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Farnsworth Review by Farnsworth
UPDATED: 138 days ago
member for 4.3 years, 454 visits, last login: a few hours ago
 Kingston,ON
 Contract price not specified.
 "Reliable connection, high speed"
 "Bandwidth caps"
 "Not for you if you are a moderate to heavy downloader."
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After being a customer since the Wave days, I'll be leaving Cogeco soon due to the bandwidth cap. I hate to do it as the speed and reliability are great but it's too much of a pain to have to check my usage constantly.
Update - Canceled Cogeco today - now with Teksavvy
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urbanriot Review by urbanriot
UPDATED: 145 days ago
member for 5.1 years, 1740 visits, last login: a few hours ago
St Catharines,ON
$99 per month (12 month contract)
"Almost always available, 100+ day retension newgroup support, amazing speeds, and excellent support."
"Strictly enforced bitcaps! Issues scheduling tech calls. Slower in dense, older infrastructure areas. Usage based billing."
"Good ISP for casual browsers and email checkers. BAD for downloaders, unless they pay for the $100 business package."
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I've been using Cogeco's service since before their name was attached, for at least 11 years and I've typically had an all decent experience all throughout the Niagara Peninsula. The following encompasses my most recent four years with their service:
Cogeco has one serious, negative flaw:
- a strictly enforced, draconian bitcap of 100GB on a $70 a month pro account. What's the point of having 16 Mbps if you can only do 100 gigs in a month before you're locked out?
Cogeco has many positive points:
- excellent torrent downloading speeds, often reaching 1.6MBps on the download. There's some speculation that Cogeco is throttling P2P / torrent uploads, but I'm receiving decent speeds.
- excellent newsgroup support that's far better than any other ISP in our region; 6 day retention with subscription support for many binary groups.
- a strong team of employees that genuinely care about their users
- local knowledgable tech support that speak a clear and understandable English who are available 24/7
- a number of dedicated employees who take personal time to help people on broadband reports
- some highly motivated, dedicated and skilled on-site techs
Cogeco's negative points:
- in the past year, a number of profit making changes have been made to Cogeco which seriously disenfranchised them from their loyal and long term customer base
- inflexibility in scheduling on-site support calls outside of large cities
- a few on-site and contracted techs who aren't so skilled
- often the phone support personal are not aware of issues that they should be aware of, to better help customers often which result in...
- an inability to repair or diagnose issues that clearly exist outside your home and don't require service calls
- official documents have recently surfaced that Cogeco was throttling torrents since 2001, despite employees directly insisting that they were not utilizing such hardware. They now claim the hardware was used for monitoring and not throttling. It's unknown what the real truth is.
- Usage based billing if you go over your cap, which is ridiculously low.
Followup comments:  
DrDog
VIP
join:2006-07-28
Fort Erie, ON | on site techs have you had someone around other than me? I don't try and miss calls. If you are booked and in my lineup, you will get looked at | |
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urbanriot
join:2004-10-18
St Catharines, ON
 ·Cogeco Cable
| Re: on site techs I'd actually written the above long before you came out; previously I'd had horrible experiences with calls and scheduling. I had to leave for a family emergency for 10 mins once, and while I was on my way back, the guy couldn't wait when I was 2 mins away. The Cogeco representative told me, "Sorry, he's in a rush and can't wait." And I'm thinking, "what rush, if I wasn't there, he would have been working on my problem not rushing wherever he had to rush to."
I'll re-read and correct when I get home tonight, I'd hastily edited it to include my recent frustrations with the newly enforced bitcap so it might have some old review. | |
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urbanriot
join:2004-10-18
St Catharines, ON
·Cogeco Cable
| said by DrDog :
have you had someone around other than me? I don't try and miss calls. If you are booked and in my lineup, you will get looked at
Updated my review. No, you're one of Cogeco's best assets and it definitely wasn't directed at you. Unfortunately, I went through a few other people before you were able to fix things up and I might have kept my digital cable TV if the other guy was able to fix the picture dropouts last year. | |
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wopr Review by wopr
UPDATED: 149 days ago
member for 8.8 years, 2159 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Belleville,ON
$47 per month
 about 2 days
"Fast"
"Caps"
"If you can't get a provider that doesn't implement caps, you should try Cogeco."
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Had Sympatico DSL for over three (3) years, stuck at the 1 mbit limit because of the distance to the CO. Now I have Cogeco Cable and 6 times the speed for the same price. Nice.
---
2009. With all the prices changes and now bandwidth caps, I would not consider them competitive anymore. I sure hope my power company doesn't start implementing caps.
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jokach Review by jokach
Posted: 149 days ago
member for 149 days, 1 visits, last login: 143 days ago
undisclosed location
Contract price not specified.
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Beware - 12 days to have someone come inspect poor lines
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a_large_rock Review by a_large_rock
UPDATED: 152 days ago
member for 6.3 years, 911 visits, last login: a few hours ago
Markham,ON
$65 per month (12 month contract)
about 30 days
"It works soemtimes"
"Horrible service, packet loss, crippling caps, outrageous usage fees, crappy HD"
"Its stepping back 10 years in technology; but with an extra cost"
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Horrible service, packet loss of %15 is acceptable, crippling caps, outrageous usage fees, high price, customer support is useless, crappy HD quality, audio cuts out all the time
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dgorgan Review by dgorgan
UPDATED: 154 days ago
member for 6.8 years, 37 visits, last login: 62 days ago
Kingston,ON
$55 per month
"High speed"
"Cripplingly low bandwidth caps, Painful billing once caps are exceeded"
"Avoid Cogeco!"
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Cogeco has several high-speed packages, but they have recently implemented usage caps and billing on their plans.
The plan I'm currently subscribed to (High Speed Internet Standard) has a ridiculously low cap of 60gb up/down a month. Beyond that, you'll pay $1.50 per gigabyte transferred. There's a stated limit of $30 of charges for usage over the cap, but there are still questions about having service cut off after exceeding the cap.
If my hard drive were to crash, I would need at least 40gb to re-download all the content (Steam purchases) and patches (WoW, Windows security updates) that I have today, and that number is going up. That would block out any use of the streaming video I would want to watch or buying any downloadable software using digital distribution.
Simply put, the transfer cap is too low to keep up with the future of the online marketplace. Avoid Cogeco if you plan on actually using your InterNet connection.
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neko Review by neko
UPDATED: 155 days ago
member for 3.2 years, 516 visits, last login: a few hours ago
St Catharines,ON
$57 per month (month by month)
about 7 days
"Fast speed, very reliable uptime."
"Download caps limit your ability to enjoy your fast connection."
"If you watch video podcasts, download TV/Movies then beware of the bandwidth caps on the service."
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[EDIT: June 21st, 2009]
So Cogeco are now instituting overage charges, of around $1.50 per GB, that you go over the low cap of 60Gb per month. And you will be disconnected until the end of the month if you go over that cap, as well as being charged.
I am still so happy that I decided to ditch Cogeco, & go with the best Internet provider in Canada: Teksavvy.
[/EDIT: June 21st, 2009]
I got Cogeco cable installed when I moved into my new apartment a few months ago. I ordered high speed standard which has 10Mbit download speed. I get around 9Mbit actual speed from newsgroups & servers. I am happy with the speed. I had a billing issue, but it was resolved quickly & without incident to my satisfaction. Haven't needed tech support.
I thought I had a fast unlimited connection: I was wrong. Cogeco has implemented bandwidth caps at 60Gb for high speed standard. There is the option to upgrade to a higher speed tier with 16Mbit download speed & a 100Gb download cap, but I find that I do not need 16Mbit speed & 100Gb is way too low a cap, what with the digital media available on the internet, Itunes, Joost, Miro, Audible.com, Azureus Vuze, High Def video podcasts, mefeedia.com, Audiobook downloads, etc.
The only option for more bandwidth is to upgrade to a commercial/business tier, clearly not aimed at residential customers; I think this is ludicrous that there is no higher capped service other than high speed pro, for residential customers.
So if you check your e-mail, surf some websites & don't do much downloading, then Cogeco cable service is fine. If you use new media & download TV shows/Movies from Itunes, Joost, Miro, High Def video podcasts, etc, then you may hit the bandwidth caps.
Followup comments: metrotitan
join:2008-11-21 | Disconnect? >> And you will be disconnected until the end of the month if you go over that cap
Are you sure about that? | |
| | 
neko
All Hail Canada
Premium
join:2006-08-11
canada
 ·Callcentric
·Cogeco Cable
·Future Nine Corpor..
 ·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: Disconnect? I got that information directly from the users on the Cogeco Forum, discussing the issue; but, yes. That's the policy.
If you go over X amount bandwidth per month, you get shepherded to a web page telling you you have gone over allotted bandwidth, & to call in to customer support.
Even after paying overage charges, you will not be able to get back to normal, & continue downloading lots. You may get 1GB or so just to surf. You option is to either upgrade to a higher tier with higher caps, or accept it.
After the month ends, the meter gets reset, & you are online again.
I would say, go ask in the Cogeco Forum, the users there will give further information on the exact procedure.
--
...virtue gives you heraldry. | |
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chdude3 Review by chdude3
UPDATED: 156 days ago
member for 6.3 years, 442 visits, last login: 7 days ago
Oakville,ON
$48 per month
"Decent speed and reliability."
"Rising costs, caps, no cheaper tiers, occasional outages."
"Switch, unless you can't get reliable DSL."
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I've been on Cogeco since I moved into a new neighbourhood. I signed on with them simply because DSL wasn't (and still isn't) available. And I'm so glad I did. The speed has bumped from 1.5 to 3 to 5Mbps, and I've only experienced one service outage of a few minutes one morning. The service just keeps getting better, without getting more expensive. I'm a diehard Cogeco fan now.
Updates; even further speedbumps have been great, as well as better compatability with Xbox Live. Only one outage of any significant length, which wasn't even that long (30 minutes). Essentially still no complaints with the service!
Updates; Several short outages. Costs are continually rising now, and Cogeco don't offer a reasonable internet package between Lite and Standard. They also don't offer anything except the all-singing all-dancing VOIP package at a fixed price. Seriously considering changing some services; only thing holding us back is that we can't get DSL. I'm still generally satisfied with the service (as opposed to previously impressed), and getting very dissatisfied with the costs.
Updates; Still generally satisfied with the service, but now pretty upset about the bandwidth and forthcoming charges. Costs have gone up for improvements to the ISP that I don't find beneficial. HiDef has had some audio dropouts as well.
Updated; UBB *AND* a price increase? You've got to be kidding, Cogeco. I'd ask whether you could show any MORE contempt for your customers, but I'm afraid you'd actually take me up on that.
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sidewinder74 Review by sidewinder74
Posted: 160 days ago
member for 1 year, 4 visits, last login: 151 days ago
Freelton,ON
Contract price not specified.
"Very Fast"
"Bad Customer relation. Charged $12 for 5G over limit (HiSpLite) after 8 years not going over on HiSpeed."
"Looking for job and new provider"
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After loosing my job in March, they offered me HiSpeedLite for $20. with 10 gig cap. Today the called and said I was still getting Hi speed standard and would immediately switch me to Hi speed Lite (10 gig cap). Immediately got an email saying I was over my limit and would charge me $12. Since it was their mistake that I was still on high speed, I was unknowingly up to 15 Gigs. After paying $55 per month for over 7 years, and never going more than half their allowed limit, they will ding me for 5 Gig over the limit. No explaining would change their mind. Why should I pay for their mistakes. I could see it if I was always close to their limit, but that wasn't the case. Nice way to treat a steady customer. They should go after the abusers....
Followup comments: 
jeisenberg
New Year's Eve
join:2001-07-06
Windsor, ON
·Cogeco Cable
·Cogeco Voip
| I wish you good luck on the job front I'm sorry to hear about your job loss. And the bonehead move by Cogeco really is the icing on the cake. I've been a Cogeco "fan boy" for more than 10 years, since I've been very satisfied with their products and support.
But lately, their price increases are testing my loyalty. I don't worry about caps, but their pricing is really not very friendly lately, and I'm considering a move myself.
I wish you all the best. | |
| | sidewinder74
join:2008-11-20
Freelton, ON
·Cogeco Cable
| Re: I wish you good luck on the job front Thanks, just signed up with Teksavvy. Quick delivery of modem, fast phone help. Not blazingly fast, but at $29.95 for 200 gigs, it's fast enough! Getting close to 3Megs upload. Surprisingly, I just got called back to work. Didn't expect that till at least December. | |
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drewis Review by drewis
Posted: 161 days ago
member for 3.2 years, 208 visits, last login: 24 days ago
Hamilton,ON
$79 per month
"Speed"
"Everything else: Price, traffic throttling, bitcaps that are outrageous if you do anything other than check email. etc etc"
"No value - Look for Teksavvy DSL or anything but Bell or Cogeco - youll be glad you did."
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They have decent support, but I have heard that went downhill recently too. Complete crap with bitcaps and traffic shaping. Worst value ever. If you are lucky enough to get good speeds with Cogeco, that's all youll get and you will just hit your cap faster.
Go with Teksavvy they are the most knowledgeable ISP ive ever encountered.
By the way, I was a 11 year customer, stuck with them through the worst times they had - no connection - poor speed city wide - not once did I ever recieve a credit....
Anyways bottom line, go somewhere else if you can.
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