TekSavvy → Re: Terrible Terrible TekSavvy / Bell Story

I made an account here to make this post. I am currently surveying these forums to look at customer satisfaction with TekSavvy before committing to them.

The kind of problems mentioned in the original post are all too reminiscent of things I've experienced with Rogers and Bell, and it's a *big deal* that there are customer support headaches, whatever the explanation for them. It's not just about issue resolution, either. If a customer spends 8 hours on the phone resolving their problem, that is a huge and non-recoverable loss in time (and possibly income).

It's great that there are Teksavvy representatives here answering questions -- very, very positive. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss the frustrations being expressed here as being an 'outlier' unless internal audits are conducted regularly that support that conclusion. The explanation offered by the Teksavvy staff, involving phone line problems and other technical issues, in fact suggests that it's a much bigger problem than the term 'outlier' would suggest.

OttawaMark,

The CRTC used to have mandatory reporting of issues. It was all nice pretty graphs of line failures etc. Bell then submitted to scrap these statistical mandatory filings. CRTC agreed and thus it no longer exists. I think you can still find this section on the CRTC website and see the year it ended.

After having my own issues with bell, and talking to a vp within bell, and mentioning their filed statistical reports with the CRTC and my on-going 2 months of on again off again phone service and a non-functioning 911 call. The Bell VP called me "a statistical outlier" (those words exactly) thus it was not included in their CRTC stat's report.

So yeah. I would take offense of the word "outlier" as mark mentions. Especially when they have nothing to back up those words. In fact, they have to use a forum where people can get very vocal after 8-hr hold times and no action to find a statistical outlier. Sound odd to you? Is that within the 95% statistical confidence limit?

Again, these are things and words that Teksavvy promised they would not state.

Sad to see how they chose not to adhere to their promise and now just toss out words and excuses like Bell does.

Marc, even that word hit a nerve with me. But I guess I'm just an outlier. Just like Bell called me.

If all the monthly outliers were presented to you in graph form, would we all still be outliers?

gang, I wasn't trying to blow smoke... I didn't pull any statistics... my point was only to say that this was an exception, and not the rule.

I've been with Teksavvy for over a year. In that time the only time I got frustrated was on account or Rogers not moving their collective ass and upgrade equipment in a timely fashion. I've not been treated poorly, or made to feel small. I'm always connected to someone who takes the time to listen to me and fix my issue. I've never once had reason to leave. And until such time as I go south of the border, I won't be. Teksavvy is miles ahead of Rogers in service and of course bandwidth caps (there ain't none!). Keep it up.

I myself have had relatively little trouble in nearly 5 years as a customer... There have been issues like cable congestion, but my service was always working...

Then that Bell Cellpipe thing happened... Which we're still waiting for compensation from Bell...

I bet Bell said no compensation for those users who were affected, some for more than 7-8 months.

Tx guys. Good to hear.

Such terrible customer/tech service "hit" me number of times for the last ~6 months. I've been with TekSavvy for 5+ years and I'm still with you regardless of feeling full disrespect to me as a TekSavvy customer and just as a software engineer

Marc, could you please answer a couple of questions without blowing smoke?

1. Count please negative and positive TekSavvy reviews on www.canadianisp.ca site and tell us why you think that this thread with negative review is an exception? BTW a man from Mississauga on that site described one of the "exceptions" (Aug 13, 2012). This is exactly what is going on with TekSavvy customer service right now.

2. I've seen this question in this forum but haven't seen an answer yet. What is the point to have three phone numbers on the TekSavvy web site leading to the same answering machine? The situation was different a couple of years ago when each number represented a separate department as it is supposed to be and as it's shown on your site.

Thank you,
and don't take it personally as it's just an another opinion that might help you to get rid of such reviews, I hope.

Wow i didn't know about canadianisp.ca... That's a lot of poor reviews. Either i signed up during a good time or something but talking to Marc off and on and my original signup i can't help but see them differently than most the reviews i read.

Never the less, the people have spoken. Sad to see though

Sure. I'll answer those questions.

#1 - working on it.

#2 - yeah. it's stupid. It needs to be fixed, maybe on the next revision of the web site *wink* *wink*. Back in the day it led to different queues but that was before the last phone system.

I'm not taking it personally at all. I appreciate everybody talking about it. Maybe some of our perceptions are off.. including mine. Lets find out.

MarcB, from Canadian ISP just send me an export of the reviews so I'll start looking at that. (We collocate and manage his server that hosts that web site)

Marc

... O' got 'em by the short & curlies *wince* lol

Maybe some of our perceptions are off.. including mine.

And maybe there is some willful 'blindness' (subconscious or otherwise). On the weekend I posted that a Teksavvy rep had not only stated a falsehood (in regard to the location of Bell's demarcation point in multi-unit building), but had maintained it in spite of being offered the correct answer.

I thought it best to allow a full working day for there to be a response.

The silence has been deafening. It is as though the problem simply doesn't exist. (Not just my problem, but the 'problem' that Teksavvy is spouting nonsense to avoid the responsibility to address my problem.)

So, what is my next step? It has been easy to get people to "talk the talk", but so far, it appears no one wants to "walk the walk"....

Here is what I have.

fair reasons? did I miss anything?

lets agree on this and then we can discuss.

sorry, that was meant as a reply to sgtux

"On the weekend I posted that a Teksavvy rep had not only stated a falsehood (in regard to the location of Bell's demarcation point in multi-unit building), but had maintained it in spite of being offered the correct answer.

I thought it best to allow a full working day for there to be a response.

The silence has been deafening. It is as though the problem simply doesn't exist. (Not just my problem, but the 'problem' that Teksavvy is spouting nonsense to avoid the responsibility to address my problem.)

So, what is my next step? It has been easy to get people to "talk the talk", but so far, it appears no one wants to "walk the walk"...."

And now it has been two full business days without any response....

Could you send me a PM or Post in the Direct forum & I'll see what I can do.

"Could you send me a PM or Post in the Direct forum & I'll see what I can do."

Eh? Were you not the one who called me last Saturday and had a Tech call me on Sunday who proceeded to BS that Bell's demarc was not the primary jack in my apartment? Think I've seen what you "can do"...

I'll send you a PM with my CID, but frankly, the Direct forum is a mechanism to prevent others from seeing the details of any problem, so I'll post them here for all to read.

I have recently moved to a different apartment building (there is a separate horror story of the transfer of my phone and internet, but that is for another day). Unlike my previous building, which had a "Call Forward" intercom system, this building has a "No Subscriber Line" intercom.

(Readers familiar with these types of intercoms and their impact can skip the following which is for those interested.)

A "Call Forward" intercom simply uses a translate table and dials your actual telephone number related to your "buzzer code". (It stays "on the line" to see if you dial the digit to signal the door to be unlocked.) If you want to know whether a call is from the intercom or if someone is buzzing while you are on the phone (or calling while you are on the intercom), YOU have to pay for "call waiting" and "caller ID" on your phone.

However, this system requires that the landlord pays for a telephone line from which the intercom can call you.

Landlords, being a rather greedy bunch, are unhappy with paying this trivial cost and many elect to install an intercom that does not require its own telephone line.

These "No Subscriber Line" intercoms are essentially a collection of switches, (one for each apartment) that are placed on the tenants' phone lines. When the buzzer code is entered, the tenant's phone is switched from the telco to the "phone" in the entryway. OK, it's a bit more complex as this type of intercom does continue to monitor the telco's line, but only for a ring signal. The main advantage of a NSL intercom is that it can provide the "call waiting" (a soft ring tone injected into the voice signal) or "caller ID" (a different ring from the standard) at no cost to the tenant, but if the tenant does not have a land line, s/he must provide a POTS handset to be connected to the intercom.

Because NSL intercoms "switch" the apartment's line from the telco, they break any DSL connection on that line. Often, this is not noticed as the subscriber is distracted by the call from the entryway. Worse, the intercom itself is a unfiltered "voice device" on a DSL line and can cause severe degradation of performance. And some NSL intercoms cannot handle high strength (your modem is not very far away) DSL signals, with the intercom itself malfunctioning.

In this situation, which occurs BEFORE THE DEMARCATION POINT, it is BELL'S RESPONSIBILITY to provide a 'DSL bypass' around the intercom, and if the line is provided through Teksavvy, it is TEKSAVVY'S RESPONSIBILITY to require that Bell provide the bypass.

And ensure that the bypass is complete without loss of tenant's wirepairs. (No loss of wirepairs means the DSL signal is returned to the same wirepair as the voice signal, and complete means both the input and output side of the intercom has DSL filters and the bypass line has a 'voice' filter. Bell may try to shortcut needing to filter the bypass line and intercom output by using up a separate wirepair for the modem when often there is only one spare.)

It's that simple. DSL resellers have Bell do this every day.

Except apparently, Teksavvy.

Hi Comment,

I totally understand what you are saying. As a Bell wholesaler, there is nothing on our part that we need to request for intercoms when submitting an order to Bell. The installer is supposed to leave any existing arrangements/wiring the way they are.

We have hundreds of customers installed daily for DSL service with intercoms and this situation honestly happens in a blue moon. You are not the first case, and you won’t be the last. This is mostly a result of a Bell tech not doing something right; maybe he had a bad day, maybe he was new; maybe he made changes without realizing what he was affecting. The only thing we can do is work hard to get your issue fixed and provide them feedback for them to coach/train out their staff.

Do you have reason to be frustrated? ABSOLUTELY!
Are we trying to get this situation resolved for you WE'RE TRYING!

We've got one of our escalation experts on the phone with Bell Repair management to have a tech sent out to fix what he wasn't supposed to break.

Martin will be getting connecting with you via PM when we get an update from Bell.

Thanks,

Andre

Could you please PM me with the circuit identifier.

(Yes, I plan to ask the Bell tech to show me the wire, show me the split in that wire, the DSL filter on the input side of the intercom, the DSL filter on the output side of the intercom, its connection to the split on the apartment line and the 'bypass' line between the two other halves of the splits with a 'voice' (Hi-pass/Lo&DC-Block) in the middle of it.)

Done!