TekSavvy → Teksavvy Installation Nightmare - Letter to CEO

The CEO from the company has written on this very topic that they are at fault

Teksavvy has messed up dropped the ball on a lot of my orders, it's a case of that I know how to escalate within the corporation. What gets me is how emotional people get over something so trivial. (Yes, Search my name, I have also been in this exact position but as I grew up with Teksavvy I grew to understand the internal processes and it got a lot easier to deal with).

For all the screw-ups on whomever's side, I do have to say that they have also been equally as responsive and generous towards myself, clients, family and friends. For that small point, I thank them.

I just PM certain people and life is good again. Easy. lol.

So to the OP, I am incredibly sorry for your experience, yes it is the problem, I do however also extend my deepest sympathy to your ongoing family case. That being said if an agent of Teksavvy Solutions Inc. was literally "yelling and screaming" at you, I would be remiss if I didn't say that agent has no potential as a CSR/TECH for TSI. TSI is a stressful but also semi-fun (Yes, I know the flip side here, don't go PM'ing me over it) environment where-by a fellow team member will take a call for you if you are unable to handle the situation effectively and I'm sure Marc wouldn't mind if you passed the client on and went for a short walk outside to clear your head.

SO my point is, USER:TSIMarc is on it, we may not like the slight curtain closing as of late but it's life for a corporation that's grown and is wanting to bring in a positive profit.

In summation, TSI has sunk but it has also risen in a way... They have been silently chugging away at increasing network capacity and management. etc.

So ya, that's all I got to dump today, thanks for reading, feel free to pm with flames and what not.

Just to update;

I've been looking into this all evening until 9pm last night and all of this morning. I'll report back soon.

It's all very well to say grow slowly, but the very fact that they were so good at CS and at providing the product drew people to them.

Look at how pissed off people get when they put a stop sell on the cable product, or have Bell say "nope can't transfer home phone to them at your address".

It's one of the differences between a "service" and a "product". A company only makes "n" of a product and distributes them, the shops sell them, and then they're largely forgotten until the next batch appears, with no ill feeling. But with a service, the inability to supply is a problem because it's in one's face all the time. They can get X, but I can't and I live next door. etc etc. It does create ill will especially when the alternative is the incumbents.

One also has to remember the incumbents screw up like this each and every day. We expect it of them. We ignore it. We didn't expect it of TSI, so now when it happens we get really pissed.

Growth had to happen ... and keeping it under control is difficult.

I think your generally right. Teksavvy leases out the last mile, space, and equipment from the big ISPs. The big ISPs have never liked the independants (probably because they're forced to share their last mile/equipment with them). They completely own the install process. All teksavvy can do is send them the order (I'm thinking Rogers didn't receive the updated address from teksavvy in time).

As long as independant's use any equipment/space/last mile that they don't own, I think you'll get issues like this.

You said it yourself in your comments. It almost made you want to go back to Rogers. lol.

I probably wouldn't go back to teksavvy unless my local ISP really cracked down on bandwidth usage. It is pretty rough when an ISP doesn't have controller over all of their operations.

As for compensation. I don't think any provider is going to give you 4 months free. I had some pretty rough issues with telus a few years ago. I spent so many hours of my time calling them, having techs come out and what not. They gave me one month free.

With a company like teksavvy which is at the mercy of rogers/bell. They'd go broke of they compensated everyone for lost wages.

They acknowledged on this forum that the inability to transfer your phone number to a Teksavvy POTS line is on their end, not Bell's. Tinfoil hat theory is to push more people to sign up to Tektalk with much higher profit margins. Real reason: who knows :P

There was no way that Teksavvy could maintain their old support model as they grew exponentially in a short period time. Yes, the good old days are gone but it doesn't mean they are the next Bell shown by the fact Marc has posted multiple times in this thread.

My time with them was good and the few times I needed to call my issue was resolved in a speedy manor.

If I hadn't been so annoyed with the complete and utter mishandling of the Quebec market around the time of the new cable tariffs I wouldn't have left and I would still recommend them to anyone who asked me about my experience

Bell, yeah. Rogers, maybe.

When my TSI cable was out for 11 days recently, reasons unknown(*), the Rogers Cable guy who eventually showed up to verify that the line was fine (which we had already proven by borrowing neighbours' modems), he said "nothing I can do -- it's Teksavvy's issue. But.. he also said, that had I been a Rogers customer, he would not have been allowed to leave until everything was working again. Possibly including a modem swap on the spot.

That's the kind of service I expect, and Teksavvy fails to even attempt to deliver.

Cheers

(*) Issue eventually written off as out of date 02.08 firmware on DCM-475, despite neighbour's having exact same modem/version, and this unit working fine in other neighbourhoods. I think some datafill got messed up somewhere, but purchasing and datafilling a new modem fixed it, whatever the issue was.

Hum, I dont understand what you're saying here. I don't at all agree that somehow the good times have past. I don't think the old model has changed or that it's not achievable today or that we're that far off. I'll explain more once I post my full review.

They're not hiding behind anything, they asked that the account information be posted in the direct forum and the very next post after yours is from TSI Marc. They're still communicating right here, in the open, for everyone to see, like they always do.

They have their faults and most of us here will point them out, regardless of which side of the fence we're on; there's no need to make shit up.

Seriously dude, go though the "Teksavvy sucks" threads, and see how many times it goes of to the direct forum and we never hear of it again.

Really the issues of installs and support come down to the fact that we are dealing with a faulty relationship between the incumbents and TPIAs, and the TPIA's being the people we talk with bear the brunt of the heat.

All this because the CRTC didn't choose to implement tougher standards for the response procedures and times for the incumbent - TPIA relationship.

Let's face it, the incumbents really would rather have all the TPIA customers themselves, so why would they want to service TPIAs? So, they prioritize TPIA clients below their own. Now granted the relationship between for example Bell and TekSavvy is generally better than Rogers - Teksavvy, because Bell have long had similar business relationships selling at a wholesale and commercial level. This was a new and very reluctant business for Cable. They were strong armed into it by the CRTC and thought they could get away with doing all interaction through the existing customer email support team with a similar 48 hour response window (who incidentally were pretty bad for their own customers). There was never a proper escalation process for cable TPIA problems ... and so the TPIA customer gets no priority when things go wrong from the incumbent.

This all puts a crazy strain on TPIA support. It's easy to say "TekSavvy support isn't doing anything to push this along", but the reality is that in many cases, particularly cable, there IS nothing they can do to push things along except occasionally rely on the goodwill of some particular employee, since there is no real business process to push things along!

The overall result is that if you choose to have a TPIA, then when things go wrong, they can readily go VERY VERY wrong and the TPIA's hands are tied.

The reality is that if the incumbents treated TPIAs as important commercial customers and gave them the priority they deserved, TPIA support staff wouldn't be spending so long answering irate customers and trying to coax incumbents to get off their duffs and actually resolve problems in a timely and efficient manner. Then TPIA support staff would be far better able to help and less likely to panic and leave. Support is a tough job and a lot of people just can't do it without burning out quickly.

Yes, I'm blaming the incumbents again, but I'm also blaming the CRTC for allowing the incumbents to put TPIA providers in this position.

I've been following TSI for years, since I live in MI and was considering moving a bit farther north; at least 7 years now. I've seen it all already.

The idea of the direct forums is that if the customer has posted in the main forum and been referred to the direct, that the customer come back to the main forum and post the results of his interaction if appropriate. The reality is that very very very few people actually do that. It's not up to the ISP to bring the story back, and could be considered a privacy issue if they did.

The ISPs don't do a "we'll fix your problem in the direct forum as long as you don't tell others". I think that would raise some eyebrows!

It's people's general "phew it's solved ... let's get on" that has happened here and they just don't come back to report the results ... even if they say they will. It's not just these forums. I mod a medical forum, and we regularly refer people to their doctor and ask them to come back and tell us how they made out (you get concerned when you hear of people having heart problems etc. It's nice to find out they're still alive!) BUT nope, maybe 1 in 100 return.

Following TSI (reading ups and downs) and using the service (Calling in for support, billing, sales and physically using the services) are two different things. I cannot physically comment on Dell for example. Horror stories i've heard are everywhere. Until i use their service, computers, support i have no right to comment on how successful or unsuccessful they are.

What you read here in the forums is a sample, nothing more.

Basically what i'm saying is you shouldn't have an opinion of either. Saying Teksavvy fights the good fight is like saying Telus does a Cancer run each summer that my family attends and donates to. Both fight good causes.

Did I read that right? Are you really telling me I'm not entitled to my opinion? And was that really in response to a statement of fact (rather than opinion)? Wow. Just... Wow. And people take you seriously?

Edit: To be clear, it was suggested that I read the forums. When I point out that not only have I read them, I've been reading them for the better part of a decade, you chime in and try to invalidate that by saying I'm not entitled to an opinion because I'm not a customer. Were you not the one to bring opinion into this to begin with, I might be inclined to agree with you.

Here you go on your high horse again. Entitled to an opinion sure, but to provide a statement without first using Teksavvy.

You're very dramatic, take it down a few notches...

Agreed. What does it even matter to anyone, except the OP, if the guy yelled?

And if he did yell for no reason, you have to wonder what would break a person to the point of screaming.

Maybe the guy could use a couple of days off for an extra long weekend. Chit happens. No one is immune from pressures of life and the pressures of work.

Yes, that is certainly a big part of the environment. I expect TPIAs and consumer groups to organize and provide leadership to effect change. Not really what this thread is about AFAIK. I am far more concerned about CSR behavior .... something for which TekSavvy has 100% control.

One of the fanbois I mentioned.

We need the R0CKY model back. Simple.

I don't think it will do any good. As sbrook said, TekSavvy's hands are tied because Rogers TPIA clients are prioritized below their own. So right now, they can't really push things other than reimburse their clients. If they had their own techs and equipment, that would be a different story.

That isn't what I was getting at.

What I'm attempting to communicate is that when R0CKY was the CEO, he seemed to present problems and solutions in a more "customer friendly" manner... He was still a bit of a bush dancer however, he did have the Je ne sais quoi jeoune sais quos (Could a french gent/lady spell that properly for me?).

Rocky was a people person, I don't really get the feeling based on past employees and current employees that Marc is such a people person.

Just stating that a more people person would be good for client communications and what not.

Je ne sais quoi.

Merci!

And once again, I am not the one who brought opinion into this. Nothing I stated was opinion, nor am I being dramatic. I was stating fact.

One word:
perception.

End Result:
Same

And beauty is in the eye of the beholder :P

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, indeed, but I'm not sure what your point is. I made a statement of fact and was called out for not having read these forums. Then, I pointed out that I've been doing so for over half a decade, which is a statement of fact. At no point in this thread did I provide any opinion, one way or the other, about TekSavvy. Facts are facts, they can not be argued; what a fact means in a certain situation can be argued, but the fact itself still stands.

If someone wants to point out something specific in this thread that I have posted that is not factual, they're welcome to. If you'd all rather keep jumping on me for trying to inject fact into the conversation, I'll take a moment to locate the "hey mods" button and consider using it. You are adding nothing to the conversation by attacking me and by replying to those attacks I only serve to further that, so it stops here.

My favourite part of TekSavvy fanboiism was when someone compared Rocky to Laura Secord years ago.

Seems to me that the bottom line is this - if you NEED Internet on a certain date, you're taking a risk by going with TekSavvy, as they can get screwed around mercilessly by Bell and Rogers. If you can live with getting Internet sometime on or after the promised date and your world won't implode if it doesn't happen on time, then go with TekSavvy. Or, if you need Internet, you better damn sure have a backup plan in place to cover you while your install process crashes and everyone sorts through the corpses.

Having dealt directly with Bell wholesale on the number porting front, it's a helpless feeling when they are completely indifferent to the screwup they made and you have to call your customer and tell them they won't have phone service that day. No amount of yelling, screaming or pleading can solve the problem.

TekSavvy generally seems to do a decent job of being accountable to the customer. But at the end of the day, this can only go on for so long before the business model has to change. I don't know what the solution is - perhaps filing a complaint with the CRTC every time Bell/Rogers dicks them around? Bury the bureaucrats with paper until you annoy them into action?

I agree. I would go further and say it's a risk with any provider. Part of the reason I'm with TSI is that I never forgave Bell for a month long delay in my install with every other day calling getting no where.

I would however say the risks are different. The big difference is with the incumbent if you can get the attention of the right people things happen almost over night. With TSI they seem unable to leverage such contacts as it seems the contacts they do have are unsympathetic.