Issues with Roger's High-Speed Internet aka Extreme Dial-Up! (Toronto - October)
Got a good deal on Rogers High-Speed internet? You may still be getting ripped off. I suggest hitting Rogers.com/speedcheck (or any other reputable speed test site) to make sure you're getting what you pay for. For the past 3 weeks, seemingly my whole neighbourhood (northwest Toronto) is getting atrocious speeds during primetime. By atrocious, I mean on Express (10mbps) I'm getting .2 - .5 mbps (200 - 500 kbps) after 6pm. Overnight it creeps back up to 5 or 6 mbps, then starts dropping again in the morning. Upload speed is unaffected.
Judging by the posts on dslreports.com, others in my neighbourhood (including Teksavvy customers) are having the exact same issue, and it has been narrowed down to being a problem with the hub at Dupont that clients were recently moved to.
Unsurprisingly, Rogers tech support has been aggravating, because 95% of the time they will not acknowledge that it is a network problem. Instead they insist on making you run the typical restart/tracert/ping/etc tests (and only a speed test will indicate that there's an issue) before escalating it to network engineers, who in turn close the ticket with a 'problem resolved' automated message despite the fact that the problem remains. And so you call back and they start over again with the testing and escalation and, you guessed it, problem resolved messages.
This happened to me 6 months ago and went through the exact same pattern for a month until they finally did maintenance at the node. Which fixed it and put my tests at exactly 10.0 mbps until this new problem started. So it is fixable, but noise must be made apparently.
I'm posting this here because at 200-500 kbps, most websites will still load so many people may not notice the cruddy speeds unless they're streaming or downloading. So i'm not sure how widespread the problem is, if it's affecting all levels of internet packages, or if we're being as vocal to Rogers as we can. So my suggestion, particularly if you're in the Dupont area, is to check, and if there's a problem call tech support, jump through the test hoops once (but let them know it's an area problem and the usual tests won't resolve anything), and then start insisting on reimbursement. It seems to me this will be the only effective way to truly get some attention paid to the matter, since tech support protocol just creates a circular waste of time. (oh and if they insist on sending a technician to your home, be forewarned that the tech can spend hours trying everything including swapping the modem and rewiring, and it won't make a difference.)
Thanks for reading, I feel like my only recourse is to get the word out so that their phones start ringing even more.
Judging by the posts on dslreports.com, others in my neighbourhood (including Teksavvy customers) are having the exact same issue, and it has been narrowed down to being a problem with the hub at Dupont that clients were recently moved to.
Unsurprisingly, Rogers tech support has been aggravating, because 95% of the time they will not acknowledge that it is a network problem. Instead they insist on making you run the typical restart/tracert/ping/etc tests (and only a speed test will indicate that there's an issue) before escalating it to network engineers, who in turn close the ticket with a 'problem resolved' automated message despite the fact that the problem remains. And so you call back and they start over again with the testing and escalation and, you guessed it, problem resolved messages.
This happened to me 6 months ago and went through the exact same pattern for a month until they finally did maintenance at the node. Which fixed it and put my tests at exactly 10.0 mbps until this new problem started. So it is fixable, but noise must be made apparently.
I'm posting this here because at 200-500 kbps, most websites will still load so many people may not notice the cruddy speeds unless they're streaming or downloading. So i'm not sure how widespread the problem is, if it's affecting all levels of internet packages, or if we're being as vocal to Rogers as we can. So my suggestion, particularly if you're in the Dupont area, is to check, and if there's a problem call tech support, jump through the test hoops once (but let them know it's an area problem and the usual tests won't resolve anything), and then start insisting on reimbursement. It seems to me this will be the only effective way to truly get some attention paid to the matter, since tech support protocol just creates a circular waste of time. (oh and if they insist on sending a technician to your home, be forewarned that the tech can spend hours trying everything including swapping the modem and rewiring, and it won't make a difference.)
Thanks for reading, I feel like my only recourse is to get the word out so that their phones start ringing even more.