Attention Sympatico Customers

Question

Attention Sympatico Customers!
I just called to cancel my service. Of course I got the "why are you switching speech".. so, I told the representative that I wasn't getting the 3mb/s download speeds.. in fact, the max that I had ever received was 1.5mb/s.
The representative did some checking and said that there is a new tool that tells how fast the line is rated for... mine was a max of 1.5mb/s! I could have never received the advertised rates... At $44.95+tax per month.. If I would have known, I would have switched service provides a long time ago... or I would have downgraded to the 1mb/s service for a lower cost (since that was the max I was getting anyway)...
The maddening thing about this is that Bell never notified me about the line capabilities... I have dealt with them about the slow speed several times before (we even changed the modems) and it was never brought up.. ...I asked why I had never been told about this before and the explanation was "because this is a new tool that has only been working for the last month or so"..
It's terrible that Bell can simply wipe their hands of the issue because the speed is rates as "up to 3mb"...

Answer 1

Your story is very familiar. Word for word I experienced the same thing a number of years ago. I battled with them until they agreed to refund me half of what I paid for three years because they argued that High-Speed was never offered in my neighbourhood even though I had paid for it for the entire duration.
The only difference is that the Bell representative instructed me to switch to Rogers! Amazing. I have had constantly high speeds since switching, even though Rogers has its quirks (reliable internet, unreliable company).
Bell (and Rogers to some extent) is not in the business of increasing speed. They are in the business of charging more for the same old services. Videotron in Quebec is supposed to introduce 10-15Mb services soon, while Rogers tops at 6Mb and Bell 5Mb. As long as we let the Ontario based Telecom companies get away with charging top dollar for the bare minimum, nothing will change.