Rogers high-speed internet

[Tim Writer]

"Michael MacLeod" <mikemacleod-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes:

> I've had the exact oppsite experience. I have both Bell Sympatico and Rogers
> High Speed at home. The Bell connection isn't fast, as I'm at the limit for
> distance from the CO and they've had to knock the profile speed down a
> little, but it's been rock solid for the last 18 months I've lived where I
> do. It doesn't slow down, screw up, drop packets, or anything.
> 
> The Rogers connection goes down for a solid week every three months. I've
> spent untold numbers of hours on the phone (mostly on hold) at Rogers to get
> the problem fixed, had no less than 5 visits from their 'technicians' to
> find the source of the problem, to no avail. Only this Sunday, after sending
> them a battery of ping test results showing more than 90% packet loss for
> hours on end and making sure they gave me ticket numbers and such did they
> send out a 'senior technician'. The guy found the problem within 1 minute of
> attaching a piece of signal reading equipment to our line. The same
> equipment all five of the previous techs had brought and supposedly used.
> The problem is with the line before the tap, so they have to send a
> maintainence crew to the neighbourhood to get it fixed. This is 18 months
> since I first reported a problem. And by the time they get a crew out to fix
> it, it'll have been at least 2 weeks since I've been able to use the cable
> connection.

I won't go into the gory details but I had a similar experience with
Sympatico. After months of complaining and full outages lasting days or
weeks, they finally sent a senior technician who quickly resolved the
problem. He admitted that the technicians I had talked to on the phone
didn't actually run the line tests they had claimed, i.e. they simply lied
to get me off the phone.

The bottom line is both organizations are behemoths and, for them, the
economics of support is such that the best strategy is to get you off the
phone as soon as possible on the principle that most people don't call back
and most problems are temporary and/or user error.

We need more competition. Sigh.

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
647.722.5301                                      toronto, ontario, canada
http://www.starnix.com              professional linux services & products
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