O Canada! → Canadian → TekSavvy > My experience and why I wont be back to Teksavvy

My experience and why I wont be back to Teksavvy

If you are one of the unfortunate souls to be affected by the outages currently affecting Teksavvy users, and plan to switch to another provider because you just have been left with no choice, read on. Here was my experience and I thought it was only fair to share my experience so everyone is aware of Teksavvy's policy when it comes to cancellations.

My story is typical to many these days. My service has been down for 8 days. I work from home, I have a VOIP home phone, and the family uses internet for all our entertainment. This outage has meant I need to drive an hour one-way into work each day as I cannot VPN into work, use my cell phone minutes which I have now am into overages, not to mention tethering my data plan I am also into overages. I cant even imagine what my cell phone bill will look like next month because of this outage.

Unfortunately, my personal situation leaves me with NO choice but to switch to Rogers. Please know I did not want to switch to Rogers. I love Teksavvy. But I need internet, and I think I have been overly patient after 8 days. First my modem was blamed so I purchased a new modem from Teksavvy. It took 5 days to get the modem, and Canada Post shipped to the wrong post office, I had to drive 45 minutes just to intercept it otherwise it would have been another 2 days getting to me. The new modem did not resolve my issue, I still cannot get the DHCP server to assign me an IP. Yesterday, finally, a ticket was opened with Rogers, and I was told another 24-48 hours for resolution. But really at this point no ETA is reliable because its completely out of Teksavvy's hands. I made my decision to call Rogers and 12 hours later, I had internet restored at my home.

I am an avid Teksavvy supporter. I have encouraged many of my friends and family to switch. Every individual I have every dealt with at Teksavvy has been overly kind and overly apologetic about this outage. I have been impressed, to the point I have said stop apologizing, because I know its not their fault. UNTIL TODAY.

I called to suspend my service for a few months while these issues were resolved. I was told no such policy exists. Fine. I then proceed to cancel and was expecting that my 8 days of non service would easily be credited to me since Ive paid for a service I never received. I was told the following was Teksavvy's policy:

1. Troubleshooting was not complete (despite 8 days of it) and therefore I could not be credited for my outage until this process was complete. I had to wait for my service to be restored before any credit would be considered.
2. Because I am cancelling and an account will no longer exist, there is no way for Teksavvy to credit my account. They need me to stay on as a customer onto the next billing cycle, at which time my account would be credited on the NEXT CYCLE for the downtime experienced. They wont send a cheque for the downtime after I have cancelled, despite telling me that I would be sent a cheque for the month of October since I have already been charged for Oct 3- Nov 2. But getting a cheque for Sept 26 - Oct 3 is impossible once the account is non existent.

The ONLY way for me to see any credit for the downtime is to both wait for my outage to get resolved and remain a customer until my next billing cycle, i.e. stay on into November. Otherwise NO CREDIT.

This was the first agent I've spoken to at Teksavvy that I honestly feel has handled this very poorly. Not once during the entire time I explained what I went through did I hear one apology. There was no sympathy for what I went through over the past 8 days. Only, in my opinion, a very rude approach to my calling to cancel. I had EVERY intention that this would be a temporary switch to Rogers, and I would return to Teksavvy as soon as these network issues were resolved once and for all. But all it takes is one agent with a bad attitude to completely ruin my 2 year long experience and ever returning again as a customer. I was a support agent for 10 years, and the way this was handled was just dead wrong. I felt completely on the defensive and attacked by this agent. All I kept hearing was this is how it is, its our policy and EVERYONE knows this is our policy. I made it very clear I would be sharing my experience on this forum because I really doubted EVERYONE was aware this was their policy and this is what they would face if they were planning to cancel.

Thank you Teksavvy, I honestly hope you get somewhere with the CRTC to avoid this from happening and I truly hope these outages don't last much longer for your clients. But one suggestion. For those left with no other choice but to move to Rogers just to get their lives back in order, this is not the right way to treat your clients as they leave, because some of us are leaving reluctantly.

Hi aplus,

Thanks so much for your post. I've been working with you in the direct side of things and I can appreciate the frustration with the situation and the reluctance with which you left us. I can also appreciate that you needed to do what was going to work best for your family. I know you don't want any apologies, just know that if you'd allow them, I'd be doing that right here. =)

I've been working on this whole issue of the credit for you and I have a solution. Could you please PM me on here and we'll get this figured out?

Thanks,
Danielle
--
TSI Danielle
Social Media Relations
Teksavvy Solutions Inc.

Thanks Danielle, You have been more than professional and gone above and beyond the call of duty helping me. I appreciate you trying to assist me in this matter.

Danielle - you are a star! You handled the situation exactly as I would have expected it to be handled by cancellations, and have regained my trust in Teksavvy. I just hope no one else goes through what I did with the cancellations department, but if they do, its great to know there are other avenues to come to a resolution. I will definitely look at returning to Teksavvy once these outages have been resolved.

Since I'm on day 8.. I guess I should be glad I haven't paid my bill yet

Switching to Rogers is exactly what Rogers is hoping for by messing with the 3rd party internet providers.

About to switch today if my situation doesn't change too. I often VPN into work but not everyday. I can always charge back since I pay with Visa and I will if I have to. I think they have bigger problems then trying to bilk me and fight me for 40 bucks for services they didn't provide.

I too supported teksavvy based on the idea that more competition would equal better service and pricing. But I don't support that model anymore. I think we need to start viewing communication infrastructure the same way we do utilities. Do I think that's going to happen? No. And I know switching to Rogers is what they want. But sticking with Teksavvy is also supporting the TPIA model which is just as flawed as the concept of market diversity and competition benefiting the end consumer.

Im in london, specifically White Oaks. This is getting rediculous. Not only has it been spotty multiple times this month, yesterday morning I had to run to a McDonald's in order to send in an important application, due to the fact I had no Internet whatsoever.

All iv had since yesterday morning is the first three lights blinking. Iv tried the power cycling, but nothing seems to help. Iv been on hold with customer service for a combined hour and 20 minutes, and I STILL havnt been able to actually talk to any customer service.

What's ironic is that being able to check my email on my phone, they recently send me the bill...as if I'm going to pay anything at this point. I'm sick and tierd of hearing the excuses to pass off the blame, that it's all Rogers blah blah..how about the company grows a spine, and begins to actually act like they care about your business.

Either way I'm looking up new providers ATM, betting I can get another provider before I can even get tek savvy to pick up the phone.

Iv posted this in another thread as well, would appreciate knowing that at least one person involved with tek savvy is aware of my case.

You do realize that Rogers customers are having similar issues too right? But just resolving a lot faster. It's not intentional messing around with 3rd party. It's just once 3rd party is down the current model of fixing thing is broken. You can blame Rogers for that but this broken model has been known for years. And only now is it being fixed. So take that however you want.

That said I think OP is way more tolerant than I ever work. I switch on day 4.

gotak,

Rogers customers are NOT having anything like the same number of issues because of Rogers network design. To a Rogers customer, a node split is basically down for a couple hours and back up. To a 3rd party customer, it's down, reallocate IP addresses, reload the routing databases, reload the available IPs in the DHCP servers, reload the modem authorization tables in the CMTS.

Yes, it's been like this for a long time, but instead of Rogers being prepared for this and being proactive and ready for all these activities for a TPIA, they are just left blowing in the wind and get around to changing things for TPIA customers when they feel like it.

Sure, the model has been broken in favour of Rogers for years, but they are now taking advantage of it big time and doing nothing on Rogers part for years.

The more you post, the more you give the appearance of a shill for a cable company.

Thank you sbrook.

I have had disconnect and still having it with TS using rCable. And I WON'T go back to Rogers no matter how long it will last. At most after a week or so I WILL switch to DSL and cut the money going to Rogers by my action. Let's see who will win in the end. And I won't get Rogers product whatsoever because of this either.

'The more you post, the more you give the appearance of a shill for a cable company.'

Nail well set in one wack! Nicely done SB! (I've been following his posts for some days now, as I understand he was a TS customer but turned tail and ran when the going got tough, now he's in bed with Rogers having bitten on one of their 'sweetheart' deals and he only comes into the forum here to spread FUD. Hardly worth wasting any time on him.)

You guys are funny. That's why I am here still

Your sentiments re: Rogers parallel mine exactly. Only if I need a particular service or product I absolutely can't obtain elsewhere will I give my business to Rogers. And at that I'll be holding my nose when I do it!