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12686

Yue
@cogentco.com

1 edit

Yue

Anon

Stay away from Acanac service ! No more taking modem back

I have been using Acanac DSL for a while, and now I want to cancel it since I don't need to have my own internet connection any more. I canceled my service and request to return the modem so to take my 49.95 deposit back, as they promised when I signed up. However the Acanac Billing people said the new policy said they are no longer taking back modems. I feel I am ripped off. Shouldn't they respect the policy back then and take my modem back???

Here is the ticket thread
[mod note - url removed for privacy -- fb]

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

1 edit

Guspaz

MVM

That URL logs you into your Acanac control panel; I can see all your trouble tickets, which include your DSL username and password, address (both current and previous), telephone number, etc.

You need to remove that URL immediately!
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by Guspaz:

That URL logs you into your Acanac control panel; I can see all your trouble tickets, which include your DSL username and password, address, telephone number, etc.
Gotta love URL-embedded security tokens... that stuff should be sprinkled on cookies or the sessions checked against their initial IP address.
m3chen
join:2009-12-03
Toronto, ON

m3chen to Yue

Member

to Yue
yeah... you should remove the link for your own safety.

Mr_Derp
join:2004-11-10
Plainfield, ON

1 edit

Mr_Derp to Yue

Member

to Yue
You should really be more careful and be thankful that the majority of DSLr residents are honest for the most part.

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

Canaca to Yue

Premium Member

to Yue

Acanac Inc.

Just to be clear we never stated that we are obligated to buy back the modem we just chose to. This was made very clear on the order form. This is the exact wording how it was stated

"Due to theft of devices we are now charging 49.95 Canadian for all DSL modems. Once your service is terminated Acanac may choose to buy back the modem at the same price. There is no obligation to purchase the hardware from our customers."

For your own protection Yue I am going to delete the ticket off our system. I also backed it up in case you need it for future reference.

Yue
@cogentco.com

Yue to Yue

Anon

to Yue

Re: Stay away from Acanac service ! No more taking modem back

ha ha ha! Who would buy back a cheap modem worth only 10 bucks for 49.95 right?

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

1 edit

Canaca

Premium Member

It's the clients choice. We don't force any clients to use our modem. Clients are free to buy their own DSL modem and use it with our service. The modem also costs us allot more than $10
zorxd
join:2010-02-05
Quebec, QC

zorxd to Yue

Member

to Yue
First the $49.95 fee was a deposit. Next it was changed to "acanac may buy back". Recently it was changed to "refund in the first 30 days only".

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

Canaca

Premium Member

Acanac Inc.

That is correct. For the first few years it was a deposit then we changed it to a buy back. Please keep in mind that we made perfectly clear that we were under no obligation to purchase the hardware back from our customers. Like you stated above we now changed the wording to refund for the first 30 days. Please keep in mind that any existing client will still have their modems replaced if they break. Basically if your a client we will provide you with an unlimited warranty.

Once again no one if forced to use our DSL modems. If you believe that they are not worth the value your free to purchase your own from a different supplier.

Guspaz
Guspaz
MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC

Guspaz

MVM

But if it was a deposit when the OP ordered, you'd be obligated to refund the deposit if he returned the modem. Your previous post, though, seemed to indicate that the OP ordered during the "buy back" phase and not the deposit phase.

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

2 edits

Canaca

Premium Member

The deposit was changed to a buy back nearly two years ago. We of course honored our terms of service during that transition period.

Farchord
Lost somewhere.
join:2004-08-28
Shawinigan, QC

Farchord to Guspaz

Member

to Guspaz
said by Guspaz:

But if it was a deposit when the OP ordered, you'd be obligated to refund the deposit if he returned the modem. Your previous post, though, seemed to indicate that the OP ordered during the "buy back" phase and not the deposit phase.
Technically, in a legal way, most TOSes have a clause that states that "Company X is free to change the terms of this TOS at anytime without warning", so...

I mean, it sucks, but what can you do....

mazhurg
Premium Member
join:2004-05-02
Brighton, ON

mazhurg

Premium Member

That is one of the things that P&&& me off in the electronic industry. Existing and active contracts should never be allowed to be changed unilaterally by one party.
jfmezei
Premium Member
join:2007-01-03
Pointe-Claire, QC

jfmezei to Farchord

Premium Member

to Farchord
> Technically, in a legal way, most TOSes have a clause that states that
>"Company X is free to change the terms of this TOS at anytime without
>warning", so...

I am not judging this particular case. However, while a company may have the legal right to make such changes, the customers have the moral right to complain about it.

*IF* this customer had been told he had a deposit on the modem, and the TOS have since changed, then he/she/it has a right to complain in my opinion. Such changes should apply to new customers only.

If this customer purchased his modem under the new TOS, then the complaint here is not justified. If this was done around the time the change was made, then one would have to factor in the chance that the staff misinformed the customer and told him about the old rules. But this gets to "he says, she says" that can't be solved here on DSLR.

Farchord
Lost somewhere.
join:2004-08-28
Shawinigan, QC

Farchord

Member

said by jfmezei:

> Technically, in a legal way, most TOSes have a clause that states that
>"Company X is free to change the terms of this TOS at anytime without
>warning", so...

I am not judging this particular case. However, while a company may have the legal right to make such changes, the customers have the moral right to complain about it.

*IF* this customer had been told he had a deposit on the modem, and the TOS have since changed, then he/she/it has a right to complain in my opinion. Such changes should apply to new customers only.

If this customer purchased his modem under the new TOS, then the complaint here is not justified. If this was done around the time the change was made, then one would have to factor in the chance that the staff misinformed the customer and told him about the old rules. But this gets to "he says, she says" that can't be solved here on DSLR.
And I don't disagree with you Heck I agree, it sucks....

jemlinus
@acanac.net

jemlinus to Yue

Anon

to Yue

Re: Stay away from Acanac service ! No more taking modem back

I guess I'm screwed.

@Acanac Inc.

"This was made very clear on the order form."

If you guys did it clear, why all of us didn't know about this?

Even admin. Fergless didn't know.

I guess I'm out of $50. This is going to be the last year I'm going to be with Acanac for sure.

Mirko B
@mc.videotron.ca

Mirko B to Canaca

Anon

to Canaca

Re: Acanac Inc.

said by Canaca:

The deposit was changed to a buy back nearly two years ago. We of course honored our terms of service during that transition period.
October 2009:
»Returning Acanac Modem
and
»Re: Returning Acanac Modem

It was stated the customer is responsible for shipping only.

April 2009:
»Re: Bell contract ending soon...

You speak of the "deposit".

Dec. 2009:
»Re: Acanac sucks
and »Review of Acanac by J E F F4

User got his 50$ "deposit" back after the modem fried after over a year of use and discontinued the service with Acanac.

I'm sure i could find more about the "deposit" if I tried.

Fact of the matter is, you yourself, Paul, can be seen in the topics above speaking of the "deposit" to customers (ie. the people ripe for the pickings?).

Did you ever Email all these people, or mail them a statement with their invoice that acanac changed terms? Doesn't appear so. And you yourself can be seen discussing the "deposit" seems no one told your employee's either. Acanac doesn't inform their employee's when they indiscriminately change terms on users as well it appears. All this is less than 2 years ago. In some cases less than 6 months ago.

Deceptive. I love it.

Mirko B.
taichan7
join:2006-03-22
Sudbury, ON

taichan7 to Canaca

Member

to Canaca
Ya this is $50 so it will never come to court but you'd lose that "we had the right" as its bait and switch, you bait them in with one offer and then instantly change it to somethign else

one I winky
@mc.videotron.ca

one I winky

Anon

said by taichan7:

Ya this is $50 so it will never come to court but you'd lose that "we had the right" as its bait and switch, you bait them in with one offer and then instantly change it to somethign else
Well that would be up to the person. With this being touted as a deposit by Paul himself (other employee's as well), I think the evidence is quite clear and speaks for itself. Chances are they would get significantly more than 50$ for the trouble of paying ~100$ to file in small claims.

There is a documented case in these forums where the court even gave 800$ to a person when Bell kept trying to bill them for a modem already returned.

Chances are this "deposit", which is referred to as a "deposit" by Paul himself & employee's, would be up there in the financial trickery department and somewhat equivalent to the Bell case.

How would a small claims court judge see this where the owner speaks of a deposit 18-months (as a minimum) after he says it hasn't existed for 2 years?

Just depends on the type of person this is. Some believe a company should be responsible, not prey on its weak or young customers, not play (visible) verbal trickery then hide behind a TOS, and not be caught in deception. Others don't care and move on.

Guess we'll see...

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

2 edits

Canaca to Yue

Premium Member

to Yue
Our modem deposit, buy back and 30 day buy back have been clearly listed on our order page. Right hand side. In the old site left hand side.
»www.acanac.com/cgi-bin/a ··· DSL.html

Like with most ISP's our terms of service do state the following. "Acanac Inc. retains the right to change any or all of the above Policies, Guidelines, and Disclaimers without notification", however we had no terms of service tricky. In fact no client who signed up during the deposit phase was ever refused during their term period. We did change it to a no obligation buy back nearly two years. During this time we have refused to buy back some modems because of damage and other issues, however as of a few weeks ago we started refusing all.

Just to recap. We did not change our deposit to a buy back a few weeks ago. It was changed it nearly two years ago. We change our no obligation buy back to a 30 days buy back a few weeks ago.

From the initial post above it looks like the client signed up in May of 2009. During this period we already had a no obligation buy back.

Mirko B from examples a few post back. The clients were using the word deposit. I was referring to returning of the modem. Yes I should it been more precise, however this does not change the fact that our site clearly stated "Due to theft of devices we are now charging 49.95 Canadian for all DSL modems. Once your service is terminated Acanac may choose to buy back the modem at the same price. There is no obligation to purchase the hardware from our customers."
Canaca

4 edits

Canaca to Yue

Premium Member

to Yue
Here you have a client complaining about our no obligation to buy back policy

Here is a post going back to Feb of 2009-02-13 13:31:20
»Why is modem repurchase not guaranteed?

Here is a post going back to march of 2009-03-18 13:59:15

»Acanac plays game with its client

Here is a cached version on google going back to Last update: 2008-11-14 19:06

Due to theft of devices we are now charging 49.95 Canadian for all DSL
modems. Once your service is terminated Acanac may choose to buy back
the modem at the same price. There is no obligation to purchase the
hardware from our customers.

»webcache.googleuserconte ··· nk&gl=ca

If I remember correctly we changed our deposit to a no obligation buy back some time in July or August of 2008.

Since nearly every contract has now renewed since we implemented the new modem policies nearly 2 years ago one should be reassured that Acanac did not pull any type of terms of service trickery.


AcanacPolicy
@acanac.net

AcanacPolicy

Anon

said by Canaca:

Since nearly every contract has now renewed since we implemented the new modem policies nearly 2 years ago one should be reassured that Acanac did not pull any type of terms of service trickery.
I don't think customers will know that Anacac have changed the policies if they get an auto-renew the 1 year contract... because the renew email never mention any change about policies or give a link to the change... So you can't blame the customers for not knowing you have change the policies...
quote:
Thank you for your continued support in using Acanac Inc for your high speed internet needs. This notice is to inform you that we have successfully renewed your account for another 12 months of service. Attached is an invoice for your own records.

Your invoice amount for an entire year of service is: $407.40 (12 months of service)

The breakdown is $33.95 per month times 12 months ( prices include taxes ).
Some clients are unsure as to why the $18.95/mo promo price is not available for the 2nd , 3rd or 4th year and here is why:

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: * All DSL companies have the same CRTC fees associated with it no matter how larger or small they are therefore, it is important to realize that if a company is selling high speed service for less then $30 dollars per month they are likely selling what is called high speed lite. They may make the advertisement sound like a better deal due to their marketing strategy however this lite version is only a 1Mbit/s or less compared to the 5mbit/s offered by Acanac. There are also bandwidth limits that if you go over will be very costly for the user. Some companies ( eg. Bell Sympatico ) may be advertising rates for high speed in the mid 20's however, be assured this is not the high speed 5Mbit/s service. They are not allowed to sell high speed 5Mbit/s lower then their current tarrifed amounts due to CRTC rules. This also applies to a lot of other competitors thus please read the fine print and ask questions before making any decisions if you choose different providers. Acanac has made it very clear that we intend to be the lowest price in the industry for DSL service in the long run and we structured our renewal plans in such a way that we do not lose money but are still lower then the rest of the competition. If you have any other questions about pricing please do give us a call.

No client is forced stay after the promo ends. We hope during the first year of service we have proved ourselves worthy of your business. Please also remember that $33.95 includes tax. You are really looking at about $31.91 before tax.

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.

We hope that this has been informative to you the client. If you have any other questions or concerns please do not hesitate to give us a call.
Best Regards,
Acanac Inc.
»www.acanac.ca
jfmezei
Premium Member
join:2007-01-03
Pointe-Claire, QC

jfmezei to Canaca

Premium Member

to Canaca
Mr Inc (first name Acanac),

You might bd able to change the ters of the monthly service (that is what is under contract), but I don't think it is ethical to ignore a commitment made to customers to re-imburse their deposit when they return their modem.

Imagine you rent a car and you have to make a $1000 deposit which they tell you will be reimbursed if tou bring back the car without damage. Then a few days later, when you return the car in perfect shape, they tell you that the deal has changed and they won't return tha $1000 deposit. How would you feel ?

Where this change might be acceptable is if your company explicitely informed all such clients that their $45 deposit was converted into payment for the modem and that they now owned the modem.

Bell Canada did this a number of years ago when it trabsfered ownership of its phones to the retail customers and stpped charging phone rental. Bell was no longer responsible for fixing the phones and customers no longer had to return them to Bell whenever they ended service at an address. (But in Bell's case, there was no deposit).
freejazz_RdJ
join:2009-03-10

freejazz_RdJ

Member

And that is why I'm not crying: It's not like Acanac took $50 and still has the right to demand the return of the modem. Plus the language/terms have been updated to make it clear that they won't necessarily take it back and pay you.

Frankly, while Acanac seems to need a fair amount of improvement in customer service, this is really not a massive issue. At the end of the day, the customer has gotten a good value from their service (particularly for the 1st year) and a modem as well.

andyb
Premium Member
join:2003-05-29
SW Ontario

andyb

Premium Member

I agree and wonder if he will feel so good about ebox if they change a line in the TOS and never tell him .People need to read contracts on renewal.Especially with the big boys like bell and rogers.I have missed a few and regretted it but shit happens.

Canaca
Premium Member
join:2007-03-05
Mississauga, ON

Canaca to jfmezei

Premium Member

to jfmezei
jfmezei in terms of Yue it looks like he singed up well after the modem policies were changed. From what I recall he singed up in May of 2009.

We also did not retroactively force clients that singed up before July or August of 2008 to purchase the modem. Once the contract renewed they were then under the new terms. We still have a few 2 year contracts and we will continue to honer the deposit until they renew.
despe666
join:2009-06-20
Montreal, QC

despe666 to andyb

Member

to andyb
said by andyb:

I agree and wonder if he will feel so good about ebox if they change a line in the TOS and never tell him .People need to read contracts on renewal.Especially with the big boys like bell and rogers.I have missed a few and regretted it but shit happens.
Actually jfmezei IS electronic box. It may explain why he's so insistent in his criticism towards Acanac.

hm
@mc.videotron.ca

1 edit

hm

Anon

said by despe666:

said by andyb:

I agree and wonder if he will feel so good about ebox if they change a line in the TOS and never tell him .People need to read contracts on renewal.Especially with the big boys like bell and rogers.I have missed a few and regretted it but shit happens.
Actually jfmezei IS electronic box. It may explain why he's so insistent in his criticism towards Acanac.
I'm not with Ebox, Acanac, TSI, Bell, Rogers, yet I criticized it as well.

oh wait, i'm with videotron, that must be the reason why I criticized Acanac. Got it.

elwoodblues
Elwood Blues
Premium Member
join:2006-08-30
Somewhere in

elwoodblues to Mirko B

Premium Member

to Mirko B
said by Mirko B :

Did you ever Email all these people, or mail them a statement with their invoice that acanac changed terms?
Deceptive. I love it.

Mirko B.
They never do, the ISP's expect you to visit the TOS/AUP page periodically to see if there are any changes. Rogers is the worst of them all, changing terms and expecting you do go through pages of legalese in order to see what might have changed.