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Review by Mister_E 
member for 9.2 years, 3779 visits, last login: 2 days ago
updated 1.2 years ago
 Etobicoke,ON
 $54 per month Bell Canada "Reliability, Speed, Direct Tech Support Forum here on DSLR" "Cost of Services provided - i.e. Speeds, Caps and outsourced phone techs that don't appear to have any tech background" "Have to consider the alternatives..."
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Update: 03/2012
Still with Fibe16. Still satisfied with the speed and the cap is still sufficient for my needs, but in 2012, the price is no longer worth the service provided. IMO, either the price should be lower for this type of package, or the package should be upgraded (higher speed, larger cap).
However, considering the alternatives and their pricing, the grass isn't much greener elsewhere either (but I'm definitely considering my options).
Can't be beat for reliability - it just works. IIRC, I've only had 1 outage in the last 5 years that lasted all of ~2 hours (other than a failed 2Wire 2701HG-G/Power Adapter).
Haven't had to deal with Tech Support other than for the failed power adapter, which went smoothly since the situation provided the phone tech no other option (although they did have to patch me through to a 'higher level' tech to confirm the failure).
Replacement modem was provided within a few days, but I have an older Thomson Speedtouch that held me over (ADSL1 only at 8Mb). By using the older modem, my profile had been downgraded, but that was quickly corrected through the Bell Direct forum here on DSLReports (still the preferred way to speak to a tech that actually knows what they're doing, IMO).
Update: 03/2010
Have since upgraded to the 16Mb plan (now called Fibe16) using their 2Wire 2701HG router/modem and paying $2 more I paid before. Quite happy with the speed, but would be nice if they maximized the upload speed on this ADSL2 package as well.
Reliability still excellent.
Unfortunately, I now have a 100GB monthly cap, but my typical usage is under that limit so it hasn't been a factor. Throttling hasn't impacted me significantly, but again, it would be nice if they stopped this practice.
Original Review:
Been with Bell for a long time (since Aug. 2000 and started with the Nortel 1Mb modem) and happy for the most part - extremely rare to see any service disruptions.
Currently on a 6Mbps / 800Kbps profile using a Speedstream 5200 (E240) and getting those speeds - would likely qualify for a higher profile but would likely end up losing my old grandfathered (read: unlimited) plan. My usage isn't that high though and I may consider moving up to a higher speed anyhow.
They were better in the past before the throttling and caps - hopefully they'll change their ways once they see enough people drop their service(s).
I rarely need tech support but have dealt with their phone support on occasion or when helping out friends/family - phone support is horrible, but I've been able to bypass the first level techs most of time (just give them enough technical details and they'll usually move you on once you request to speak to a higher level). Of course, the direct support forum here on DSLR is invaluable.
Comments:
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 Review by Rifleman
member for 9.3 years, 4552 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.3 years ago
- p1a
- $70 per month
 about 1 days- "This Turbo Stick gets me online anywhere a phone signal is."
- "Big bucks for a max of 5gigs up and down combined"
- "works good for my needs as I travel."
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I bought the turbostick to get service in my RV. Had to reinstall XP to get the drivers to work. It works fine and quite fast.
The stick cost 129 bucks with open contract. Sign for 2 years it is free.
30 bucks gets you 500MB then 5 to 3gB is 50 then 3 to 5 is 70. Over that is 5 cents a MB.
I am hooked up to cable and the turbostick will be cancelled tomorrow. It works fine but a "heavy" user like myself it is far too expensive.
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 Review by Terrific
member for 4.9 years, 19 visits, last login: 1.3 years ago
updated 1.3 years ago
- Cobourg,ON
- $60 per month
- Bell Canada
- "Steady Infrastructure and Reliable Service"
- "Customer Service Answered off -Continent"
- "Over Priced for BAsic Service, but heavily advertised."
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Ordered the Basic DSL service of 2Mbps/ Only was ever able to get Download speeds of 64 Kilo-Bytes Per Second, until I called Customer Service. It should have been installed at the higher rate when I subscribed.
Customer Service is always Not in Ontario or Quebec. Usually in India or Philipenes.
Initailly ordered Wireless Option but was only delivered Wire-Only Modem.
WIll see if the service improves (2 Months using service)
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 Review by xfinisherx
member for 2.1 years, 32 visits, last login: 1 year ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- undisclosed location
- $47 per month
- Bell Canada
- "It was fine when it worked, even though the speeds were horrific"
- "Disconnected frequently, Horrific Speeds, Absolutely disgusting customer support"
- "Never ever again will I go back to Bell. After this mess, I switched all services to Cogeco Cable, including my Phone and TV"
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Where do I begin?
I have had Bell internet since 2009 and I have been quite satisfied until about 6 months ago when the service quality went down. And I mean it, down to the ground. Lately, it had gotten so bad that I was paying for 6Mbps service and only getting 1. After spending 2 hours on the phone, being disconnected twice, and having the line checked and having had 'no problems' they decided to send a technician out to my house to check the line the next day.
Next day comes... I'm at home for the 6 hours they want me to be, and no one shows up. How wonderful.
I call back again, this time I spend close to 3 hours on the phone. These technicians are so incompetent its not even funny. I had to scream at the person who was probably in Pakistan on the other end because he could not hear me, even when I was screaming. Please note that I have, should now say used to have, a Bell Home Phone line too. I guess that service is garbage too. After screaming for 15 minutes, the guy went silent, and wouldn't dare say a word to me even after I asked for his supervisor more than 10 times because he was too incompetent and clueless to understand anything I was telling him. After hanging up, I called back immediately, and asked to speak to cancellations. It was my last straw, and I absolutely could not thank myself any better for the job I did with Bell. After being disconnected from Bell, I went to Cogeco, and I switched every single service over to them, and then Bell has the nerve to send letters about how I am such a "valued customer" and that they "hate to see me go"
Bell will never get another CENT from my pocket ever again.
Update - August 30 2011 - I'm still happy with Cogeco. I'm not ever going to switch back to Bell. I would threaten Cgo to lower rates or else cancel, but tha'ts as far as I would ever mention Bell again.
Update - January 22 2012 - I'm living the Bell free life, rockin hard on Cogeco's blazing fast network 
Comments:
 | | sympatico I hate bell i sometimes get pings of 900ms and download speeds of .25 mbps... these people are theives | |
| | | ^^ Reply ^^ ^^^ Absolutely. They are thieves. I will NEVER go back to them. | |
| dbzero
join:2011-04-02
Kanata, ON | Me to I used to have all services with Bell. Changed that about 3 years ago and could not have been happier. The customer service and billing issues were an abomination. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·Cogeco Cable
 ·Bell Sympatico
| ^^ Reply ^^ Oh yes. I agree whole heartedly with you, Bell made me sick, and I'm getting better than what I pay for with Cogeco, and its cheaper than Bell too.
And you get someone who speaks english when you call them too, not Pakistani-english or Chinese-english. | |
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 Review by thebaron
member for 9.5 years, 4267 visits, last login: a few hours ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Orleans,ON
- $55 per month
- about 14 days
- Bell Canada
- "Recently upgraded from 3.0 to 5.0 for same price"
- "Tech support blames everything on you, no static IP"
- "Very Reliable ISP"
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Recently Sympatico switched from 1.5mbit down and 128kbit up to 3mbit down and 800 up without any increase in cost, i was quite pleased... but on the other hand, every time i call for tech support, they always try to blame the problem on me. I had called once for a connection problem and they kept telling me it was because i was on a network, and networks are bad an so forth... turns out, it was NOT my fault, an animal chewed the line and messed some stuff up, causing static on my line. Oh, and im a little dissapointed that they dont offer any plan with a static IP.
Update: Have not had any problems with this ISP in a very long time, have not lost sync in over a year. Rates were increased from 45 to 55$ this year though.
Update: no longer with Bell, absolute garbage
Comments:
Reviews:
·Acanac
·Source Cable
| No longer with Bell. I left Bell because of very slow speeds and complete blackouts, phone support which promised but never delivered (and apparently was never recorded), accidental cancellation of service, failure to cancel services, even when notified 6 months in advance, and, of course, failure to provide the services for which they charged.
I switched to Acanac, who could not provide internet service without disabling my phone (still with Bell). A Bell lineman told me, "these old lines cannot support both phone and high speed internet." Acanac has still not refunded nearly $400 which I prepaid, so I must take them to court.
Next, I switched to Primus, who interrupted my phone service for 6 days, trying to solve the problem that they could never establish the internet connection I was paying for.
Both Acanac and Primus depend upon Bell's lines. Bell has failed to maintain these lines. After leaving Bell, I was harassed. I received unexplained bills, and threats of collection agencies. I also received phone calls and letters, to "thank me for returning to Bell". They told me by phone, "if you return to Bell, accepting a different phone number, we will replace those old lines". Their mail-outs "confirmed the new services to which I had agreed". [NONE!!!]
I gave up phone lines, in my 35-year-old condo. I'm now with Source Cable. Although paying for a down speed of 8.0, I usually receive 2.0 or even less than 1.0, OR no connection. I've signed up for a year.
It seems that robbery is now quite legal in Canada; there is simply no patrolling of ISP's.
Please, do everything you can to speak up for consumers like yourself...take it to Small Claims Court. You can only collect $25,000 per company you sue, but you'll receive money from the CRTC, just for reporting the crooks!
If you want reliable internet at an affordable cost, leave Canada.
FP
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Review by mrhud
member for 5.3 years, 87 visits, last login: 154 days ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Hudson,QC
- $50 per month
- Bell Canada
- "Good speed and reliability"
- "Got a new 2wire modem and was able to jailbreak it"
- "All in all, really not that bad. Customer service has improved"
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Even after all this time, I am still their customer. I guess I just know how the system works. Whenever I'm not happy with something, I call up 310-SURF and talk with retentions. They always seem to offer me something, dangling the carrot as it were, to keep me. My most recent call was to cancel, but they offered me 3 months free, plus a credit of last months bill (Dec 2011) , and and extra 40GB free for 12 months. All in a savings of almost $200 for a 10 minute phone call. And, they credited last month right away, so I don't think I'll have to call back to complain that they didn't do what they promised.
Honestly, I don't think they're that bad. I haven't gone gone over my bandwidth limits in years, and the price with my bundle is palatable. I think I would like to try out cable (Electronic Boxes new rates are tempting), but I want to find a solution to cable voip before I take the plunge.
Or, status quo until Bell calls me for with an offer for Fibe, which I guess which be coming sometime towards the end of 2013 or early 2013 for my area.
(Below this line is my original review almost 4 years ago)
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I have been their customer for a number of years, at least when Hi-Speed Edition first came out for Sympatico.
I have found the last few years that the service has been sub par, and this has been most evident this past year. I moved last year, signed up for a new 1yr contract, and the speeds seemed okay at first. A month or 2 later the speeds dropped dramatically. Calls to support either went unanswered and unsolved. My 1 yr contract is coming to an end next month, and now my speeds have suddenly gone back to what they were originally. Conspiracy? Whatever. I'll probably be changing providers...most likely a reseller.
Also, for some reason over the last few months my bandwidth has really increased...I called them up and asked them where I went over. They could not tell me how, where or when I went over my limit, only that I did in fact go over my limit. Prior, I was only using something like 25 GB total per month but now I always seem to end up with the extra 30$ charge.
Comments:
| | No you'll learn What they promise you and what you see on your monthly bills are two different things. Be prepared to spend hundreds of hours on the phone to get the extra charges reversed. | |
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Review by rockstar
member for 5.6 years, 49 visits, last login: 90 days ago
lodged 1.4 years ago
- London,ON
- $70 per month
- (month by month)
- Bell Canada
- "poor knowledge both sales and technical, poor customer support, poor line quality, the list goes on"
- "Avoid Bell (Sympatico) Canada at all costs if you can"
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The initial installation back in 2006 was an absolute nightmare. I've been on the original contract which was for $35/month, unlimited data, at speeds of up to 7Mbps. I've lived with around 4Mbps for past few years. Recently my Speedstream 4200 died. When I called to have it replaced customer service (misnomer if you ask me) suggested that I replace the filters as they are only good for 5yrs. Give me a break already. I called back & the next customer support person told me it was my modem but they couldn't replace it without placing me onto a new billing plan. Right. No go. I finally got someone at the test center who immediately placed a call for the modem to be replaced. When the modem was replaced the line was once again stable & I was running a whopping 6Mbps. That lasted for about a week then back to the lousy 4Mbps. The fee I currently pay, after a number of increases over the past couple of years, is $70/month, unlimited data & a total of 4Mbps. What a load of crap for that price.
Comments:
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Review by Cposer
member for 7.9 years, 53 visits, last login: 1 year ago
updated 1.4 years ago
- Ottawa,ON
- $50 per month
- Bell Canada
- "Think about it...fail!"
- "Not realiable and too costly!"
- "not good value for money!"
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I still have unreliable internet service with Bell ...Have had a pot splitter installed twice...modem replaced (this is the third one - upside is it is a rental). I spend more time with bell service folks on the phone - 1st level assessor, 2nd level technician - then comes the telephone/internet specialist in my home. Ther have been so many of those - nice guys but each has a take on it, each has a solution, each one fixes the last guy's work who thought he had it all sorted. Argg! Still magically disconnects even with a pot splitter...know one knows how to fix this is seems. Fibre still not available in my area. Bottom line, internet service is poor at best, not good great value for money and not reliable.
Comments:
| | Ottawa seems cursed for all internet From what i've read neither dsl nor cable internet works well in Ottawa. On the sad side Bell charges you more for a modem delivery than the actual modem is worth and they own it not you after it's delivered. | |
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Review by Burdy90
member for 1.5 years, 3 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
lodged 1.5 years ago
- Dutton,ON
- Contract price not specified.
- "The speed is Flawless throughout non prime times."
- "When prime times come around I use my phone to surf the internet."
- "If you have a 9 to 5 job, DO NOT use Bell."
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My family has been with bell DSL for 7-8 years and they've been absolutely fantastic up until 8-10 months ago. Throughout the past 8-10 months we've been having the same issue with our internet speed. From 12am to 5pm the internet work fine, no problems at all with the speed. As soon as it hits around 5pm my internet speed starts rising and falling which makes playing games very difficult and sometimes impossible. From 7pm to 11pm my internet speed ranges from 0.12Mbps to 1.2Mbps, the upload speed usually stays the same, and my ping reaches up to 900ms. I've been using www.speedtest.net to check my internet speeds...and yes I have pictures for the proof but I don't know if I can upload them on here.
We've been paying for "up" to 7Mbps and I'm getting speeds slower than dial up on occasion. I've called Bell tech support numerous times always going through the exact steps over and over. No one has been able to solve my problem since. Most of the techs I call usually say it's something on my end, say they'll have a lvl 2 tech call back later but never do, I've had them say they have no clue. Not all is lost within the tech service at Bell though! Sometimes I did receive a Bell Tech who actually cared about what they do for a living! They told me "yes you're paying for "up" to 7Mbps but it should never drop below 4Mbps." They helped me through a few steps that I've never seen before and after I was getting the appropriate connection I said thanks and hung up. 10 minutes later...BOOM back to dial up speeds. I've had a pot splitter put in but that's it so far for people coming to my house to solve the problem.
I use a wired connection, no router, I've dumped all the temp files on my computer. I even restored my computer back to factory default thinking it may be a virus of some sort...still did not help. Only have 2 phones hooked up in my house. I have this connection problem on all my computers and even my xbox. I've unhooked them all and used one to make sure they weren't all eating up the bandwidth and nothing helped. Tried a different phone jack, nothing seems to work.
So my conclusion is if Bell doesn't fix this problem within the next month I'm switching to another ISP and never looking back. As for Tech Support if you can grab the 20% who actually care about their job they will try and fix your problem without trying to get you off the phone.
I am ashamed that Bell has sunk this low, I used to back them up.
Comments:
| | P.S. If anyone wants to take a crack at solving my problem that would be very much appreciated. | |
| | | |  Re: P.S.
Bell you've lost a once devoted customer, and stand to lose a lot more unless you sink some money into your decaying assets. | |
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| | only advice I can give. I work for an american ISP. your story is a typical one where 9-5 joe schmos come home and network traffic picks up causing shit connectivity for you. definately sounds like a network issue but you would probably be better supported there by a bell representitive.
» Bell Canada Direct
Only yourself and a bell representitive call see any posts you make as you cannot read topics created by other members in that forum. | |
| | | | Re: only advice I can give. Like someone suddenly flipped a switch around the middle of December of 2010. Read the dsl forums and get a clue. There is no congestion, none zero zilch. This is something Bell does on purpose. If no one used the internet at peak times the exact same thing would happen, gee like someone suddenly flipped a switch. | |
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Reviews:
·Bell Sympatico
| Cry for help. Yea this is sort of my final cry for help before I switch ISP's, I used to really enjoy Bell. I never had any hastles with them before this started happening and now no one seems to know what's going on or really cares. Hopefully a Bell Rep sees this and wants to help! | |
| | | | Re: Cry for help. You could try Teksavvy and hope what Bell states about throttling in the future is true. Once they turn off their dpi boxes your connection will return to normal. In the meantime cable internet is your only alternative. | |
| | | | | Re: Cry for help. I'm not able to get cable because of where I live. If bell doesn't fix this problem, yes I am more than likely moving my service over to Teksavvy.
Also, what is a dpi box? | |
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Jurjen
join:2010-08-18
Montreal, QC Reviews:
·Acanac
 ·Bell Fibe
| traffic shaping vs. congestion So here's the deal: Bell has more internet clients then their infrastructure can handle. They started too soon offering Fibe services and now they can't handle it.
For a long time they did (and still do) traffic shaping, so making sure that only P2P traffic (such as bittorrent) get's lowered to about 60kbps, but all other traffic should be fine.
Every one complained about the traffic shaping, so recently Bell said they'll gradually upgrade everyone on the 5Mbit package to 6Mbit (causing more traffic) and stopping traffic shaping. So now that the bittorrent users can go wild, others will get caught in the congestion.
Right now, Canada is limboland and congestion is everywhere. You might be better of with one of the indies, but it all depends on your local node how traffic is handled, it could still be that Bell's congested traffic will still be affecting your speed. | |
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Review by ITMChris
member for 1.5 years, 6 visits, last login: 1.5 years ago
lodged 1.5 years ago
- Kitchener,ON
- Contract price not specified.
- Bell Canada
- "That there are other ISPs I can switch to."
- "Reliability, connection, speed, tech support, service, cost"
- "Not worth my time or effort anymore to deal with Bell or ever do buinsess with them again"
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I am simply disgusted with Bell and their lackluster products, services and support. There are no redeeming value to Bell's service and their 'internet congestion' bit is a farce. For me, I've actually been fortunate enough to have somewhat reliable speed for the past 2 years on this 5Mb connection (I know, not super fast but it used to get the job done). Downloads usually ranged between 550-650 Kbps. Not bad. For the past 2 weeks though, my internet runs on average of 20 - 50kbps between 5pm and midnight with a latency ranging from 400-800ms. This only started 2 weeks ago, and is timed almost exactly the same time every night. I realize that network congestion can cause slow-downs, but randomly starting only 2 weeks ago, to go from no problem to ultra-severe is horrendous. I tried Bell tech support, unfortunately they aren't actually educated or trained to work with telecom equipment or understand how it works or how to fix it. The tech support lies, don't return calls and make no real effort to help, it's simply the automated "have you tried going online? Is your modem plugged in? My screen says you pay for a 5 Mbps connection, so that is the speed you should be receiving ." Really? 20kbps is the speed a 5 Mbps line should produce? Has BELL ever tried going online?
I give up, better, cheaper, more stable/faster connection (Teksavvy) here I come!
Comments:
| | They got to you a little late Most subscribers "had the switch flipped on them" back around the middle of December of 2010. | |
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