Complaint Review: Cogeco Cable Canada LP - Burlington Ontario

Cogeco Cable TV has been screwing me around the corner for the last five weeks! On October 2nd, some hapless idiot they employ doing an "audit" of our buildings services decided I was on the "wrong" plan, so they cut me off of Digital Basic Cable, and switched it over to just Basic Cable. This, in spite of the fact that I have been paying for the Digital service for almost two and a half years AND the added expense of a "Digital fee".

This left me without certain channels I had been used to listening to (Galaxy Music channels), and watching before they cut me off. So I complained to their technical staff on October 9th (when I discovered the missing channels), and was told it was "out of their hands" and I had to talk to "customer service". Let me just state at the outset, that Cogeco Customer Service is anything BUT! So I was told I'd get a credit and the soonest they could hook me back into the "Digital" scene was October 13th. Granted they did come up with a "cheaper" plan, at least for the next year, and then the price will d**n near double. So I waited, and on October 15th, still didn't have the "Galaxy" channels back, at least not the one(s) I listen to most of the time (I like music in the background, with no advertisements). I wrote a quick email to the CRTC, which didn't help much because apparently they only deal with "basic" cable services, not additional channels or packages. They did, however, write a note to the President's office, and I quickly got a call from some flunky there who promised the world and has yet to deliver anything but excuses.

So I was passed back and forth a dozen times between customer dis-service and technical dis-service. Almost every time, in spite of the fact they have "notes" from my calls (and apparently recordings, too), I had to explain my dilemma to each person. All of this at my expense, because I was also paying for the telephone minutes to talk to them, and mainly sit on hold for upwards of 10 minutes at a time. In total, I have now spent almost two hours on the phone, talking and on hold, to try to resolve this issue. In the end I agreed to have a technician come out to my residence to see if the problem was at my end (and had to wait another FIVE days for him to show up). I was also chastised by the President's flunky when I candidly called one of the yappy service techy's a witch (ever try to explain a problem to someone who won't shut up and keeps talking over you?!?). Well, you can pretty much guess my response to that!

Anyways, the service call was Wednesday, October 27th. He didn't even know why he was coming out, for cryin' out loud!!! So when we (my daugher and son-in-law were there for back-up, just in case I decided to throttle the poor schmuck) explained the situation, and I showed him the list of channels I was/was not able to receive, he thought he could work his magic from the down-stairs "box". Well, no - there wasn't a problem there, and obviously, because I was now receiving SOME of the digital channels (just not the ones I liked to listen to, mostly), it was pretty much decided that MY equipment wasn't at fault. Oh, by the way, I had earlier been threatened with having to pay for the service call, if they found that the problem was at my end. This after THEY created the problem!!!! So much freaking gall, it's amazing they all haven't drowned in it!!! So the service techy promised that he would have his supervisor, Andrew, look into the problem further on Thursday morning and give me a call. I have yet to receive that call. I did call back to the President's office on Friday afternoon (October 29th) to leave a message (they don't respond directly to calls, it appears) to let them know how disappointed I was that I STILL don't have the channels I'm supposedly paying to receive. They still haven't responded, nor has there been any further efforts, apparently, on their part to resolve the issue. I'm just stuck paying for something I'm not receiving, and the big problem is, if I don't pay up, they'll cut off BOTH my TV and and my internet and then charge me for a reconnect fee, if and when I resume their service.

It is unfortunate that I don't have another choice of cable carrier to turn to (in my area of Oakville we're stuck with Cogeco ONLY), and I'm on the wrong side of the building to use satellite, plus the regulations of putting up a satellite dish in this Condo make it pretty much impossible to do so anyways. Of course, Cogeco knows this, so they must feel pretty SMUG with their monopoly. If I wanted a much slower internet connection I could switch to (gag me!!) Bell Sympatico, but it's a case of "been there, done that, and will NOT EVER deal with Bell again". That still wouldn't solve the Cable TV problem, though.

I have filed a couple of these online reports as well as reported this to the Better Business Bureau - hoping that the BBB will have some clout.  I'd be happy to hear of any other avenues I can take to get them off their collective butts, and get my FULL service restored.