good, when bad), logs from the modem and any other information I could provide to help them make a case to get big red to focus on the real problem. Too many times big red would come back with "we see his modem online, all is good". I asked about surrendering and just switching to their 6mb dsl service but they asked if I would stick it out and "lets see if we can get this fixed."

Somewhere along the line Bryan asked me a very unusual question. "Can you look at the amperage of the power cube of your modem for me." This question revealed that my power cube was rated for 1.5a vice the 1a the modem called for. I checked all my equipment to see if I had mixed up a power cube, nope, the modem had shipped with an improper power cube. Start immediately believed me and never accused me of screwing things up like many companies would. They immediately shipped me a new modem and a mailed a return kit for the 1st modem. New modem was received and the problem got a little bit better but the problem was still there.

They used all the screen shots, modem logs and my observations to make a case and convinced red to dispatch a proper RF tech to the house. Fortunately it was from a 3rd party company (Forefront) and not big red. This young fellow listened to the full problem, looked at my logs and immediately went though everything. He replaced the cable in the house and every connector from pole to the modem. He would have changed the cable from the pole to the house but this needs an over the road crossing crew. Unfortunately at the time it was raining and the problem would disappear in the wet so we had no way of knowing if the problem was fixed or not. Instead he left me a phone number to call if things were still bad. "Call us direct, no need to call your ISP." I sent a report back to Start to let them know what had happened and what the next steps would be.

After things dried out, the problems returned, but the weather had cooled down and I was able to start seeing a pattern. As the sun would come out and warm the air the problems would get really bad and again when the sun would set as things cooled down. Rain would also eliminate the problem. Obviously something was happening outside of the house and was affected by weather. I phoned the 3rd party company and explained what I was seeing. The guy asked me a few questions and he was convinced that to properly eliminate the variables that replacing the line that crosses the road to my house would be a good start and after that he would check the entire neighborhood if the problems continued. We then noted that the cable run was around 200ft long made up of two 100ft sections of RG-6 with connectors inline. Completely improper. He dispatched a "crossing crew" to come out and replace everything to the house with RG-11 in a single run. The crew was delayed by a week but finally came out.

I'm now sitting 3 days in, the signals have improved by over 5dbm and the connection has been solid. The crew also commented that the cable was in terrible shape. Looks like the problem might finally be fixed.

But the point of this story is, if Start would not have taken the time to learn the entire story, document it, work with me and fight for me with big red this story would never have ended successfully. These guys actually do care and want to get you up and running. Bryan and Dan on the tech team at Start took it upon themselves to continue to follow this problem and work it through. We had numerous phone calls and after every attempt at fixing he problem they would phone and follow up with me. We spent a lot of time on the phone trying to sort this problem out. Near the end I was getting very frustrated but I knew this was a red infra problem and not the problem of Start. I was a slave to watching the logs and signal levels, constantly on the phone and dealing with a very unreliable connection. I do think that someone less patient would have lost it long before I did. Fortunately I'm a techie guy myself and took it as a bit of a challenge as well.

If I had one little nagging criticism for Start over all this it would be: not once was it ever offered to lower my bill for the time I was suffering with the problems. That would have been the the cherry on the cake on an already great cake. LOL, but not something I'm worried about but I can see it being something that other customers would demand.

I do hope that Start continues with the very high level of customer service, it is what sets them apart from the rest. I have already convinced 1 friend to switch and apparently I will have a 25.00 discount next month thanks to their referral program. Well done.

I look forward to many more years with them and highly recommend this company for your internet needs.

Scott

member for 10.5 years, 134 visits, last login: 8.4 years ago
lodged 10.3 years ago


Review by BenVanDorp See Profile

  • Location: London, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $68 per month (month by month)
  • Install: about 10 days
  • No Cap
The best price, fastest service and most friendly tech support Ive ever recieved
NULL
Start is the perfect choice for any customer, especially if they want good prices!
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I convinced my roommates to switch from Distributel to Start

It could not have been smoother on Starts end ^^

Great price, good service. It blows every other ISP out of the water INCLUDING Teksavvy!


member for 11.6 years, 20 visits, last login: 6.5 years ago
lodged 10.3 years ago







Review by tatty See Profile

  • Location: North York, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $57 per month
  • Install: about 7 days
  • Caps of 200 gigabytes/month
Fast speeds, great cap
none so far
Great bang for your buck in the Cogeco area
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I've been with Start for a couple of weeks now. I've read great things and needed a fast connection with a generous cap. Since I use VOIP, any DSL provider would become too expensive thanks to a required modem rental and dry loop fee for the 25/7 package.

Now I get 30/2 with a 400GB cap for less! I don't download that much, but it's nice not having to worry about it.

UPDATE: I moved to a red area, so now I'm on the 35/3 plan with 200GB usage and an unlimited 2-8AM window. It's been stable, my VOIP line has worked well with this package and support has been great!

member for 22.1 years, 811 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
updated 10.3 years ago


Review by KoganIZ See Profile

  • Location: undisclosed location
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Seamless switch, no activation fee, good value, unlimited option, cheap rental modem, no contract
Nothing
I would recommend everyone to use them. They CARE!
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I got the standard package with the unlimited option a week ago. I pay about $55 including the modem ($63 with taxes). I switched from Rogers. The switching was seamless, I just removed the old modem and connected the new modem. Finally my internet is running. I think Rogers doesn't know to configure their networks.

I have got exactly what I have been promised. Exactly at the promised time, including the modem shipment.
Btw, their login free web portal is amazing. I mean it's simple, and this is what makes it amazing
Regardless my unlimited option, I still go there for the usage meter, just to see how much I'm winning by running away from Rogers

I was using TekSavvy before Rogers for 2 years. They also great guys, but unfortunately they had a couple of outages last year, that lasted for days, and I couldn't afford that. Their outages often caused by Rogers. I hope it will not happen with the Start.



member for 11 years, 10 visits, last login: 10.1 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago


Review by Bye internet See Profile

  • Location: canada
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Very reliable. Speeds are always above those advertised. Friendly and efficient Customer Service.
Sorry, I just can't find a bad!
I'd recommend this company to anyone.
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From their first word, communications were prompt, professional and courteous.

The service is consistently great, always with speeds a step or two above those advertised.

Prices are very realistic.

It would be very, very hard to imagine a better company, better art, better opportunities to expand ourselves as musicians.




member for 12.2 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 10.4 years ago







Review by jeffrey15287 See Profile

  • Location: London, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $59 per month
  • Install: about 5 days
awesome speed good price unlimited bandwith.
nothing
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My Other Reviews

·Start.ca
signed up for the 25/10 package. everything got hooked up on the date it should have. they even called to make sure I was online. using a moto sb 6141 modem.

member for 10.4 years, 3332 visits, last login: a few hours ago
lodged 10.4 years ago







Review by peter4000 See Profile

  • Location: Bolton, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $73 per month
Awesome!
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Switched from Rogers.
I get advertised speed and great service. Advanced Cable Internet 35 down / Unlimited.
Plugged modem in and had internet within 1 min!
Spoke to Jason day after install. Very nice guy asked me about how everything went and if there is anything
he can help me with.

Thank you Start!

member for 10.4 years, driveby review (so far)
lodged 10.4 years ago







Review by c00lsnoopy See Profile

  • Location: Markham, ON, Canada
  • Cost Contract price not specified.
Friendly sales staff and amazing tech support
none
Great service and price
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Great tech support. Dan spent a long time trying every possible option to make things work for us. Finally we had to bridge the ADSL modem and use my router to have it working. He was patient and I can really feel he wanted to help us fix the issue.

Very satisfied.

member for 10.5 years, 21 visits, last login: 10.4 years ago
lodged 10.4 years ago


Happy Custom
@start.ca

Happy Custom

Anon

Start Communication

Great tech support, customer service, and ISP provider! Have been with them for awhile now, and I'm very pleased with Start. I highly recommend them to anyone that is looking at switching ISP provider.






Review by camelot See Profile

  • Location: Whitby, ON, Canada
  • Cost: $55 per month
  • Install: about 5 days
Fantastic Customer Service
Nothing so far
Probably the best setup I could have asked for
Pre Sales information:
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I decided to switch from another TPIA to Start. I scheduled a transfer, however the previous provider botched it and disconnected me 3 weeks early.

I called Start and told them of the situation. My only option was to be setup sooner as a "new" customer. Fine. I need internet...let's go. During the subsequent calls for setup, they kept me informed, and answered the phone promptly. What a refreshing change.

I scheduled the tech for 5 days out. 10 minutes into my 3 hour window, the tech showed up, cleaned up my levels, tagged the line for TPIA and we're LIVE! He even left his Tech number, name and cell in case there were issues.

Thank you Start. It was an absolutely seamless setup. Happy to be a customer. Now the 150/10 is becoming tempting...

»www.speedtest.net/my-res ··· 95407603

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