TekSavvy → Shell shocked by TSI West price increases and no 300GB plan

You make a semi-valid point, yes, but it's bad habit to use port 25 anyway because of the filtering. End users are best served by using the submission port, 587, to send their email. This way it still works on networks that do filtering, such as practically all free wifi access services.

I'm very annoyed by the changes too. I'm now going to have to pay an extra $10 a month (33% more) for no real advantage that I need. I'm on a mid-tier package and they've basically stripped out the package from under me. I honestly don't care if the 25mb plans are cheaper, they're way more than I need.

I signed up a couple of months back (and I had to work hard to even get that to happen with them) and now I'm being pushed into an unlimited package I don't need. I expected prices to go up a little, but not by this much, and at the time all notices were that there would be speed increases to go with it.

I don't need unlimited, I use web, email, youtube, watch some netflix and that's about it. There's no way I'm close to 300gb but it's also unlikely that I'm below 75gb too, not to mention that I'd have to PAY $25 to get the package moved to a 75gb one...

Really, if I hadn't already switched from Shaw there's no way I'd bother doing it now. I'm fairly unhappy and any chance of any loyalty to TSI has gone out the window. Something even marginally better comes along, and I'm gone.

With my conservative $270.91 estimate for TSI West DSL and Martin's revelation, how in the hell is TSI going to attract anyone in Alberta (let alone BC)? I guess clarknova with his 50 DSL connections will have to win the lotto to upgrade.

Ideally that is the case. Unfortunately port 25 has been as a standard for far too long to make people convert easily. In addition, port 587 isn't uniformly applied on many email servers which further adds to the confusion.

Man, TSI West better look at this speed test from one of the Telus employees in YVR, »Latest speedtest while watching 1 HD channel .

By the way, the email sent out contailed details for the highspeed package which made no sense. Contradicted the rest of the email. (Does no one vet these things?). I replied to the email (support@) on the day the email went out.

Replies? Zero. *sigh*

Unfortunately port 25 is also the most common way for zombies (compromised/infected computers) to send out spam email messages without the user knowing, which is why most ISPs have blocked it, else their IPs would quickly become blacklisted.

Assuming this hasn't changed, Teksavvy blocks 25, except if you have a static IP.

Well at least you got an email. I haven't been notified yet that my package and pricing will change at all.

I was hot to trot to go with teksavvy last year.

Some months ago I decided they were a bunch of clown shoes.

Really happy I signed up with telus a few months back.

500 GB with unenforced limits. Excellent! And with optik I pay ~ $39 for my 25 Mbps service.

It's too bad TSI sucks so bad. I really support the idea of smaller businesses giving incumbents a run for their money, but unfortunately TSI just isn't up to the task.

Until they get their own infrastructure (which may never happen), it will be pretty damned hard for them to give the incumbents a "run for their money", as they are bound by the limitations of the CRTC rulings and tariffs imposed by the incumbents.

You're entirely correct, there isn't really much of a reason for the average person to subscribe to Teksavvy as opposed to Telus.

Right now the main advantage for Teksavvy DSL in the west is for users that need things like static IPs, subnets, and unblocked ports. Teksavvy does give Telus a "run for their money" in this niche market.

Are there any other DSL providers? I'm starting to look around, and it seems ON is full of choices while out here we've got Telus and Tek. Surely there must be someone else, too?

TSI Marc, since you are commenting in other current DSLR threads and I'm sure you read this one, care to comment on some of the thoughts already expressed here about the West?

I told Marc that their offerings weren't competitive a year ago, and layed out the many areas that needed to be improved (for myself at least) before I would sign up with them.

Marc graciously told me he had read and understood all of it, and that most (all?) was being worked on.

Some of it was, I suppose. But judging from this point, none of it was executed properly. I wouldn't expect any kind of real answer - what can one say when their business model and execution just doesn't measure up?

To the guy asking about alternatives -

In the west there is Primus, distributel as alternatives. None of them suited my needs, then, now you would have to look.

Looks like Primus beats TSI for 6mbit (they advertise 7meg, but Telus syncs 7meg for the 6meg profiles; so they're the same) with unlimited monthly transfer.

Good to know in case TSI doesn't fix their paltry 75gig limit for those of us who don't need the higher speeds.

I'm still stunned that they chose 75gig out West. Telus only filed tariffs for unlimited transfer on their network, so the only cost difference for TSI is going to be their peering. After all the criticisms of Bell's low limits and they come out West and offer 75 vs unlimited with nothing in between. Someone really dropped the ball.

I am the rare person with a 7ish dollar band rate in Calgary yay!!

Interesting, Primus offers a flat rate for their dry loop, $7.

»www.primustel.ca/en/resi ··· L-BC.htm

Psssst....Telus.

Calgary used to have cadvision until they sued telus and won so telus bought them out.

now its just Nucleus left i think

Agree! I have collection of TELUS ADSL/ADSL2 modems from over the years. The CSR's told me to keep them, as they where old and TELUS had no use for old modems anyway.

I'm open to talking about it all for sure. If its just flat out wrong, I'm game to changing it.

I don't have all the data in front of me right now but the main factors were these: The 300 gig offer went away because there wasn't enough difference between the lower usage option and unlimited. Second, Telus has very aggressive prices and large usage options. We figured we simply didn't want to compete with it especially when we had a good offer on the cable side. The bummer is that we still only have limited availability for Shaw. For now at least. So the logic was that for lighter users we have good options and for heavier users the only real option is Shaw... For dsl you're better off going with Telus...

For existing users there was no simple answer... Truthfully, I'm sympathetic but there's no easy answer.

Lastly, I said I would focus on west stuff... So I put some pressure on to get it done. We upgraded the gear and we tweaked the prices... So many changes in the last few months. Unreal.

Thoughts?

You're right in that for customers on the old 300GB DSL plans there's no easy choice especially for those wanting to remain with TSI.

Personally I'm looking to switch to something faster as my DSL line is stuck at 2Mb (weird as it is syncing at 7 but that's a different topic). The Cable 25Mb unlimited would be an easy choice but like what happened back east earlier this year, the extremely high start up/activation costs really makes us stop and think. It's even worse for DSL customers looking at a dry-loop.

With both Shaw and Telus, neither charges for activation or a modem. Plus both have continuously running promos that reduces the monthly costs of the first six months of service (standalone or bundled) to a price that is significantly lower than TSI's price on a comparable service. Given the already small difference in prices between the incumbent and TSI's comparable service after the price update, it would take about 2 years or more for a customer to recognize any savings from signing up with TSI.

While I understand that the activation costs are charged to TSI by the incumbents, in the eyes of customers, the problem is that they incur none of the startup costs with either Shaw or Telus. While the tariffs makes the situation more complicated, the average customer would be hard press to make that consideration.

Which I would have done a long time ago if Telus didn't block ports 21, 80 ,443, which is a big problem for me.

As for Shaw/TSI Cable, even if it was available I still wouldn't touch it. With cable it's always a cable as to whether or not you'll encounter the infamous node congestion, and I have a zero tolerance for congestion. This is why I ditched Shaw years ago at my previous address, after suffering through several months of lost packets, high pings, jitter, and slow speeds during peak hours.

Node congestion should somewhat less of a problem now with DOCSIS 3. Another issue I would worry about with cable is whether TSI would be able to keep up with it's POI capacity in the West. There was quite a bit of capacity issue in this respect (wasn't node) shortly after cable was launched in GVR as TSI got more signups than their infrastructure could handle back then.

But if you really need the unblock access to those ports, you don't have much choice in the residential internet market.

There's a few but tek is better (price/cap wise)...

»lightspeed.ca/personal/a ··· tes.html
»www.incentre.net/content ··· iew/83/2

I guess I'm still lost why you didn't just keep the 300GB tier and not introduce the 75GB. You've always said that people aren't touching their 300GBs for the most part. Leave the bandwidth alone and introduce a $10 to $15 price difference between the 300GB and unlimited. I'm not arguing about price increases, that shit happens, but as I said before, its feast or famine with these plans.Can you enlighten the masses on why you can't get into the rest of Shawville?It kind of sounds like you've given up on Alberta and that your DSL customers will just be a niche base that need static IPs. I'm assuming you're cognitive that your VDSL startup costs are killer dancing around $300 for a residential install.

Is there any means to show the CRTC that their isn't true competition in the West when Telus isn't charging hardware and installation fees nor a band rate for dry loop / naked DSL? Would Telus even consider a free wholesale VDSL install like Bell?You sent the Gabester out and got your equipment spruced up, danke. Is IPv6 available now for the TSI West DSL camp?I had a bad feeling during the whole UBB thing and subsequent decisions that CNOC focused all their energy on the East, Bell and Rogers, and a little Vidéotron mixed in for shits and giggles. Telus really made a smart choice with being under the radar.

You got to get your marketing folks to double and triple check what is being sent out. Unfortunately, we keep calling you guys out on mistakes in the sales literature and emails distributed to the West.

What happened to the open house?

Yeah, I always prefer DSL over cable, but took the plunge ten days prior to the VDSL speed matching announcement since I was able to score a D3 modem from TSI, which I am grateful for. If I would have known that 25Mb DSL was right around the corner, I would have waited. Shaw's whole system (including TSI West Cable) has already taken a dump twice this year. I'm not talking neighborhoods, I'm talking all of the AB and BC hood. Another fun aspect of Shaw is them blocking a TSI modem's stats page during provisioning, so you have zero means to troubleshoot.

How about a little unsolicited market survey: why are we with you?

First I'll mention that for many people the single factor after "does it work" is simply price. And for those same many people, the "does it work" criteria is adequate speed and adequate caps.

For myself and perhaps a good number of your current customers we factor in many additional pieces. So speaking for myself and perhaps others can chime in with their perspective, here's what I look at (in no particular order):

- Does-it-work and price are a given
- DSL. I don't like the uncertainty that comes with the cable technology (cf. node congestion, stop sells, trouble with IP 4&6 assignments, inability to swap out personal hardware without registering the MAC for each device). Except in extraordinary circumstances I won't choose cable nor do I recommend it to others.
- Small company feel. Call it what you want: buy local, support the little guy, down with the 1%, whatever the fashionable phrase is. When a business grows it often (not always) turns stuffy and bureaucratic. No personality; no humanity. Much nicer to do business with a neighbour than a suit.
- Support the Good Guy. Even when actions are unrelated, it all reflects on the company (or personal) image. I, for one, do not like to support or do business with someone (or business) who is involved in dealings that I oppose. I choose not to buy icecream from a man who tortures puppies.
- Tinker-friendly / no artificial limitations. Not have crippled hardware forced upon me. The ability to use my own hardware is preferred. Blocking port 25 is understandable, but should be removed free of charge with a request. Blocking port 80 or others is unjustifiable other than as a price-gouge which immediately creates bad blood. Supporting technologies like IPv6 are bonus points.

So how does Tek rate?

- Tinker-friendly: Yup. Even though I currently have no need for unblocked ports, I still value that it's available. IPv6 has been a long time coming, but even with the delays over the East, it will still be arriving before the majority of ISPs. Until then I've still got my tunnel.

- The Good Guy: On the Good/Evil scale, I think we all agree that Bell is on the far end of the 'E' while Tek, being the primary counterbalance is firmly a 'G'. Yes, others in CNOC also help, but none of them have a presence in the West, so Tek gets full credit when someone here is looking to reward a GoodGuy. Telus is pretty much neutral. Not actively sabotaging, but nor are they actively trying to improve matters. So despite Telus not being Evil like Bell, when comparing a G to an N Tek still wins.

- Small company feel: Certainly was true years ago when I first signed up. You've gone through some growing pains since then, and it's been less than perfect when I had an issue last year. Points for a non-drone human who speaks English natively after a pretty short wait time. Not so great with the "other department" disease that plagues large businesses. "Sorry, you cannot talk with someone from ____ directly. We just write notes in this ticket and they communicate back with more notes. Then I'll call you back and tell you what they said and hope it was complete and clear." The "other department" was escalations in my case. I've seen posts some time ago indicating that you want to blur the line between sales and tech similar to what you had in the past. Full support for that and a good way to stave off the growing company feel. The transparency that you have shown and having the upper management involved in public forums gives major points here.- DSL: You are in a position where you are not married to one technology or the other. Choosing to limit choices on one side because the other is available feels artificial. I understand it's extra work for you to have 3 or 4 choices for caps instead of 1 or 2, but are those savings more than the revenue from customers like me who you would have kept/gained because you win on other points if only there were an option that was not one extreme or the other? (Rhetorical, I know no one has those numbers except perhaps later using hindsight).

I think the real sticking point for myself and others here are the caps. The two extremes with no moderate ground is the wound, but the salt is that after years of "sorry, our traffic counter only works for Bell land", we're told with very short notice to choose one extreme or the other with no information on whether we fit in the low extreme. I know I was well under the original 200GB and come nowhere close to 300GB. But do I fit under 75GB? I have no idea. And it was never even a consideration, so I had not invested the time to track it. Tek, on the other hand, obviously decided to pick caps radically different from the current offerings before announcing it and destroying the current limit. So the traffic meter could have been prioritised so that it would be completed even just 30 days prior to the changeover so that we could have some knowledge of where we stand. The choices combined come across to your existing customers as "Tough ----. Make your choice and pay a fee if you guessed wrong and want to fix it once you have more info."

The choice of pricing w.r.t. caps also seems peculiar. The general consensus with the whole UBB fiasco is that when pricing unlimited (or higher limit) caps, the greater the speed the higher the potential cost. But going from 75GB -> unlimited at 15Mb costs $5 or ~11% while the same 75GB -> unlimited at 6Mb who would be less able to abuse it costs $10 or 33%.

Edit: typo.

I really enjoyed reading your post mactalla. I think Marc doesn't grasp that the Western users never used his company because of price, but for the other reasons you mentioned. Marc, the prices and speeds in the West have always sucked. TSI West DSL users stuck it out even with faster speeds and cheaper prices from the local duopolies (& speed matching in the East) because they dug what you guys are about. It does feel like the West was sh*t on again for its loyalty.

Your 75GB plans make zero sense. Is 300GB going to break the bank, or hell even 200GB that was had around a year ago? My gut tells me that the kind of user you want to attract with that plan (75GB) has never even heard of TekSavvy and probably won't in the future either.

About the fees, how come you (TSI) can cut some slack when people buy modems from TSI, but otherwise it's tough luck.

I feel for you guys, I truly do, but I feel like Marc's hands were tied when it came to 300GB vs Unlimited....from reading his post it looks like for example it being $54.99 for 25meg (which I believe is better than us in the East @ 77.99 for unlimited 25meg), you'd probably have @ 300gig, the price being about $53.99....so for out there it makes no difference from 300gig to Unlimited....

That's what he's saying, he could offer a 300gig between 75 and unlimited but at what he'd have to charge it makes no sense to offer another tier for a simple $1/month difference...So it does make sense.

So yeah, I'm sure all of us in the East would kill for 25meg service unlimited at 54.99....I'd pay 59.99 for unlimited 16 meg service....so maybe I should complain that we're not getting the same love in the East....and that we are probably as always subsidizing the money losing West operation (that's just a theory of mine, much like how the DSL users in the East subsidize the Cable users as well)...

And I think that's what Marc is saying, they've done stuff and that's where they're going to sit, TSI can't be everything to everyone...unfortunately they're now too big to be that, but they do what they can at an affordable price point....so, if you want a Static IP and unblocked ports....TSI West DSL may be for you...but there's a reason why there are not a lot of IISPs....you guys have it pretty good out there with cap usage and pricing overall vs. the incumbents so there's not a lot of wiggle room for the IISPs (and resultant lack of competition in the IISP space out there) to provide an inherent difference for someone to go with TSI, Marketing costs tens of thousands of dollars....Huge costs....and they're just not seeing the uptake to do what they want.

My guess in regards to Alberta is because there's no 1 POI for Shaw and Shaw is probably forcing them to interconnect directly in AB...and that makes no logical sense for TSI due to the distance from say Calgary to Van to backhaul traffic....they just can't see an ROI and I'm sure after all these years they want to see Positive Cash Flow from their business after sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into it....

Just my 2 cents on the matter.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but here's my situation: I'm a bit of a geek with a server under the desk, so Telus DSL with their port blocking is not for me. But I don't mind cable, never had any major issues with it with Shaw. Oh, except for one time last summer when I tried to switch to TSI cable using DOCSIS 3.0 modem. What a fiasco! Anyhow, as I said I generally don't mind Shaw but hate their pricing and promotional policy where some customers may get half the price when the others for a year, a some get zilch. That's why I switched to TSI a few months back. Simply - I liked the pricing model, clear and simple. I can care less about "small company", 1%, etc. I kinda like the idea that I'm not paying a duopoly (at least not directly) but it's not the major consideration. Main point was solid pricing for a solid service. Well, no more! After TSI's "happy to announce" email about their "very competitive pricing and bandwidth changes" all I see is that a) they no longer have a competitive offering for me and b) they screwed me royally on the connection fee just a few month back. I still wonder how ISP are allowed to change contract agreements on the fly when if the same were done by cell providers they would be in deep shit. Taking out 300GB limit and increasing pricing more than 35% for almost everybody (I can't imagine any large percentage of TSI users who only needs 75GB/mo) - this is not called "improved offering". It's not even called inflation adjustments. It's called rip-off for BC standards, regardless what Quebec guys are saying. Having said all that I can only conclude that a) TSI lost me forever as a loyal customer, regardless of their future price or service changes. I just can't trust them any longer. b) I'll be reviewing my options for terminating the agreement with them as soon as I can procure any reasonable alternative. And at these prices there are a few. Somebody made a huge mistake here. Hopefully they are able to comprehend this.