Thinking of signing up with Bell for you Internet service? Make sure you read the fine print. There are several tiers of service you can get. Essential 0.5 Mbit line, Essential Plus 2Mbit, Performance 7Mbit, Max10 10Mbit, Max16 which is 16Mbit. However you may have missed the part about “within acceptable speed range”. WHA? Yeah, they key thing about those packages is that you can get UP TO X Mbps speeds. Just because you’re subscribed to a 16Mbps package doesn’t mean you will actually receive those kinds of speeds, nor anything approaching those speeds.
According to the techs performance will vary depending on your location and distance from the Bell office. So long as you’re within the “acceptable performance range” no tech will come out to upgrade the physical line to your home. For the 10Mbps package that means 1.5Mbps to 10Mbps. So even if you’re on the most expensive package but far away from the Bell office, you will get crappy download speeds. You will get the exact same speeds if you were on a cheaper package. I don’t know about you but paying $52.95 for “up to 10Mbps” and getting a 5Mbps performance is simply unacceptable. So what are you paying for? Essentially a bigger download cap and that’s it.
I don’t mind paying more so long as the service I receive is “as advertised” or is an improvement on my previous service. This tiered system by Bell is just a scam, fooling people into believing they will receive “faster downloads” on a more expensive plan. Simply put, it’s false advertising.
Also the whole “live chat” with a Bell representative is irritating. I’ve chatted with several reps this past week and all of them do not know the meaning of customer service. I’ve had chat sessions closed while in mid chat by the rep and then when reconnecting and attempting to reconnect with the previous rep only to be told “that rep is currently busy”. Nice way to avoid the issue. Not only are they uninformed but they also gave quite a bit of attitude, like I should be “thankful” that I’m getting the speeds that I currently get with the impression that many other customers experience worse speeds than I do. This is not the right approach to customer service. If you’re a Bell Sympatico customer I urge you to switch services. Send a message to Bell that this is simply unacceptable.