DSLReports.com<\/a>, I’m happy to report that I solved the problem thanks to a fellow user who replied in 5 minutes with an answer. We’re now on a dual-band 802.11n wireless network, with the entire house on gigabit ethernet, with a media server, Netflix account, central file\/photo\/music repository, still all with pretty good internet speeds and a decent television setup.<\/p>\nThe moral of the story is to not expect much except frustration from Telus Support if you have even the slightest proclivity for technology.<\/p>\n
UPDATE<\/b> (May 15, 2011): I had to phone Telus again about our Optik bill. It turns out they raised the rates for TV and internet access by 2-3 dollars each, and I missed the small line item on a bill a few months ago explaining this would happen. Anyway, I thanked them for pointing out my mistake, and they still offered to give me one month free of internet access. So, while not necessary it was certainly appreciated. Thanks Telus!<\/p>\n
UPDATE #2<\/b> (June 30, 2011): My next statement actually back-billed me for 75% of the free month they gave us. Crazy! Details to follow.<\/p>\n
UPDATE #3<\/b> (July 2011): I had to talk to two different customer service reps, because the first one was convinced I didn’t understand the concept of pro-rated billing, belittling me by telling me it has already been explained to me and refusing to analyze the situation closely. The second rep recognized the problem was indeed theirs, fixed it and apologized.<\/p>\n
UPDATE #4<\/b> (October 2011): I called to upgrade from 15Mbps to 25Mbps. Ports available, but unable to provision, so I was told to call back in a month. Called back three days later and got the requested service. Speeds never increased, as I was checking daily\/hourly with Speedtest.net and a quiet home network. Called to check on status, all is well, wait a few more days. Again, no change in speed one week after Telus started billing me for it. More time spent on the phone, Telus admitted it was their mistake, transferred me a few times, and finally got the speed I was paying for. The whole ordeal was more headaches and wasted time. That said, the speed is consistent throughout the day, very low latency and otherwise great. Technically Telus has a lot of good things going for them, they just have a strange view towards customer service and ensuring things are done correctly.<\/p>\n
UPDATE #5<\/b> (Nov 2011): A couple months ago we were tempted by a free one-month trial of the movie channels which we were told we could cancel anytime. I canceled shortly after the first month, and on my latest bill I noticed they billed me up until today at $20\/month. I waited on hold for 75 minutes (which they were unapologetic about), I explained I was being improperly charged, waited another few minutes, and was informed that this apparently is the way they do it. Cancellations take effect on the next billing cycle, not when you tell them you want to cancel. Because I wasn’t explicitly told this when I called to cancel originally, the representative reversed the charge, and made a specific point of explaining this to me now so that their a** is covered should it come up again. Ignoring the fact that instant activations\/subscriptions and delayed billed-for cancellations is nothing but a cash grab setup favouring only Telus, I’ve seen first-hand that Telus often jumps to the assumption that their customer is wrong, placing the burden of proof on the end-user. I have wasted far too much time with this company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UPDATE: I’ve updated this post a few times with ongoing issues. Almost every month I have had to call Telus to correct a billing or service issue, most of which is detailed below up until April 2011, with subsequent issues at the bottom of this post. We subscribe to a great new internet service here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.spaceman.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/optik.png\" "\\"Telus")
It’s a brand new service utilizing new technology (IPTV via Microsoft’s MediaRoom<\/a>), and so I expect a certain amount of growing pains on Telus’ behalf as they figure out what works and scales up. Since we signed up six months ago in October 2010, we’ve had the following issues:<\/p>\n