A couple of weeks ago I read this post that talked about Harold discovering he was paying for aliant’s ultra high speed but not getting high speed. He discovered from other readers that they too were also having the same problem. So I tested out my speed and discovered that it was not the right connection for ultra, but more in line with regular high speed, 169 Mbps. So I called Aliant and they sent out a technician that flipped some switch and now I’m getting the correct speed, that showed up in a test today of 479 mbps.

One reader on Harold’s post commented;

Welcome to Aliant my friend. This is how it works, aliant has several packages.

High speed, 1.5 meg

and ultra, anywheres from 3 to 7 meg.

You pay for ultra, but they will NOT switch you to the ultra circuit until you complain about 15 times, then they click the button and you get your ultra speed.

For about amonth, when they switch it back to 1.5 thinking you won’t notice.

I’ve been an Aliant customer since vibe began, and have been an ultra customer since they started offering it. This is how it works, and I’m a tech for the government so I know what I’m doing, and I know exactly what is going on.

Aliant does not have the bandwidth to support the “dedicated” connections it sells, so it screws most people, and they don’t notice.

A few notice like us, and spend the rest of our lives fighting them to get the speed we are paying for.

The worst part of this, is that I’ve been paying for the ultra for a year and a half now and it never occurred to me to verify.  I suggest if you’re paying for ultra high speed, you check your speed. I will give the aliant tech people kudos though as they were quick to respond and very friendly.

I received a call last week from Rogers promoting Rogers Home Phone. It’s a new service in NB and while I’m glad that there is finally competition for local phone calls, I had decided to stay with Aliant for now. When Rogers first called me and told me about the benefits, I told them to give me a week to do some research. I called Aliant, talked to them about my existing package which combined local phone, internet and long distance. I decided that at this point I wasn’t ready to deal with the hassle of switching over my internet and I liked the bundled savings I was getting.

So this morning Roger’s calls me back to find out if I wanted to switch over. When I said, thank you, but no. She beligerently asked me “how come?”. Not a nice, “would you mind telling me your reasons?”. It was a literal annoyed tone of voice, of why on earth would you not switch over. Maybe she is partially paid on commission for those who switch over. All I know is that at that point, NO WAY would I think of switching over. I told her that I liked my bundle services, didn’t want the hassle of email change, etc. and just wanted to keep things as they are. She then went on to tell me that I could have a bundle too as I have rogers cable. I said yes, but I wanted to keep my full savings with Aliant with the full bundle and I wouldn’t have that if I switched. At which point, she then said that wasn’t very nice of Aliant to do that. Hello??? This was Rogers, where I can’t just say I want to have discovery channel on top of basic service unless I buy the bonus bundle. Rogers who a few years ago was villified in the news for charging people for services they hadn’t ordered.

While I certainly think both Aliant and Rogers need to do some work to reach a “feel good place” to the consumer, it sure doesn’t help Rogers having their sales reps treat potential customers like this. Treating me like I’m an idiot for choosing Aliant over Rogers, does not endear me to Rogers. Trying to make Aliant look like a bad company in light of Roger’s past practices does not endear me to Rogers. She could have been a lot more successful, if she had simply asked nicely why. Then said, thank you, if you would like to be notified of new services, do you mind sharing your email address? And then I would have been more open, and then maybe one day while reading on their e-newsletters, I might be in a different place and time and think, hey maybe I should switch over. But it will be a long while yet before I think of doing that.