Just returned from the sidewalk sale. Lots of people enjoying the wonderful day (although it was getting a bit hot) by shopping for items on sale. Pictures will follow soon. But the highlight of the excursion was the talk with a Bell representative.
I was observing a phone+internet+cable TV offer the representative was offering to another lady. After a couple of minutes, the lady started talking to me too along with the Bell-rep. I thought of asking details about the deal as it was a conversation of 3 now. I asked how much could I use the internet and the Bell-rep said, 1GB of bandwidth @512kbps per month. I exclaimed that it was too slow and he said he could offer a high speed connection with 100GB/month cap. I said great, but what about the throttling issue? At this point I think I pinched a sensitive nerve and he became agitated and said "We do not throttle, but reduce speeds for p2p transfers as they use a lot of bandwidth." For that I said, Bell themselves replied to CTRC and their chart does not show more than 6% of peaks due to p2p. Hence they don't use that much of the network. His face was clearly agitated and said "Let me finish with this lady first as she was here before you." I let him go hoping to continue the discussion in a nice way.
Another Bell-rep approached me and said, "May I help you?" I said "Sure". She asked me what information did I need. We started discussing about high speed DSL connection offers from Bell. She said she could offer me 100GB cap/month for high speed DSL @ $86.95/month(!). And extra bandwidth will be $2.50/GB usage. When I said, I already get 200GB/month for $27/month. She asked me "What speed do you get?". I told her that it is a 6Mbps line. She said she couldn't believe that price but cannot lower Bell's offers. She said "The company offering me such a price is not making any money with that price". She was surprised and said that the main goal of doing business is profit and that company is sure to close soon with those prices. She said that Bell spends so much in maintenance and customer support that they can't offer prices any lower than the current ones.
Another person who was standing beside us, said he has been with Bell for 10years and has had no problem. I told him, I too was with Bell till last year and had to change to a better company because Bell breached the contract without intimating me prior to the change.
I told the Bell-rep that I was expecting much more from Bell with regards to offering high speed DSL connections at prices comparable to other DSL providers in the market and not playing Big Brother with what the user downloads and uploads. Taking into consideration that they were just Bell-reps who might have been hired only for the sidewalk sale and couldn't do much about the "throttling and price problem at Bell", and that I had made 2 customers and 2 reps aware about the problem, I thanked her for the information and continued on searching for great deals on clothes.
A couple of minutes later I realized Bell was charging 10 times the cost Teksavvy charges for extra bandwidth usage per month!! $0.25 versus $2.50. Teksavvy Rock(y)s.
