Something that I encourage my customers to do is to always check what they’re paying for the telco services that they are getting as it is not uncommon for prices to drop and you end up paying more than you have to. Case in point, my DSL connection into my home. I was paying $32.95 a month to get 6 Mbps downstream service with a 300 GB usage cap with Teksavvy. A good deal in my opinion. But I noticed on their website that I could get 15 Mbps downstream service with a 300 GB for the same price. That’s clearly a better deal. Thus I gave Teksavvy a call last week to set up an upgrade. Now to make the change, there was a $50 fee and Bell (who does the work for Teksavvy as they are Bell resellers) would have to come out to my place twice to get the job done. I wasn’t thrilled about the fee, but Bell has to get paid somehow I suppose. So I signed up and I had an appointment for sometime this week. I was also told to watch my e-mail for details. Total time invested was about 30 minutes which included being put on hold three times.
Fast forward to this past Sunday. I get a call from Teksavvy and the woman that I spoke to confirmed that the upgrade would happen on August 8th (today) and Bell techs would have to visit twice to get the job done between 12 and 9 PM. So that means that I would only be working with customers for less than half the day. Not the biggest deal in the world unless you’re self-employed as that cuts into your potential income for the day. But it was understandable so I won’t complain. Much.
Now let’s go to last night. I had flown out to see a customer for an emergency earlier in the day and returned just after 5PM. I caught up on my e-mail and I decided to unwind by playing some Team Fortress 2 online with 23 of my closest friends. At around 7PM, I lost all Internet connectivity. I did some basic troubleshooting and found that my DSL modem was not syncing to the network. My first thought was that Bell had pulled my line card in preparation for my upgrade. So I posted this Tweet to Teksavvy:
Much to Teksavvy’s credit, I got this response back in very short order:
So I direct messaged (DM) them with my account info and a quick synopsis of what happened and after doing some checking, they suspected that Bell pulled my line card to install a faster one. Since Bell was coming out today, there was no point in submitting a ticket to Bell. Thus I was offline for the night. So that I could at least get my e-mail, I used my iPhone 5 in Personal Hotspot mode. This turned my iPhone 5 into a wireless router with access to the Internet via LTE. Thankfully I have a 6GB data plan with my provider so that I have the ability to use it in situations like these.
I got up this morning and found that the DSL modem now is syncing to the network, but I still had no Internet. I suspected that there has to be some additional work done by the Bell techs before I get my Internet back. Again, much to Teksavvy’s credit, they direct messaged me at 8:30 this morning asking me to keep them updated. I responded with a request for them to check my line stats so that I could confirm that my line card had been put back. They found an active connection and after some troubleshooting with no success suggested that there wasn’t much they could do until Bell completed the work order. That’s understandable, so I waited for Bell to arrive.
Just after 1PM, my Internet connection came online. I did a speed test using speedtest.net and got these results:
Not bad. I can tweak it by playing with the way the DSL modem connects to the phone jack. I have it on a phone cable that is longer than six feet which is the recommended length. So I should be able to get slightly faster speeds if I shorten that cable. A tech came up to my unit just before 2:30 to check to make sure that I had Internet access and what my speed was using speedtest.net.
Seriously.
The result that I got was within acceptable limits as in Canada, Internet access tends to be advertised as “up to” a given speed. If that’s why I had to be at home and cancel my appointments for the day. That’s kind of lame.
Now, if I may make some suggestions. Here’s how things could be better:
- The window for a tech to show up shouldn’t be between 12PM and 9PM. That’s 9 hours. Make it a three hour window as people have lives. Now I get that Teksavvy in this case isn’t in complete control of that, but perhaps they should suggest that to Bell?
- If Bell is going to pull a line card, how about doing it when a customer is expecting to not have Internet access. For example, if the tech is scheduled to come out between 12PM and 3PM, pull it during that time. Not the night before.
- Don’t send a tech out to just to run a speed test. Either phone me to see if I have service when you’re done and talk me through doing a speed test or if I don’t have service, I will phone to complain.
The good? Teksavvy responded well over Twitter to help me. Kudos to them for being responsive.
Now I will go enjoy my new Internet speeds.
Related
This entry was posted on August 8, 2013 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Teksavvy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Upgrading My Internet Was So Much “Fun”
Something that I encourage my customers to do is to always check what they’re paying for the telco services that they are getting as it is not uncommon for prices to drop and you end up paying more than you have to. Case in point, my DSL connection into my home. I was paying $32.95 a month to get 6 Mbps downstream service with a 300 GB usage cap with Teksavvy. A good deal in my opinion. But I noticed on their website that I could get 15 Mbps downstream service with a 300 GB for the same price. That’s clearly a better deal. Thus I gave Teksavvy a call last week to set up an upgrade. Now to make the change, there was a $50 fee and Bell (who does the work for Teksavvy as they are Bell resellers) would have to come out to my place twice to get the job done. I wasn’t thrilled about the fee, but Bell has to get paid somehow I suppose. So I signed up and I had an appointment for sometime this week. I was also told to watch my e-mail for details. Total time invested was about 30 minutes which included being put on hold three times.
Fast forward to this past Sunday. I get a call from Teksavvy and the woman that I spoke to confirmed that the upgrade would happen on August 8th (today) and Bell techs would have to visit twice to get the job done between 12 and 9 PM. So that means that I would only be working with customers for less than half the day. Not the biggest deal in the world unless you’re self-employed as that cuts into your potential income for the day. But it was understandable so I won’t complain. Much.
Now let’s go to last night. I had flown out to see a customer for an emergency earlier in the day and returned just after 5PM. I caught up on my e-mail and I decided to unwind by playing some Team Fortress 2 online with 23 of my closest friends. At around 7PM, I lost all Internet connectivity. I did some basic troubleshooting and found that my DSL modem was not syncing to the network. My first thought was that Bell had pulled my line card in preparation for my upgrade. So I posted this Tweet to Teksavvy:
Much to Teksavvy’s credit, I got this response back in very short order:
So I direct messaged (DM) them with my account info and a quick synopsis of what happened and after doing some checking, they suspected that Bell pulled my line card to install a faster one. Since Bell was coming out today, there was no point in submitting a ticket to Bell. Thus I was offline for the night. So that I could at least get my e-mail, I used my iPhone 5 in Personal Hotspot mode. This turned my iPhone 5 into a wireless router with access to the Internet via LTE. Thankfully I have a 6GB data plan with my provider so that I have the ability to use it in situations like these.
I got up this morning and found that the DSL modem now is syncing to the network, but I still had no Internet. I suspected that there has to be some additional work done by the Bell techs before I get my Internet back. Again, much to Teksavvy’s credit, they direct messaged me at 8:30 this morning asking me to keep them updated. I responded with a request for them to check my line stats so that I could confirm that my line card had been put back. They found an active connection and after some troubleshooting with no success suggested that there wasn’t much they could do until Bell completed the work order. That’s understandable, so I waited for Bell to arrive.
Just after 1PM, my Internet connection came online. I did a speed test using speedtest.net and got these results:
Not bad. I can tweak it by playing with the way the DSL modem connects to the phone jack. I have it on a phone cable that is longer than six feet which is the recommended length. So I should be able to get slightly faster speeds if I shorten that cable. A tech came up to my unit just before 2:30 to check to make sure that I had Internet access and what my speed was using speedtest.net.
Seriously.
The result that I got was within acceptable limits as in Canada, Internet access tends to be advertised as “up to” a given speed. If that’s why I had to be at home and cancel my appointments for the day. That’s kind of lame.
Now, if I may make some suggestions. Here’s how things could be better:
The good? Teksavvy responded well over Twitter to help me. Kudos to them for being responsive.
Now I will go enjoy my new Internet speeds.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on August 8, 2013 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Teksavvy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.