The Lesser of Two Evils: Shaw or Telus in Victoria?

60 comments

1. I don’t know if its true but I have heard that both Telus and Rogers have stock in each other, therefore they get paid no matter what carrier you use. That is why there really is no incentive for them try hard to keep you.

2. Shaw is at our door the second they said they would be. They hooked us up and we haven’t had an major problems in a year since. There have been a few outages but they usually only last a couple minutes at most. We haven’t heard from them and we download a substantial amount (more then the package permits). The only complaint is that they throttle bit torrent traffic. I was with telus before that and it was often slow and to get someone on the phone was an exercise in patience.

   Go with Shaw. Run Transmission. Learn about port forwarding. My two-point-two cents.

   1. can we speak briefly about port forwarding? I’ve tried, through my modem manufacturer’s support and I can’t get it. Will you help please?

   2. Try encypting your bit torrent traffic, Shaw won’t know what it is and will not be able to throttle the uploads. Shaw doesn’t Throttle bit torrent downloads.

3. Second vote for Shaw. I have had Shaw, Telus and Rogers at one time or another.

   I have found Shaw has better support and service, as well as consistently better speed. I am pretty sure I blow through my bandwidth allotment occasionally and I never hear from them.

   1. Agreed Shaw all the way. Telus Sucks, Majorly. Rogers sucks too.
      Shaw has genuine people working for them that actually care about us consumers.

4. Hmm… looks like my comment got eaten.

   Basically, another Shaw vote.

5. Are both Rogers and Shaw in Victoria? Or just Shaw?

   1. Just Shaw.

6. I recently tried Rogers Portable Internet. It worked fine in the West End, but when I moved to a place near Vancouver General Hospital it would not connect at all. The problem was diagnosed by their tech people as “to much interference between my location and their tower at Ash and King Edward.”

   I tell you this to lead into this: Rogers internet customer service is lousy. You have to wander through their voice mail system, get referred from one to another (Internet reps know nothing about portable Internet) and when you get to the right department you have at least a 20 minute wait for the correct customer service representative or tech person.

   I spent hours with them over a 2 week period (because I agreed to try out the “outdoor portable” unportable modem).

   And key steps you might want to take on you account cannot be done online–like cancelling service. And if you do not do your purchase in person at one for the stores, you cannot get any help from a store.

   1. Obviously there is interference near a hospital. They ask that you don’t even use a cell phone in the hospital… like raelly give your head a shake.

7. I am fairly certain it is Shaw in Victoria. I don’t think there is any Rogers cable in BC anymore, but I could be wrong.

8. I’m confused. I just entered V5W 1X5, a Victoria postal code (for, ironically enough, Rogers Chocolates) into Rogers Cable’s ‘do we serve your area’ checker, and got passed through okay. That seems to imply that Rogers does provide Internet in Victoria.

   I visited Shaw’s page, and they tell me (based on my IP address, I guess), that “High-Speed Xtreme-I is currently not available in your area.” Gee, they don’t have an office in Morocco?

   The small print on this page indicates that I can’t get their super-fast (up to 25 MB/s) service in Victoria.

   Besides calling them, I don’t know how to determine if Shaw provides service in addition to or instead of Rogers in Victoria.

9. V5W 1X5 is a Vancouver postal code.

10. We have Shaw here in Edmonton, and I’ve been fairly satisfied with the service I get. A note vis-a-vis Shaw/Rogers: I’m fairly certain that Shaw/Rogers share the same network for their internet and voice communications. When I first signed up for Shaw’s phone service, I’d occasionally get Rogers’ error messages (in fact, a cursory google search reveals the two did a bunch of asset-swapping in 2000). So it seems that the choice between Shaw and Rogers in western Canada is really just a matter of choosing which customer service department to talk to.

    I don’t have experience with Telus; however, a friend of mine was on their service and switched to Shaw after having problems with Bittorrent traffic. I personally haven’t had any issues with Bittorrent on Shaw.

11. Geet: Er, you may be right, but that’s what Rogers Chocolates has on their website for their Victoria address.

    I believe you are right, because I just tried another Victoria postal code (V8W 9W2, that of the RBC museum), Rogers says they don’t offer service there. I’ll adjust the post accordingly.

12. We have been using Rogers for a few years now and try not to deal with the tech support, as noted is a pain. We have not gone over our limit but have seen on other web boards that Rogers might not be charging for going over any more.
    The service techs are pretty good about showing up on schedule. The only major complaint was when we moved and it took nearly a month to get our service changed over.

13. Telus tech support is a such a joke, last time I moved, they would not come and re set up my DSL line. I ended up having to use my DSL modem as a sniffer to find out which twisted pair the service was coming in on. ( I finally found it coming in on a pair that was terminating in the basement of my home, thank God for Wi-Fi routers!).

14. I’ve had both (in North Van) and would easily take Shaw over Telus for the simple fact that you can easily setup a Shaw cable modem without having to install any software or having to authenticate on their servers using a clunky web-based tool. It’s always been plug-in and surf with Shaw for me. If you change your router, it’s always a pain on Telus.

    But that’s just a personal preference on the installation aspect.

    I’ve found Telus to be slower than Shaw – I had both for awhile to compare and dumped Telus after a month. This was on a mixed computer household of Macs and PCs.

15. Another vote for Shaw.

    I’ve been connected through Shaw in Burnaby, Vancouver, and now Langley. The service has always been faster than when I used Telus. I now use Shaw for HD, Internet, and Digital Phone. I don’t hesitate to recommend them for a second. Their customer service is so far superior to Telus it’s not even funny! Their product’s better too.

16. Shaw. Lesser of two evils.

17. I have the telus extreme or enhanced or whatever package. I’m not in Victoria mind you, but in Burnaby I find it pretty underwhelming. My upload hasn’t ever gone over 70Kbps, and down I maybe get 300 if I’m lucky.

    I’m sure all of those other factors like old phone lines,distance from their servers, having curly hair, and being born in June have an effect, but I tells ya I’m going to try out Shaw now that my contract is over.

    They haven’t ever sent me a note about bandwidth though, and I’m sure I push their “limit”.

18. Your mileage will vary based on the area you’ll be inhabiting. With Telus, you get more of a dedicated line and a more consistent bandwidth (they also seem less likely to ding you for downloading too much). With Shaw, you can get higher speeds during non-peak times, but peak times can slow to a crawl if you have heavy-using neighbors. I do find that Shaw seems to have better uptime than Telus though. Oh, and in my experience, the customer service of both companies isn’t very good.

19. Try yak…they offer high end Telco products and services without all the Telco pricing schemes..no contracts, no hidden fees and no bullshit.

20. I’ve had both Telus and Shaw — I ranted about Telus just before I dumped them, but the service itself was fine. It was the customer treatment I didn’t like.

    Telus’s DSL throughput depends physically and directly on your distance from the central office (CO). The farther you are the slower your connection (and I was pretty far). So Shaw has been generally quicker for me at all times. Their tech support has been pretty good. So I’d be okay with sticking with Shaw, which (from people I’ve talked to) is a big improvement from Rogers.

    There are occasional brief outages with either service. Some of my Shaw outages seem to have been my base station, which I’ve now replaced, but they have been helpful diagnosing problems, and most of the time the outages resolve themselves relatively quickly.

    If you can find an alternative to Telus and Shaw, at least give it a shot in a vague attempt to keep them honest. The Bell/Rogers Inukshuk wireless network does seem to run in Victoria, but then you’re buying into another oligopoly, of course.

21. Shaw offers high speed internet as well as local phone service and cable television in Victoria.

    Info from the shaw.ca website:

    Shaw
    861 Cloverdale Avenue

    Sales & Customer Care: (250) 475-5655
    Technical Support
    (24/7/365): (250) 475-5655
    Technical Support
    (24/7/365): 611 on a Shaw Phone

    Hope this helps Darren!

22. Having moved from Victoria last summer to wonderful, wintery Ottawa, I’ve had the pleasure of using Shaw and the disappointment of using Rogers. Rogers charges more but has less reliable service. If Shaw moved out east, I’d switch to them in a heartbeat. They’re pricey, but very reliable and very helpful when things go awry.

    I wouldn’t recommend Telus to anybody.

23. I’ve subscribed to high speed internet from both Telus and Shaw in Calgary, and Shaw has provided far superior service. Outside of regular maintenance windows, my Shaw connection hasn’t gone down in 2 years (knock on wood). I’ve also found their customer support to be far easier to deal with.

    On the flip-side, Telus support ePost billing (a positive for me) while Shaw has a customized online billing service (meh).

24. Stop downloading porn on the internet.

25. Shaw. Their customer service has always been excellent for me.

26. Key decision point: Do you want to run third-party VoIP?

    I run a small phone company in Victoria called NaTel. (http://www.natel.ca, horrible website). We can’t provide service reliably to Shaw customers – they deliberately degrade quality on VoIP calls to promote their own IP-phone service. (Vonage sued them back east for it).

    Having said that, I run Shaw at home and have managed to make it work. I’ve also tried 3web, which is a third-party reseller of Shaw… pretty disappointing.

    If you can afford it, go for a Bell Canada business-class ADSL circuit.

    Oh, and to second the post above – Transmission with DMZ in the router, and change the default port – works great.

    Joshua

    PS – If you’re back in BC, and in my hometown no less, we should talk more about some consulting work.

    1. I understand you are no longer active in NaTel Canada’s day to day operation. Do you get to Victoria much? Perhaps you could refer someone I could talk to about some consulting work.

27. One thing to note (coming from an insider that used to work for Telus, and worked specifically on Telus TV) if you order from Telus, and get their TV package, they won’t harness your internet signal at all… They can’t. You need the bandwidth for the tv signal. And, they can’t tell what data is being used for what, so you aren’t charged overage fees, ever.

    Not saying you should go for Telus, but that’s just a tidbit most people probably don’t know.

28. I know…don’t go to Victoria. I think (totally selfishly) that you guys should come back here. As in, close to Vancouver. As in, closer to ME.

    Vancouver is nice…c’mon. Hey, first month back in Vancouver, I will pay for your connection. It is my April special. We want your business back.

29. Wow, so that’s about

    Shaw: 25
    Telus: 0

    Though Tanya’s note on the TV thing is intriguing.

    Thanks for all the input. I’d say my decision is pretty clear, eh?

30. Make it 26: Shaw’s customer service is so good, it makes it onto my “companies I actually don’t mind calling when there’s an occasional problem” short list.

    Telus’s customer service, on the other hand, is like being hungry when the only thing in your fridge is too-old left-over take out chinese food. Unpleasant for sure, and something’s probably going to go even worse for you.

    1. Make it 27, I agree, I think overall both internet services have their strong and weak points and for the average user of the net the speed should be fine. The clincher for me is the customer service, Shaw is rather pleasant to deal with actually. Telus they have a mightier than thou attitude and they actually blamed me for not having a business internet plan that had guaranteed uptime. I lost my internet for several days on an upgrade they told me would not leave me without internet. At the end of the day, Telus sucks and their customer service and technical staff are the reasons why I will always recommend Shaw.

31. With those results, I guess you don’t need my vote; but it would be Shaw.

    I’m still commenting though because you asked about the other services and bundling. You do get a discount on additional services. We have long had the TV/Internet bundle. The wife and I do download a lot also, and so we did get the occasional warning, but no further action. My wife was tired of the calls, though, so we pay the $10 extra for the Extreme-I to raise the limit to 100G. We haven’t had a call since, and the connection is noticeably faster.

    More recently we added on their phone. We started by putting the in-laws on it, as they live in Abbotsford like us, but their kids are throughout the Lower Mainland. Abbotsford to Vancouver or Chilliwack is long distance with Telus, but Bowen Island to Chilliwack is all local with Shaw. Perhaps they might have a similar expanded region in Victoria?

    We then also joined because of the savings. With the Shaw plan, there are none of the hidden fees Telus has like the 911 fee and the long distance admin fee. The savings are quite a bit, even more because we get $5 a month off sine we have their other services, and the little bit of long distance we now have is much cheaper at 4 cents a minute, including the first minute.

32. where’s the post saying you are moving to Victoria? link please! please re-consider!

33. I used to also for for Telus, and I quit because it is one product that I can sell anymore due to the fact that I don’t believe in masking your flaws just to get sales. I believe in transparency in business. Yes, Telus is a company that has been in the business for quite some time, it awards its employees very well BUT let me ask you one thing? Why doesn’t Telus employees subscribe to their own company’s product? Belive me, they are the hardest people to sell it to! Telus TV uses the same bandwidth as your internet and it will definetely affect the speed of your internet which is at the present a bit slower than the high speed shaw is offering. Yes, it is a little bit cheaper than shaw, but you get what you pay for. Telus tv is also cheaper than shaw, their packages offers double the # of channels shaw is offering for less than shaws full cable (classic cable). But if you turn on 2 tv’s at the same time. guess what, your internet will be significantly slow down. Well, if you’re a person who doesn’t mind all this, then well go for it. If you’re a person whose tv and internet runs all day, then I don’t think this is the right one for you. I quit my job because I couldn’t continue selling something I don’t believe in anymore. HD is available, so i wonder how it will work with your internet because HD uses a lot more bandwidth than digital. Goodluck!

34. I like shaw

35. I’m a computer tech here in Victoria and I have been using Telus six years now. When Shaw recently called and offered a deal on their service I decided to give it a try. They were giving me a free month so I ran them both for three weeks as a test. Basic Telus ADSL is 1.5Mbps, Shaw is 5.0 Mbps. My telus connection tests out to 1.25Mbps very consistently. (I live right downtown.) When the Shaw installer hooked it up we went right to Speedtest.net and got 5.5Mbs download and 485 upload speeds. Haven’t seen anything close to that since. It has varied between 4.2 and 1.2Mbps, averaging about 2.5 over that time. This was still faster for less money so I decided to cancel Telus and stick with Shaw but when I called Telus, their Loyalty and Retention people sweetened the deal so I now get their fastest “Extreme” service, 6Mbps, for less than I was paying before! It pays to haggle with them. By the way, Telus service has been great. It wasn’t a while ago but the Canadian telecom overseeing body made them clean up their act and it’s been great since. I ran into one snarky guy with Shaw, but other than that they were good too.
    So one for Telus.

36. We’ve been using Telus in Victoria for almost 2 months now (we live 7 blocks from downtown), after living in Kitsilano for many years, where I used both Shaw and Telus at different times.

    Everyone else in my building here uses the Shaw bundle. So I was forging new ground by bringing Telus in. The main reason we decided to stick with Telus was contentment, keeping longtime email addresses, and a horrific past experience with Shaw’s billing.

    So far the results are mixed. The service guy came out quickly and was courteous (are they learning?). You can’t Telus TV in Victoria yet, so I can’t take advantage of the full bundle.

    One thing I notice is download speed is slower than back in Kits, and we get dumped more frequently. It’s livable, but no one in the building complains about Shaw, except for some minor comments about occasional static on their phone.

    I guess on balance that Shaw is the better choice, at least until Telus TV hits town.

    What did you end up choosing Darren and how’s it working out?

37. Shaw’s equipment sucks. They don’t offer an all-in-one modem/router. Their HD and PVR receivers have crappy software and are slow to react to remote functions. Their basic digital receiver has the lowest quality video output on the market today. While I find the customer service at Shaw pretty good, I detest the equipment they provide to customers.

38. We have Shaw bundle- works great but just got a promo from Telus- called them and did a comparison to our current service- phone 5 services (caller id etc.) xtreme, digital tv with about 9 ‘packages’. current Shaw bill $168 Telus equivalent $117 (not including 12 month $5 discount and full 3 months free). Having said that when we moved to New Westminster last year we moved our phone an tried the ‘bundle’ which was good until they tried to set up tv (which had to happen after Internet was physically installed). When it was time to get tv they said it couldn’t be done… Did I mention that

39. Did I mention that I have 2 little kids and it was coming up to Christmas break?

40. I’ve been using Shaw in Victoria since April 2008. Very fast downloads, reliable service, no outages – I am happy.

41. shaw isnt a voip service though..

42. We have had Shaw since it was @ home in ’99…EXCEPT…we moved to TO for one year and had Sympatico DSL. The service was fine there although speeds were a little slower than what we were used to. When we returned to Vic in ’03 I decided to give Telus a try….BIG mistake. To start with they couldn’t get our phone hooked up for almost two weeks. (we now have all 3 services with Shaw) I spent HOURS, probably 4 or 5 over 4 months on hold, occaisionally to have my call dropped or re-directed to the wrong party.

    OK, what counts? Speed and service…go figure…

    Can’t beat Shaw’s speed. I also have power boost for $2.95 a month and it is worth it for me as I don’t download large HD files so feel the x-treme speed is not cost effective for me. I did notice a difference with the power boost, certainly worth the 3 bucks.

    At the time (2003) we had Telus, both Shaw’s and Telus’s advertised max was 1.5mb. I check my speed regularly and would always be close to topping out with Shaw. Enter Telus….450kb average…ok, I thought there must be some loss from within the house as our phone wiring is a mess. I called Telus and eventually they sent someone out. He tested the line entering our house…..I looked over his shoulder…first reading 778kb…ok some loss for sure but still half of their advertised speed. He didn’t see me register that reading….he took another reading…808kb and announced our service was fine. I quizzed him…what’s with the speed being half of the advertised??? His, answer???…..OK, here’s the punch line…..he said 800 kb is their acceptable minimum!! Acceptable minimum?? Acceptable to whom?? Certainly not me. There was no offer to check the connection at the pole or investigate any futher no matter what I said. That did it…we had Telus internet for about 3 weeks and have been VERY happy back with Shaw ever since.

    When you call Shaw tech service in the daytime, they offer the phone back system….leave your phone number and they’ll call you back in queue…no waiting hours with a phone glued to your head…..now tell me why can’t the phone company do that??????

    1. I had the same problem with Telus. I was on their enhanced 2.5 mb plan and only ever got 1.1-1.5 when I called them, they said that is about right and close enough. Though they were quick to point out that Shaw is “up to 5 mb” and not gauranteed. I replied so you are roughly the same as Shaw. I’ve switched to Shaw Extreme 15mb and have gotten tests ranging from 12mb-18mb download. I am happy with Shaw now, the service I recieved from Telus was appauling. I could not get a straight answer as to why my internet was down for a seamless upgrade. I spoke with far to many persons that did not care or understand what was wrong. I for me, the customer service of Telus is non-existent. I actually got blamed for not having a business plan with gauranteed uptime. He said if it is that important to you why don’t you have it. I think Telus really needs to examine how they are treating their customers. I will never go back to Telus. Ever, they have no customer service department.

43. Telus created major problems when I was helping my 84 year old mother cancel her internet because she was moving from Victoria, BC, to a care home and she has lost her vision. EVERY time I called there was a long wait with muzac. The agent became very agitated and insisted that her 3 year contract was not up yet. I asked where’s the paperwork that she signed? I knew that she had not signed anything and that a volunteer for the elderly had given her a free used computer and had signed her up for Telus internet on his own. The agent was so rude that I asked to speak to his supervisor, who was polite and canceled the service.

    When my mother moved I canceled her phone service. It took up a lot of my time waiting to an agent. Because her condo was up for sale I had to ask that the phone be reconnected in order for the real estate agent to be able to use the phone at the entrance of the building. No problem BUT, even after explaining the situation, the agent wanted me to add internet to her service!
    After my mom moved 2 years ago, she decided she wanted to have Telus internet again so I could use her computer when I visited her. It was costing so much that she decided to cancel. But she has to continue paying until her next billing date. Thanks, Telus! Stick it to the pensioners.

    We had the same phone number for 26 years, during 3 of which we operated a business. When we disbanded the business we returned to a residential phone service. We retired and moved in the same neighbourhood. But we cannot get our old phone number back because it was used for a business.

    Then we made the mistake of signing a 3 year contract with Telus for a cellphone, an EXPENSIVE service indeed.

    Shaw can’t be any worse. We already have cable and internet with them. Today I ordered the cheapest Shaw digital phone service. The agent was polite and EFFICIENT.

    We`ll have to keep the Telus cell contract until it`s cheaper to buy it out and we`ll use our Shaw phone for most of our calls.

44. I completely agree with Travis, from Dec. 2008. Telus service bites, big time. Every time we’ve had problems, getting them to admit they’re even part of the problem is extremely difficult, if not down right impossible. I had an agent refuse to open a work order to have something completed..they took it upon themselves to start, and left it half done. The automated telephone system is verrrry annoying, also, however, if you say ‘agent’ enough times, you may talk to a person in 4 minutes instead of 4.5 if you suffer through it. Thanks to this last unpleasant experience, we’ve decided to switch to Shaw digital phone service for our home line, and if happy with it, will be switching our business numbers too. And, hopefully, we’ll never have to deal with Telus again. Oh ya, and their ‘managers’ are as impossible to deal with as the regular customer service agents!! Lots of help there; NOT!

    1. Ha, not only will they not admit to any wrong doing, after telling me every 3 hours that my internet was going to be running, I find out 3 days later that it was never going to be up and running until monday because they told me no one was there to do the update, so they “lied” to me. To add insult to injury, the guy at the loyaly line (their last ditch effort to jab me one more time) said, as I was cancelling my service, well if uptime was so important, why didn’t you get the business gauranteed up time service. Oh, so your incompetence is my fault. Telus’ lack of customer service makes Shaw look better. Overall, I don’t think there is much difference in the internet services, they both have their pros and cons but for the average user, either would be fine, but because of Telus’ aweful customer service Shaw stands out as better. On another note, if you call on the weekend, you will get a third world third rate tech that knows less than my shoe.

45. We’ve had BC Tel/TELUS ADSL since 2000.

    When my wife mentioned that to neighbors they all asked “does it slow down when kids get out of school, like Shaw does”. The answer was no, of course, ADSL speeds are highly consistent. At the moment I get a bit over 3 Mbit/sec download for $40.95 at a 3 year guaranteed rate bundle.
    We use Skype for most out of province long distance calls.

    I will admit that TELUS has a bizarre gap in XP support after SP2. The Siemens SE567 modem/router came with an Install CD which fails with current XP releases, but a bit of web searching turned up the default Password for configuring it. TELUS customer service acted like they didn’t have a clue about how I could manually configure a Siemens modem. Perhaps that is normally done by TELUS Techs when they install ADSL these days. TELUS mailed the Siemens to us.

    I haven’t bothered to configure it, since I already had 3 firewall routers and hubs in my home. The 3 Com modem BC Tel gave us in 2000 has no trouble delivering 3 Mbit/sec download service, so the Siemens sits in its box as a backup.

    During November Gales a few years back Shaw Cable was off line for days after BC Hydro and TELUS were back up and connected.

    I can’t recall the last ADSL service interruption.

    Oh wait, it was during that wide area BC Hydro outage on Thanksgiving Sunday in 2008/Oct and during the (2006?) Gales before that. One of our neighbors was in a motel for a week before the downed power line in front of their house got cleared and their power was reconnected

    Shaw provides good customer service? Gimme a break. It has been very poor service ever since they started buying out Penninsual Cablevision, etcetera back in the 1980s. My complaints about Shaw running “basic” service converter signals on impaired channels above 200 Mhz while running premium channels at clear frequencies below 200 Mhz got them forced by the CRTC to upgrade the cable to have clear channels for all basic service channels. That took years, and service kept dropping while my children were watching Fred Penner, Math Net, Today’s special, etc. I asked Shaw at the time why they were bothering with 500 Mhz cable when they would eventually be forced to install fiber.

    Am I the only one who remembers Opt Out marketing? After that the only thing I will ever buy from a cable company is bottom line basic service, and only till TELUS TV is available in my area.

    Shaw attitude toward customers is very poor.

    Shaw ran cable past some friends on William Head Road for months before they were allowed to connect. Shaw had already installed the hardware, but waited to file for their annual increase first. They divided the money spent by 240 times the total number of customers.
    (Automatic guarantee of 50% cost recovery in 10 years under CRTC policy at the time).

    Shaw got a bigger rate increase if they refused to connect the new customers to the new equipment until after the rate increase filing.

    That is, they spent money hanging cable and equipment to serve new customers, but didn’t want the additional customers served by the equipment to be part of the rate calculation.

    I will admit that I got a $100 credit for my bottom rung ($33.95) cable service in 2006. but I had to get the Federal Privacy Commission involved before Shaw would admit or apologize for invading my privacy rights. A “rogue” Shaw marketer had made an illegal extract of my service address, ignoring the Do Not Solicit flag set after I informed Shaw in writing that I would bill a minimum of $100 for any future telemarketing calls or personalized Junk Mail from Shaw.

    Now the monthly invoices just say DEAR RESIDENT and I don’t get any more personalized junk mail or phone calls telling me about Shaw products I already know about but will never buy. Personalize snail mail from utilities is prized by identity thieves, as “proof” of identity and residential address. Removing the name and address from Shaw’s Unsolicited Commercial Mail was an annoying chore. I already have enough shredded mail in the recycling bins.

    Shaw wanted to pretend that they didn’t carry KCPQ on the Saanich Peninsula, deleting it from lists they sent to the CRTC, until I started sending pages from TV Week, TV Times and the Time Colonist to the CRTC to prove that Shaw was lying to the CRTC. That was back when KCPQ was the only regional station carrying Next Generation, etc. Faux(Fox) News I can do without.

    Shaw also deleted CFTM-10 (Montreal via satellite), but I didn’t think I could make a case of many people noticing that. CFTM did have interesting movies and a different perspective on international news.

    Shaw tried to jack up the rates for Peninsula Customers when they merged the Peninsula and Colwood-Sooke operations, saying that the Peninsula customers should pay the higher Western Communities rate. The CRTC agreed with my novel suggestion that Shaw divide the total income from both operations at the old rates by the number of customers in the new operation to give them the same total revenue.

    The incompetents at Shaw who set up the automatic switch of Canadian signals onto USA channels are too lazy to check and note when Canadian Specials make it illegal for them to do that on a single night, and are slow to catch the clue when stations no longer broadcast the same show at the same time.

    I spent 10 minutes on the phone once telling Shaw Customer service that they were illegally running some sort of Canadian special over a USA signal instead of one of the final episodes of Dr. Quinn. That switched abruptly 9 minutes later when they found someone with a brain to give my complaint a 5 second reality check.

    I haven’t called Shaw about cable signal problems for years. They abuse my non-published home phone number later for telemarketing and give me a broken record routine about “most complaints involve user equipment failure” instead of investigating whether there could just possibly be another of the recurring problems with their cable TV service.

    1. Kelly Manning — you’re my hero. What do you do for a living tht you have so much knowledge about cable service provision, the CRTC etc. Why can’t we stop Shaw from throttling VOIP calls and torrent downloads?

46. Welcome to Victoria. I have had Shaw cable for 10 years– and I’m about to drop it, in two locations– a rental house and my home– because of incredibly rude treatment from their billing people, of whom I was trying to ask a clarification. If you have a studio in the backyard (two writers in our family!), they’ll want to double your charges– mind you, I already pay over $120 for high-speed and TV at just one of my locations… my call to clarify the imminent work appointment (the signal is poor in the studio– the technician had already assured me it was Shaw’s fault/problem, and that they would fix the problem without extra charge) prompted a very nasty tone in the woman at billing– and today a letter from billing threatening to remove the cable connection.. If you have even a room that “could” be rented — that has a connection in it– they claim the right to charge as if for another service. This though I do NOT rent out the studio and though the city prohibits anybody’s sleeping there (because it’s not zoned for that– so I COULD not rent it). I was trying to explain that it’s where my husband works during the day when he’s in town, which was infrequent even during the summer vacation– and the representative said “I don’t care who it is, husband, 2nd husband, 3rd or 4th; it’s irrelevant.” This insolence only got worse. The people at billing are a nightmare of aggression– customer disservice, I’d call it.

    1. There is too much praise of Shaw for my liking on this page. The attitude of entitlement from customer service personnel and the rudeness of billing personnel is quite consistent.

47. For 5 years I was a Shaw Customer, and then moved into a new fiber optic building that offered a year free of Telus HDTV & High Speed Internet.

    I have never used a Telus Service in my life (Besides the Homephone growing up) But got a Rogers Cell phone when I was 18.

    So I called up Telus to set up my new TV Service & Internet. I was shocked at how well the Call Went. I work in Customer Service myself for a Utility Company, and this service was superior.

    The Agent advised me my internet speed will be apx 25 MPS, I asked will that be affected by my HDTV, he stated that they give me a 50MPS pipleline to allow extra bandwidth for the TV.

    I have been in this apt now for 6 months, and I LOVE their service. I have opted for all the channels, which are crystal clear in regular def & high def. My internet is a Consistent speed of apx 23 MPS.

    I had one issue with my internet, and it was resolved Quickly and Efficiently…

    I would have stayed with Shaw, had I not had the 1 year free trial. However I think I will stay with Telus now…

48. What about a third option such as teksavvy in Victoria? They seem to be the only ones offering 200GB downloads for around $35/month (DSL) you do nee dto buy their modem at $75..comments?

49. Some genuinely excellent info , Gladiola I observed this.

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