Feb 19 2007
Bell Sympatico - Are you on drugs?
Those who forget history are bound to repeat it, so they say.
I think that Bell Canada is forgetting history.
Despite having lost a bundle of customers around 2003 (I was one of them) when they last tried to institute ridiculously low bandwidth caps on their DSL service, it seems like they’re trying it again.
At the time Bell thought that 10 gigs per month (total upstream and downstream) was “acceptable” even for their premium DSL customers using (at the time, their fastest offering at 1.5mbit) service.
When customers started to drop like flies and scurry to the competition (who conveniently failed to match these bitcaps despite initially saying they would) Bell quickly reversed their decision and tried to woo their lost customers back with increased speed.
It then became a game of hopscotch for a few years - ISP’s actually competed by offering more features and better speeds at more competitive prices versus the competition. Wow - what a novel idea! Competition!
Overall speeds came up, bandwidth caps either disappeared or were set reasonably high, and the consumers benefited for the most part.
But now we seem to be shifting into reverse.
You’d think that Bell Canada would have learned…but alas, they seem to be repeating history - I ran across a message on a forum this evening from a consumer complaining about an extra $9.75 “Total Bandwidth Activity Cost” item on her Bell Sympatico ISP bill.
Sure enough, despite the sneaky wording (no doubt aimed at confusing the customer) this turned out to be an extra charge for having gone over their plans bandwidth cap.
The cap in question on the customers DSL plan?
1 GIGABYTE. One lousy gig over the period of 30 days. Upstream, and downstream total.
Holy shit. Am I the only one who thinks that this is absolutely insane?
One of my frequent gripes about the cost of internet access in Canada focus’ on the ridiculously high cost of cellular mobile data in Canada, but this takes the cake - this is hardwired DSL service!
When the “ultra lite” DSL Service (read as “glorified dial up”) includes only 1 gig, and the “lite” DSL (read as “dial up on steroids”) only allows 2 gigs, I’m floored. Even at those low speeds I could still surpass that easily, as it seems that lots of people unsurprisingly are.
When the so called mainstream services (their “DSL Regular” and “DSL Ultra”) include 30 gigs each, I again shake my head. I can go through a gig or two in a single evening of surfing multimedia sites like Youtube, Google Video, etc.
30 gigs may work for some - it certainly won’t work for all, or most I’d venture to guess.
My current ISP allows me 100 gigs per month of bandwidth on a 7mbit connection, which is fair in my opinion, and allows me freedom to use my connection every month with little concern - I’ve never broke that limit.
But 30 gigs? Who are they kidding?
I was actually considering switching back to Bell DSL recently (part of my fight with Future Shop) but this puts the nail in that coffin - it’s not even worth pursing any longer.
The state of Telecom in Canada is honestly screwed.
We’re going backwards it seems, not forwards.
You poor people who have to surf with the fear that you might exceed your cap and get “billed” for it.
Rob “capless and lovin it” in the maritimes…
I got a surprise $30 extra charge for bandwidth on this months bill. At least Telus calls me to notify before sodomizing me further with their outrageous billing practices. I have been really happy with Bell Sympatico until now, taking advantage of the ‘dry dsl’ service without a telephone line. However, I’m going to start looking at the competition now and most likely will switch.
Hmm, interesting - what cap do the place on Dryloop now - 30 gigs as well?
Please be sure to tell them when you cancel *why* your doing so - once again Bell needs to be reminded that their foolish business practices are not reasonable and are going to cost them customers.
Seems that people who had a contract before this went in effect are essentially, uneffected… Me for example
Your downloads: 21.70 GB
Your uploads: 12.64 GB
Total bandwidth usage: 34.34 GB
Usage exceeding your plan: 0.00 GB
Billing rate for additional bandwidth usage 0
Additional bandwidth charges: $0
Wow this has got to be the single most obvious cash grab from Bell. I’m telling you as someone who works and knows a contracting company working for Bell on their servers.
They have plenty of usage space, in fact this is causing problems on usage process daemons in the billing contracting system since the have more volume.
I can only say that if this is the case. I’m switching to Teksavvy.
I work with Bell in my profession. I know all the problems of the bell sympatico servers and billing system and I’m not renewing my bell sympatico service subscription.
I have no idea what “bandwidth” usage charges are, but my bill this month for the first time says $9.00 for bandwidth usuage. I’m just a guy who surfs the net. If there were charges over and above my monthly bill, they should have informed me when I signed up about 8 months ago. Where can I get phone service AND internet service without dealing with Bell Canada anymore?
My mother who is not tech savvy got billed 40 dollars extra on her bell account. She is retired and likes to look at Google movies and other Media. She types with one finger and only got into computers 4 years ago. She doesn’t know the difference between a image that is 300k and a movie that is 1 gig. She has no way of selecting the amount of bandwidth she wants to use. If bell wants to use these billing practices then they should provide a browser plug-in that estimates the price of loading a page. Until they do that the idea of charging all users based on unrealistic bandwidth caps is really a rip off.
Atleast Bell tells you your bandwith allowance per month, with Comcast, you either don’t go over, or your service gets shut off….
We have Sympatico DSL Basic, and our total monthly charges are $35. But on average every month, we are charged $30 more for total bandwidth activity.
They never explain or expand on the extra costs… and as far as I know, we were never told what our limit actually is. Perhaps they mentioned it in a letter awhile ago, which my parents would have read and thrown away because they have no clue what it actually means =.=
So what ISP are you using? Because I would very much like to look into that lol
If your going to pay $65 for a slow DSL connection to begin with you may as well switch over to the Rogers Extreme service (What I use here at home) for $52/Month.
6 meg downstream, almost 1 meg up.
100 gigs bandwidth cap, as well….much more reasonable.
Be sure to tell Bell (when you cancel) exactly why your doing so. Perhaps eventually they’ll reconsider their assinine bitcaps.
No bandwidth cap here, been with bell for a couple years now. Rarely under 100gb/month, no probs.
I am with Rogers Extreme with the 100GB cap, I exceed it almost every month but they haven’t contacted me.
Bell Sympatico seems to be doing this to all their new customers, I have had internet for 2 months now at the quoted price of 19.95 and have a charge for 30.00 for bandwidth, the person at sympatico said they could not help me even when I told them I was not told of any extra charges. What a bunch of scam artists!!! I’d rather suffer with dial up , but they make you sign a contract you cant get out of.
Kickin it with Bell High Speed Edition UNCAPPED.. Unlimited bandwidth! It’s for new customers and they do advise you whether to your face or in the contract it IS your responsibility to understand what you are signing BEFORE you sign it.. Just like a car lease or loan.. You wouldn’t sign THOSE without understanding first.. would you??
I just hate them. Plain and simply. Once had to inquire myself for a deal (from 52$ to 29$!!) wich lasted for 12 month.
After this, I wasn’t made aware by them it was over, and they now ask me 460$. Why do they rush to me to sell me Cell phones but never do anything about sympatico customer services? Because they like to sodomize you until you realize it, sucking your ass off it’s money.
I’ve been a loyal customer for over 5 years and feel cheated. They won’t even accept that I pay them this damn 460$ monthly (100$/month). They lost a member there. I wonder where I should go now?
Riding on Basic DSL, I regularly get bills that go $25 over the monthly amount for overuseage even though I do not go near YouTube any more. Sympatico offers 2gigs per sec bandwith Rogers seems to offer 60 gigs but a lower upload speed for the same $$. From a $$ perspective if this is true I will go with ROgers - but how much slower are they?
I Have been with bell tree years this is the first $21.00 I have been charged ..I cant afford to be on line no more.why charge us ?there going to lose me and a lot more.Lets try the elsewhere.
I had bell sympatico high speed and to save money I asked them to downgrade me to the $25/- highspeed lite (?) from the faster highspeed that I have had with them for the past seven years.
Now I got billed the $25/-
PLUS $30 for bandwith activity…
It is about sympatico, they charging me 10$ more as bandwidth activity cost , this is crazy a total of 50 $ for abnormal Internet service this is crazy i am searching of another provider in Montreal
maybe some one know a good deal
Here’s my story.
Called 3 months ago to cancel my service. Said I found another company cheaper with same “unlimited” deal
Bell Rep tells me they will match for same “unlimited” deal if I sign 12 month contract
3 months go by
I get a bill double what I usually get. Reason: I HAVE A LIMIT ON MY INTERNET BANDWIDTH
I call Bell to complain stating they breached the contract. They tell me too bad…and if I cancel they will charge me $100 penalty fee.
BELL = CROOKS. Don’t trust anything they say and get EVERYTHING in writing if you decide to sign with them
I was going threw my phone bills which my wife always pays and found these bandwidth charges. So I contacted Bell and informed them that i was never informed about the bandwidth change so they gave me a $90.00 credit on the three months bills with the charges on them. My problem is I signed up for a two year contract about six months ago. At the time I signed if you broke the contract you were subject to penalty charges which I assume still applies. I will have to consult with a lawyer to see if I can get out of the contract due to Bell changing the terms of that contract with out my consent.
This is crazy, we have had nothing but trouble with bell and when you call to talk to them there are just ignorent and can’t understand them.
we are being bill 30.00 EXTRA a month and I never noticed. I just paid the bills when they came in, then I noticed this. I didn’t know nothing about bandwidth because we were from Nova Scotia and we had no limit on bandwidth and our high speed ( through Eastlink )was kick ass…speed 15 now we are in ontario and we get speed 1 or if we are lucky 2…what a difference.
so just to break it down we pay ALOT more monthly payments to bell and we get ALOT less. Cannot believe it and we have no choice but to deal with it, because there is no other company around here but bell.
BUT I will be double checking this week…this is insane.
Hi Tara;
Have you Checked to see if TekSavvy is available in your area? They are a DSL reseller that do not impose restrictions like Bell.
[...] what are we going to do in Toronto with hight defenition videos when both Rogers Wireless and Bell put caps of 60gb for internet traffic. I mean 60 gb should be enough for 15 movies - assuming you don’t do anything else online [...]
I just got charged two $30 charges for overusage… I was on contract for 3 years (extending every year) and nobody told me this feb that I was going to be charged for extra bandwidth… I hate telecom in canada we’re worse then a 3rd world country… i hope that bell and rogers burn in hell…
we’re paying more for high speed then 10 years ago… i remember rogers was $45 and was faster then it is now… its brutal
The idea here is not to see this as a download limit but a bandwith limit.
If I have 20gig per month and my services is advertised at say 5mb/s for 30$/month then I don’t really have 5mb/s for 30$ a month.
The fact is that I cannot take advantage of the 5mb/s because after 10 hours or so I would bust my limit. In essence:
20Gig=20,000,000 bytes
5mb=625bytes
20,000,000/625bytes/s = 32000 seconds or 8.8 hours.
So for 30$ a month I get 8.8 hours of 5mb/s service.
Now flip that:
one month equals: 720hours or 2592000seconds. Every 720 hours I get 20,000,000 gigs. I thus should not download faster then:
20,000,000/2592000=7.7bytes per second or 61b/second or 0.061mb/s
There Bell will cap now limits a 20gig/month user to a 0.061mb.s service should this user choose to use his service for the entire month!
I have just got charged $28.50 for “Total Bandwidth Activity Cost”. I am thinking about changing to some other ISP — I guess it’s one way of putting pressure on Bell. Let’s make some noise about it so that Bell notices it.
I have also had charges of $30 extra each month for bandwidth. Somewhat retarded since I barely used my computer last month and didn’t even dare go on Youtube or download anything. Anyway, my deal with the devil (BELL) is now over as I have changed over to Teksavvy. They offer a great package for DSL High Speed (200 gig cap) for $30/month. For those of you who aren’t having problems (new customers and long-time customers), just you wait. They’ll find some way to get your money. If you don’t change now, don’t say we didn’t tell you so. I wonder how Bell employees can wake up every morning and not commit suicide (Damn crooked bastards!!) I hope Bell’s business goes down the frick’n toilet; they deserve it. I’m going to recommend Teksavvy to all my friends and relatives. As soon as my phone contract is up with Bell, I’m changing that too. I vow, as long as I’m breathing, that I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER be a Bell customer again.
I just read that Bell and Telus are going to start charging for incoming text messages. Their reasoning is that text messaging is increasing so much, it’s costing them more to handle all the traffic.
I don’t think that’s right. Charge the person sending them, sure, but incoming? You don’t necessarily have control over who sends them to you. I would hope that there is an option to block incoming texts.
Apparently, Rogers isn’t planning on going this same route… yet…
Just called bell to complain about the $30 a month activity charge and mentioned the Rogers Extreme plan. They counter offered the Max10 service which is apparently 100gb/month with 10gb up and down on fibreoptic cable for $50/m so I’m going to give it a shot.
Bell’s bullshit contact,customer service and cancellation policy will lead customers to stay away from Bell and finally company will collapse for sure in next five years.
Okay, I too was billed an extra $30 this month for Bandwidth Activity. What does this mean? Is it going to happen every month now? Online, we’ve been tracking our usage and it SAID we were only $6 over. Help?! I’m SO confused.
I hate Bell, everytime I load in to see my bill I know they are going to pull some stupid fee out of their asses. Like ok, I gettting charged $2.00 on modem rental fee. Suddently this fee increases more that 200% $ 3.95 wow, make the math. For at least 10 000 people, that would be $39, 500!! Way to make money bell.
Now this RANDOM bandwidth charge appears on my bill!! I am so sick of this!!!
Basically every month I’ve had to spend at least 1/2 an hour in the phone, cause they keep screwing up and signing me up for contracts to which I neve agreed to, and end up speaking with Bell “managers” which are extremely rude.
THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!!!!
[...] hate the schemes, despite broadband industry propaganda that suggests customers didn’t mind paying more for [...]
I have been dealing with bell for ages. My daughter is a major downloader and she uses itunes alot. She uses a Mac book and Sometimes it has a mind of it;s own and automatically downloads it’s updates for the system. I have bell for my business an it is a fair price for business uses. But for home uses it’s a SCAM. We were on dial-up for 3 yrs and then we bought an upgrade to Basic lite. My daughter went over the 1 g downloading and then we got an extra 40$ on my bill. We upgraded to the next up and they are still getting my daughter for downloading, when she needs to get her documents and such for school. I’m waiting for my contract to expire in the next year, i have already called rogers, and i am upgrading, and saving 30$! a month. Yet My family in B.C pays less than me a month. If the over charging wasn’t enough, they call my house hounding me to upgrade to the services higher up. And i know i can not get in writing. It’s all a scam. Bell improve your services. When American companies come into Canada this company is going to plummet.
I cant believe what I am reading. I thought it was just me. I have had a disgusting performance from Bell about their bandwith charges. $50 per month for nothing. They wont talk to you and they insist on putting charges on your account, refuse to take them off and they threaten you. There is no answer you just have to go somewhere else. In my case they lost a lot of business. I took my cell phones, internet the lot to another company. My guess is they will go out of business eventually but it will take a while because they are so big. What you cant do is let them abuse you