Re: [OT] Bell Canada - service vs. abuse

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

. . .

I'm struck by the contrast between the quality of service I got vs. the
"service" - which seems more like abuse - that I hear about when Adam or
anim have to deal with *their* internet providers. Instead of getting
jerked around and having to always pay more, sometimes for less service,
I got more services for considerably less money.

Even the phone company or the cable company may bend over backwards for
a new customer. You were being romanced.

As an existing subscriber, you will soon learn that the honeymoon is
over.

Of course it isn't *always* that way in this country. Bell and its main
competitor Rogers used to be notorious for crappy service and
ever-increasing prices, just like American ISPs. But Bell at least seems
to have changed their attitude and is trying to win customers and keep
the ones they have. That's the way capitalism is *supposed* to work,
even if it doesn't always work out that way, especially in the
semi-monopolies like Internet and telecoms. (At least their
semi-monopolies in this country; in the US, not so much.)

Exactly.

Where I lived for close to twenty years, we had the bizarre experience
of being the first place in which the gas monopoly replaced underground
utilities (my block was literally first) and the hookup to the meter,
but just about the last to get anything like home *DSL from the local
Bell telephone company. Once there was competition, I routinely switched
back and forth between cable (I had an outdoor antenna and excellent
sight lines to the antenna array on top of Hancock (point at Hancock and
you also receive signals from Sears) and the Bell telephone company. At
one point, Bell gave me a new drop and did inside wiring work. My
apartment still had a screw terminal! I got them to put the DSL signal
on the unused pair in the two-pair inside wiring because my cordless phone
interferred with the signal.

I lost satellite television via cable distribution but just didn't care.

When the phone company pissed me off, I went back to cable. There was
another point I switched back to phone, but they wouldn't give me back
the DSL as they had done an FTTN installation in the block but it wasn't
the full-sized node delivering satellite via FTTN.

I switched back to cable another time. I guess it was cable when I left.