Canadian internet access gets shittier

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Canadian internet access gets shittier

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

thexerox123 posted:

Has Netflix Canada rolled out the Instant Queue among everyone in Canada yet, or is it still just a random, select thing?

I'm currently on Netflix Customer Service Chat with... well, I hope it's just a horrible chatbot, because otherwise, this person has some basic reading comprehension issues.

Doubt it was an AI bot. You really expect a customer service rep to be able to tell you "why" management decided to do things they way they do? I'm guessing you've never had a customer service job

I see why you were totally dissatisfied with the answer he gave you, I agree its just a bunch of BS that doesn't really say anything. But I'm 100% sure the reason he gave you that wishy washy unhelpful answer is that he has no idea how netflix decides who gets access to the feature you're asking about, no idea why it's not everyone and no way to find out. You're never going to get an answer to this kind of question by contacting customer support at any big company.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2013 04:36

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:24

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

Vintersorg posted:

Shaw seems to have loving collapsed in Winnipeg.

I guess Shaw's network is pretty inconsistent depending on where you live. Cause I have a friend in downtown Winnipeg who is getting only about half what he pays for - he was on their 20mbps plan and got about 10 on speed tests so he asked them to change him down to the 10mbps plan and suddenly he was getting about 5mbps on speed tests. lovely.

However, I also live in Winnipeg in the Crestview area myself, I am on the 25/2.5 plan and I am getting >99% of those speeds on speed tests and have great real world performance. I sometimes stream real time video of my starcraft 2 games on twitch.tv (I'm a huge dork) at 1828kbps and I have no lag issues doing that while I play online, stream looks great too.

So with my connection being so fast and solid but other people having poo poo experiences, unfortunately it seems like in Winnipeg right now it really matters where exactly you live. For anyone moving or considering a change it is probably best to talk to other people in the same building or on the same block if at all possible, to figure out which ISP is better in your building/on your street. Cause I've heard plenty of horror stories about MTS and they seem like an all around lovely company, but it sounds like in some areas Shaw may be even worse.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 03:52

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

A c E posted:

It was my insurance company. They tried to increase my rates, I decided to cancel before the rates would be applied. Either the broker or someone at the insurance company hosed up because they tried to charge me after my policy ended. 3 times within 4 days ($120 of NSF charges, which was great). I spent hours arguing with PC, my broker and the insurance company and everyone single one of them was useless and blamed the others.
It doesn't matter either way, PC should have helped me. They could have easily changed my account number or done anything, but all they told me was basically your SOL, pay our fees anyways. I switched to RBC and they were amazed PC did nothing to help.

This was 4 or so years ago, so maybe they are better. I would never go back to them though.

Edit: Rewording.

Speaking as an employee of a different major canadian bank, I really doubt they are able to do what I bolded. You'd very likely need to open a new account and close the old one. Which does accomplish the same thing, so I guess that's a fairly minor technicality. And I agree they should've advised you to do that in your situation. It's the advice I would've given you after hearing that you had tried to resolve it by speaking directly with the insurance company and had found that they were too incompetent. I'm not sure why you didn't just do it yourself though, when you obviously realized on your own that changing your account number would resolve your situation. Maybe PC gives you a hard time about opening an additional account when you already have one since they're no-fees? I'm not sure about that but the Big Five banks definitely don't mind.

Honestly if you called a Big Five bank and told them your story, whether they'd just say you're SOL or be creative/smart enough to suggest something like opening a new account would depend entirely on how good the employee you talk to is and that's luck of the draw at any big company. Again I do agree that telling you to get yourself a new account number would be good advice. It'd definitely be "plan B" though, after the best option being to tell your insurance company to get their poo poo together. Really those two options are your only possible solutions to this situation at any canadian bank though. Even the "plan B" of a new account number is pretty rarely necessary as generally companies doing pre-authorized debits are good about sticking to the terms of the agreement they have with you and respecting cancellations etc. Reason being they know that under CPA regulations, any pre-authorized debit that was not legitimately allowed for by an agreement you made with them (and is actually paid ie not returned NSF) can be refunded by the bank within 90 days of the payment if the client informs their bank that the payment was not legit. The insurance company charging you after you cancelled is of course the actual root cause of your problem, is totally unacceptable and definitely indicates that your insurance company kinda sucks. It was probably incompetence/a mistake on their part, but it is A Thing that happens occasionally.

# ¿ May 13, 2014 21:16

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

Wow we really need start or teksavvy or SOMETHING like that in Winnipeg. This is going to suck rear end. At least MTS has apparently upgraded their wiring in my building since I last checked, so I can get their 50/5. That's probably what I'll end up going with, don't think I want to stay with Shaw after the changes. It feels like I'm choosing the least lovely of a bunch of very lovely options though. MTS as a company is just all around terrible. But it seems like after the Shaw pricing changes happen, the MTS offers will become a slightly better value rather than slightly worse as they currently are

# ¿ Dec 20, 2014 03:46

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

Siochain posted:

I live in a northern community of like 10k people. There's no place to rent anything.

For what it's worth, here in Winnipeg with like 700k I'm pretty sure there are no places left to rent anything. Blockbuster and rogers are both gone and the one independent I knew about is gone.

Also blurays don't come out until months or years after stuff has aired on TV/online streaming services so it's truly absurd to suggest renting or buying blurays is somehow an alternative to cable/satellite/streaming services.

Part of me wants to say the TV industry will learn from the music industry and give you decent options to buy stuff online eventually but then I remember that the most popular option for buying music is iTunes which is an absolutely awful experience to use and is locked down as gently caress so although it's still better than any option that exists for TV... I think progress on this front is going to be slow. (Yes I know you can buy TV shows on itunes for download but as far as I know that's stuff that is out on bluray, so doesn't apply to the conversation about "cord cutting" and recent/current content anyway)

Col.Kiwi fucked around with this message at 20:51 on May 8, 2015

# ¿ May 8, 2015 20:47

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

shadow puppet of a posted:

the second was re-bagging returned products for sale as new, especially if the customer return was due to defective goods.

Yo does anyone have any actual proof of any retailer doing this? It seems completely pointless, the retailer has essentially nothing to gain. If an item is defective and within the distributors defective exchange timeframe, the retailer sends it back to the distributor. If it is outside that timeframe the retailer refuses the return and the customer RMAs to the manufacturer, or the retailer does that on the customers behalf. It's not like the retailer has to just eat the cost of defective items, every computer & electronics store in north america would be out of business if the industry worked like that as margins are WAY too low for that to work.

The only thing the retailer has to gain by trying to resell a defective item they've returned is they save the time and effort of sending it back to their distributor, and a really tiny amount of shipping cost. And I mean truly tiny, cause they don't ship one item by itself they ship them in batches AND retailers all have volume discounts from the shipping companies they use. So overall it just does not make sense. This is all based on my experience working in a canadian computer and electronics retailer. A small one, not any of the retail chains that have been mentioned in this discussion.

Now selling used stuff as "new" is a whole different story, that would be an effective way to make money if you're an rear end in a top hat.

Col.Kiwi fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Sep 26, 2015

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 01:56

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

infernal machines posted:

What do you consider proof?

I have first hand (and yet completely anecdotal) experience with this ...

Hm well its super stupid for the reasons I explained, but I guess I can believe people would do it anyway as people do much stupider poo poo. If you are using sketchy/lovely distributors that will fight you, and/or you're just not really thinking stuff through it could seem like a good plan. In reality it's always going to cost you more because in most cases if the item is truly defective then the same item is just going to get returned over and over until you finally stop reselling it or finally some idiot buys it and doesn't start using it until their return period is over. AND you're going to ruin your reputation as a retailer in the process.

Again though people do dumber poo poo so I guess it probably happens

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 02:11

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

woops quote isnt edit

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 02:12

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

infernal machines posted:

Yeah, counting on business to be wholly rational and think of the long term costs of their decisions probably isn't going to get you very far.

Yeah. I dunno why I'd even talk like people always think long term and make completely rational decisions, that is powerfully naive.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 02:15

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

shadow puppet of a posted:

pricing contract with the distributor
...
prices fixed at the negotiated rate.

Huh? This isn't even a thing. Not in canadian computer retail. I double checked with some of my colleagues who have been in the industry 10+ years and they've never heard of any kind of contract or agreement made between a distributor and retailer that sets pricing in writing. That is simply not how the industry works. Most distribution agreements don't even obligate you to keep buying from the distributor, if you get sick of them you can just stop ordering from them at any time. Of course you might not be able to get the product in question from anybody else in your country. However for items that are available from multiple distributors, it is common for retailers to order from distributor A one month and distributor B the next month depending on pricing at the time.

Since you already said you don't actually have any experience in the industry and this conversation is a real derail I'll just leave it at that. Again I do accept though that some retailers must put defective items back on the shelf even though it is not a rational thing to do. You just can't argue with facts that it's in their best interest though.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2015 22:14

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

That sounds pretty different from what he was speculating to be the case, but that is interesting. You say it stopped a long time ago though so that explains why my experience is different in the present day and why my colleagues have heard of nothing like that in the last decade. I did kinda forget (until I scrolled up just now) that this derail started with somebody talking about getting defective items sold to them as new years and years ago in the early 2000s. If some retailers had a totally different relationship with distributors back then, perhaps they were actually rationally motivated to do that kind of poo poo back then. Whereas I was only ever arguing it makes no sense for anybody to do it today the way the industry works today, which is true but kind of a seperate point.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2015 01:17

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

37th Chamber posted:

If it's 2.4ghz I can almost promise you that is your speed issue right there.

This is a hell of a stretch, 2.4ghz wifi works fine for lots of people. Works fine for me including HD netflix and nice fast file transfers of big files. I'm even using a cheap modem/router combo my ISP provided. There are a million things that can go wrong with wifi, and poor wifi performance is generally some kind of interference or other environmental issue. 2.4 is more susceptible to various types of interference but it works just fine for many people. How well wifi works for somebody depends much more on their environment than what equipment they have, other than truly garbage equipment.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2016 18:43

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:24

Col.Kiwi: Dec 28, 2004; And the grave digger puts on the forceps...

37th Chamber posted:

2.4Ghz is fine if you have good kit and don't live in an apartment/condo/townhouses, otherwise good luck getting a channel that isn't completely congested or filled with every day noise.

I do live in an apartment complex, but in a suburb not in a super dense urban area. My HTPC can see 9 peoples wireless SSIDs including my own, so not that many compared to some peoples environments. My equipment is pretty modest. I have an ISP provided modem + router combo and I'm using the built in wifi in a cheap mini desktop (asus vivopc). As I said netflix in HD works great for me and local file transfers are nice and fast. There is only about 30 feet between my router and HTPC, and the two walls in between are just drywall. So yeah, it depends on the environment. My environment is quite typical though for a lot of people who live in suburban areas which is why many people use 2.4ghz equipment without problems. Don't get me wrong, 5ghz has advantages and if you can get dual band equipment for a modest price increase it is worth it. But a lot of people are doing just fine on 2.4.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2016 19:15

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Canadian internet access gets shittier