ISP automatic forums » Acanac → ACANAC 18.95/ month , a scam if includes the crappy modem

Acanac charged my credit card an extra 50 dollars for a DSL modem that sells for 37 in the market (they get it for less than 30 as their contract is based on volume).

This is before my first day with them - I still have my Rogers account, and I've denied the credit card transaction as they only specified 18.95 * 12 month in the contract that I saw on the screen when I gave them my card's details.

On top of this, I've called their customer service number - if you want details about billing nobody answers the phone - it works by email only (probably they do this therough India). I selected "sales" as a consequence, just to speak with somebody vs email. That girl was totally incompetent and whhen I asked to speak with her manager she told me to dial the management number - maybe they are only 10 people with no manager at all.

I'm already highly disappointed, before even using their service for even one day. I'll cancel my application and deny the credit card transaction as I see a highly incompetent customer service and a mindset towards advertising low monthly fees and charging big time for extra things - like the modem deposit that is way more than buying the modem per se.

I'll probably go to Primus or worst case stay with Rogers - it's more expensive but at least it works and customer service is not great, but OK.

The modem deposit is not a service charge. It's a refundable security deposit. Once the modem is returned so is your security deposit. You don't have to use our modems. You can use your own. Acanac does offer a 30 day money back guarantee. You more than free to cancel your service at any time.

Also the modem security deposit is clearly stated on the order page.

It states the following:

Deposit Info
Due to theft of devices we are now charging 49.95 Canadian or 44.95 USD for all DSL modems. Please note this will be returned to you when the modem is returned to our office.

We require all billing questions to be done by email in order to keep a paper trail. Not only for your protection, but also for ours.

Best Regards,
Paul
www.acanac.ca

Ahh... tsk tsk Liviu

All I can say is please learn to READ before you open your mouth again.

There is no polite way to put it other than to simply point out you are a moron.

Everything you complained about is spelled out on their page and can be found quite easily... IF you actually read it.

Since you failed miserably at such and actually are bitching about it as well you are hereby given the designation of MORON.

Now STFU and stop wasting space on this forum with your useless drivel.

Shalimar,

Working for Acanac must be fun - if this is the best job you can get with your skills.
If you'd learn to count one day, you'll realize that acanac wants to block people's money for crappy modems that cost acanac 1/2 of the deposit.

Pretty good cash for a poor company that's struggling to step into a market with bugger and smarter players.

Taking the clients as idiots who don't realize what's the trick behind that 18.95/month is just not the way to be there for a long time, and companies like this struggle for 2-3 years and dissapear.

Liviu, you could have just decided not to get their modem, or just to send it back once you got it if you got it in error to get back your deposit...

Canadapost doesn't offer a free service in my area unfortunately.

What you're missing though is the way acanac is treating the clients, right after charging their credit cards:
- customer service by email only for billing issues (come on ...)
- 50$ deposit for the modem ... they buy another 2-3 modems with the clients money. Additionally, if you heard about deprecation & amortization, you realize the cash flow they generate from this is huge.
- Vashia - the super-customer service lady who answer the phone for sales issues. She couldn't even check my name against their DB, to validate that I have an account with them. Ignored my request to speak with a manager. Totally incompetent...
- I sent 4 emails to customer service on billing, got only one reply back "addressing" 1/2 of the first email only.

No comments about these issues in Paul's reply above because he knows these are real issues at Acanac.

Also, paying friends in India to reply on this forum is never a bad idea for them ...

Why Primus, Rogers, Bell don't do that? Because they know better what's the way to do business in North America.

Good luck with Acanac. I'll never recommend them to anybody. Now I'm out of here.

Liviu... again so sad... I don't work for Acanac or any other ISP. However I do work in the industry and deal with morons like yourself all the time. Give it up since you're impressing no one other than yourself.

Simple reality as was already spelled out for you (but I'll repeat here since you have proven to be reading challenged)

YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ACANAC's MODEM....

Ohh and if a modem was sent to you in error Acanac is perfectly happy to have you ship it back to them on their Fedex acct. and refund the deposit charged.

End of your argument.

I am sorry to disappoint you Liviu, but Acanac has already been in business for nearly 4 years. Our sister company will also soon be celebrating it's 10th year in business in a few short weeks.
Just in case you missed it the first, second and third time. You don't have to use our modems. You can use your own modems. It's up to the client to decide. Finally this is refundable security deposit. It's returned back to the client when the modem is returned back to Acanac.

Now I see your accusing us of paying our "friends in India to reply on this forum". You have zero credibility with me from this point on. Your just a troll and nothing more.

Best Regards,
Paul
»www.acanac.ca

Paul,

Most of the comments on this forum are negative - maybe you're right and almost everybody else wrong.

Even if you've been in business for 4 years in a suburb of To that doesn't mean you'll have any success with this approach.

You missed it again - asking for a deposit could be ok if that's a fair price - here 50$ is just a way to foolish your clients.

Dear Liviu,

Maybe you haven't noticed but even thought this forum is lower then others it it still 84% possitive. Simply look at our reviews. What you are saying makes absolutely no sense.

To address a silly comment you have posted without know anything. Acanac is not some suburb company. We are out of Mississauga ( head office ) but most of our clients are in Toronto and Montreal. We service nearly 100,000 clients in both our Canaca and Acanac network. We have own our data centers and we have been around for 10 years.

It is amazing how many people come on these forums and try to discredit our company ( probably the competition ) and slow us down. You can be assured that we will be here for many more years to come.

I am sorry that you are disappointed but you have not tried to get help nor answers. We can probably audio tape something for you and send it to you by e-mail if you wish because it seems you can't read nor want to. I'm sorry to be so mean to you but that is not my nature. I am simply trying to point out that with every reply you make you simply do not have any facts to support it. You are making assumptions and accusations that are clearly wrong and this is the reason you are receiving such replies.

If you are not happy with the service we will be more then happy to refund your money and refund your modem fee.

For the record... we do not have people in India. 99% of our staff is based out of our office branches in Canada ( yes we have more then one just in case you were wondering )

hope this has helped to clear your judgment

Sandro H.

Sandro,

I appreciate your reply and despite I didn't intend to continue this, it's interesting to see that it raised acanac's passion.

You give some interesting numbers here, and I'm a numbers guy: 84% happy means 16% bad experience with Acanac.
Having 100.000 clients, this means that 16,000 clients are unhappy with Acanac's service - that's pretty bad! If I'd be you I wouldn't share this number with the public.

But if I'd be you I'd share the following, if you pretend to be a fair play guy: How much do you pay for the DSL modems ? 20$ ?
What's the modem's value at the end of the 1 year contract ? 5$ ?
Average the two and ask people to pay a deposit in that range, and you'll get my respect.
Advertising a lower rate than others may work for 15y kids, if that's the market segment you're after, but that's not enough to grow.
In those 227/year you charge for the service you probably have a 30% margin (your investors wouldn't give you a penny for less than that). That's about 60$ profit.
Acanac is also probably insured for the equipment it owns - so theft is coverd by this, included in your operations costs.

Again, you can foolish 15yo kids, but treat the market with a bit more respect if growth is something you're interested in.

I didn't apply to your service just to post comments here, but rather to give you my business, if you deserve it. For now it looks you guys still have work to do.

So, would you share with us how much you pay for the DSL modem and at what % you deprecate it on your balance sheet?

Again, I appreciate your reply.

Best,
Liviu

Hello,

Thank you for your quick reply. I do appreciate all your comments and let me tell you that every post is read and taken into consideration.

please remember that the 16% unappy clients is not accurate overall. Very few people come here once they are happy with their service providers so unhappy clients find forums to post bad reviews about their unhappy experience much more then happy ones who have no need to be here.

It is not 16,000 unhappy clients because that is actually between both networks. The 84% success rate is only for Acanac and does not include our other company.

The attrition rate is within normal industry figures.

Please note that this is what we charge for the DSL modem. You do not have to choose to take it. You can simply get your own and pay nothing. We do not make it manditory that you have to use our modem. It is much like when you buy something somewhere else. Some companies sell it for 30 , some do it for 40, etc. You buy what you wish and pay what you are willing to pay for it. Please try to keep in mind that we do not sell these modems. As paul stated earlier this is a modem deposit. If customers do not return our modem back then we keep the 50 dollars. Even if they were to return the modem 4 years later they would still get their 50 dollars back.

It is very simple proceedure and we are not trying to take advantage of anyone here. I do feel we need improvement in some areas however we will keep trying to improve over time.

Regarding your comment about the 227 and its proffits. Please keep in mind that we are selling DSL bellow cost. Acanac is loosing nearly 8 dollars per month for every client the first year. Here is a clear description of how we came up with these numbers.

Acanac's cost of running a DSL client on a monthly basis:

Bell Charges: $19.50 a month plus $1.00 per month, on all GAS Accesses existing as of the effective date of this tariff and for each GAS installation or re-installation (move) until such time as the associated GAS access is disconnected or terminated.

For proof of CRTC tariff prices please visit the following link:

»www.bce.ca/en/aboutbce/r ··· 20%20%20

Bandwidth and Tech support is about $4.50 per month Other expenses including Rent, Servers and professional fee's: $2.30
Total monthly running costs: $27.30

During the first year of service Acanac loses about $8.35 each and every month. Please also keep in mind that we have not included all expenses. Acanac for example still has to pay the GST on all DSL sales.

It is also important to know that Acanac was built with the clients in mind. It will take our company approx 3 years before we begin to turn a profit. The first 3 years only gives us enough money to repay the monthly loss incurred to each client from the 1st year.

Important: Important: * All DSL companies have the same CRTC fees associated with it no matter how larger or small they are. (Once you pass a certain threshold.)

We hope that the CRTC lowers their tariff rates in the near future. Once they do we will be able to reduce our monthly fees as well.

You also get the following with Acanac.com DSL service.
Unlimited Bandwidth ( Upload & Download )
100GB of online storage
Access to our Online networking site
Online computer with 50GB of storage
No Ports Blocked ( Bitorrents and home servers allowed )

Acanac continues to try and innovate by offering features that no other service provider does. We will do this as much as we can without placing any additional financial burden on our clients.

If you have any other questions or concerns please let us know.

Thank you
Sandro H.
»www.acanac.ca

Sandro,

Thanks for your reply.

We're looking at this from two different angles, and I see the 1/2 empty glass, you see the 1/2 full.
I'd leave it here for now.

Good luck with your business - I'm sure that building it with the client's perspective in mind you'll get there one day.

For me the 50$ deposit, the 'by email' customer service approach and the conversation with Vashia from CS determine me to ask my money back.

If this will change in the future I'll be happy to come back - Rogers works fine for me but it's more expensive, Bell seems to have the worst CS in Canada, and Primus seems to gain terrain more and more - don't know much abot them though.

Thx again,
Liviu

Which is fine, because Acanac isn't for everyone... that's one of the reasons that they provide their 30 day money back guarantee...

As for not having free Canadapost service, Acanac pays for you to send the modem back. And in regards to the $50 deposit, it's just that, a deposit, you get it back when you send the modem back, even if, when you send it back, Acanac can no longer use it...

In addition, you don't mention any of the downsides that "Primus, Rogers, Bell" do have, so you are being kind of one sided here... against Acanac. If you have a bad experience with a CSR, you usually complain, and just because you couldn't get a hold of a manager and you decided to give up doesn't mean that one doesn't exist, or that the tech support is outsourced (which, btw, is also funny about what you said, cause both Rogers and Bell outsource lol).

Either way, no one is going to stop you from giving your review of the company, as long as you recognize that that's your opinion, not that of the majority

Can the Acanac DSL service be active at the same time as my Bell sympatico service? I would like to test the speed from Acanac in my Mississauga area before I switch over from Bell? Is this possible?
Thanks.

I can send you a free PPPOE trial account. Please just send me a PM if your interested.

Best Regards,
Paul
www.acanac.ca

Paul, I sent an email to you from the acanac.ca website addressed to you within the subject field. Thanks for your quick response!!

I agree I have been doing research into the service. The price is very good, but payment for 1 year seems like a scam. No support on weekend. unlimited download?? I have heard this before. If you exceed the limits they can ask you to go else where. I have seen this with colbanet another DSl carrier. They are trying to get as many people as possible to sign up. Basically they are using the Bell infrastructure. It takes acnac 8 months before they see a profit. You will only get best effort DSL, the same thing as Sympatico or any other DSL service.

Acanac does offer support on weekends, but it's only by email. Acanac offers phone support Monday through Friday 9AM to 12AM. Acanac does offer truly unlimited downloads and uploads. In the nearly 4 years we have been offering DSL service we have never asked anyone to leave because of bandwidth consumption.
Yes we are using the Bell infrastructure. So are the majority of the DSL providers on this fourum. It does not take us 8 months to see profit on a client. It takes us Acanac about 2 years.

Best Regards,
Paul
»www.acanac.ca

Aside from being living proof of what Paul just said, I'd love to see even ONE of the people that have posted in this thread actually register an account and stick around long enough to get help instead of complaining and disappearing...