Review of B2B2C High-Speed InternetAll reviews of |
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Good product, especially the MxDSL. For around 200$ a month, you get a DSL 6m x 3.2m (theoric, more 6m x 2.2m real speed) with 4 dryloop lines. The BAD If you choose any DSL product, be aware of Bell tech guy who install the lines and don't test them. This might get you into hell, on either sides (B2B2C or Bell). The UGLY If you got some financial difficulties, or your accounting clerk was on vacation and missed one or two payments, be aware : you're running for troubles, i mean real deep troubles. Their policies are on the limits of being legal, they're not afraid of taking an enterprise in hostage by cutting any services without any notice, even after you take arrangments with them. They seems not talking to each other inside the building, so once you make any arrangments with the accounting peoples, they don't advise the other departments, so the services will be cut anyway. They usually do this on fridays, so you cannot reach anybody until the monday morning ! I don't mean not to pay your providers, you HAVE to, but sometimes money don't show up at the right time or other issues can arise, and a little letter of phone call to the owner CAN do the difference. Their only invoicing mechanism is by emails. Paper invoices don't exist with B2B2C, so as phone calls to advice anyone in you company of any commercial issues that might lead to service disruption... Conclusions : When problems arise, you see the real nature of your providers. Sometimes dealing with smaller providers doesn't mean they will listen, and they will probably will have less flexibility than the bigger ones, especially this provider. I'm not the only one who had troubles, lot of my customers also had their own administrative adventure with them, and I'm taking them out of B2B2C one by one... Followup comments:
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Later on I switched to unlimited and ran that at my fathers place where I lived for 5 years and was able to download 200+ GB per month several times without any complaints from anyone. I still had awesome speeds, awesome customer service and the awesome price of 34.95 was still there(+$5 for unlimited) but this is where things started going wrong. I had some high latency so I called them after I had tried trouble shooting with my network. Like the old, plugging your PC directly into the modem deal etc. Up until this point whenever I called to ask a question or something I would wait on hold for no more then 1 or 2 minutes, this time I waited for 20 minutes. I thought nothing of it and was just glad to be answered, until he opened his mount and I realized this guy not only isn't at b2b2c's head office in montreal, he isn't even from north america. The guy was from India or something. I explained to him that I had latency issues and i had already ruled it my side so it must be because they were running me on 5mbps line when the DSL lines in my area could only handle 4mbps which makes it unstable. He had no idea what I was talking about. After 45 minutes of explaining the way it worked to him and explaining I already did the trouble shooting his monitor was telling him to tell me to do I finally got frustrated and hung up. After this encounter I had a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I called back to complain and talk to someone who had more then a grade 6 education and was actually greeted by someone who mostly spoke english. You see, at b2b2c they have excellent french speaking reps but being that I'm english, I'm second class and not worth alittle extra money spent so i can understand the tech guy. I spoke to this guy and although his english was the stardard I couldn't care less about pronunciation he was intelligent enough to understand what i was talking about and promptly fixed my line. Fast forward now to 4 months ago when I took my internet from my step fathers place(he no longer used it) and transferred it to my new apartment. I had unlimited yet again and after a month I was greeted with a lovely cease and desist letter. Here is an excerpt from it. "This letter is to advise that B2B2C considers your current bandwith usage is in excess with over 100Gb of transferred data since the start of the month 6/1/2009 : Down:108.90 Up:62.50 TTL:171.40. This usage far exceeds what is considered normal for residential customers. Excessive usage significantly affects our network performance and by consequence negatively affects the service provided to all of our service subscribers." I called them right away and explained a mistake had been made, I pay for unlimited. The person informed me that Quebec's ISPs had formed a Cartel and were now limiting UNLIMITED users to 100GB per month. I told her well too bad because I'm in ontario and I signed up for unlimited. She then explained that it doesnt matter because b2b2c is based in Quebec therefore I am subject to Quebec's rules. I told her she had 2 options, 1 stop sending me these letters and allow me to continue as we did and I'll forget about this incident and keep recommending b2b2c to friends and family or 2. send me more letters and I'll make sure I download at the full extent of my connection 24/7 until you cancel my contract and release me to find another provider. She told me she could not release me from my contract unless I received 3 more of these warning letters. So I hung up, went to Canada Computers and purchased a 1TB hard drive. I began downloading at the full 5mbps speed for the rest of the month. I ended up downloading over 400GB and then received another letter which was exactly the same but with my updated numbers. At this point I have called all the people I recommended to b2b2c and suggested they switch to another provider. So since I'm already pissed at the underhanded nature of what b2b2c has turned into I decided to reply simply with this; Unlimited \Un*lim"it*ed\, adjective 1. Not limited; having no bounds; boundless; as, an unlimited expanse of ocean. 2. Undefined; indefinite; not bounded by proper exceptions; as, unlimited terms. ''Nothing doth more prevail than unlimited generalities.'' --Hooker. 3. Unconfined; not restrained; unrestricted. I have yet to get a response from them. I have started my search for a better ISP in the Ottawa Area. Followup comments:
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Considering Bell doesn't offer DSL in my area I didn't have too many alternatives for high speed internet service. Thankfully I've come across B2B2C who resells Videotron's regular high speed cable service for the same price Videotron offers but without the need for cable service and 12-month commitment, which is really 20$ cheaper than Videotron. It has the same usage restrictions as Videotron regular high speed (20/10) but, just like Videotron, they guaranty that they will not charge more than 30$ for going over the quotas (it's been three months for me and I haven't been charged for the quota-busting yet). So, in the worst case scenario, it's still 67,95$ for unlimited high speed service, with speeds only slightly slower than Videotron's extreme service (I haven't noticed while using it, only when running speed tests), which is still much cheaper than Videotron. On top of that I never had to wait more than a couple of minutes to speak with either customer or technical support and they've always fixed my issues (minor, like confusion on my cable modem model and it's capacity before they enabled my service) on the spot without me having to call in 4-5 times. On top of that if there's ever a problem caused by Videotron (it's their network after all) all I have to do is call in to B2B2C and they'll be the ones stuck on hold with Videotron  So far I'm benefiting from Videotron's reliable(!) service for cheaper and with better service. What more could I ask for? Followup comments:
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I have very little to say about B2B2C that couldn't also be said about child molesters. They are easily one of the most underhanded internet companies available in Montreal; their tactics are to provide their customers with as little information as possible or to outright lie to them in order to disguise unexpected and often fraudulent charges. I used their service from September of 2005 until May of 2006. During this period I experienced very variable download speeds and oftentimes my internet connection would flat out disappear; their technical support passed these instances off as maintenance problems. But I'll put the shoddy service aside because it pales in comparison to the billing. After cancelling my service in May I received a $30 charge to my account in June. When I called about this charge I was told it was for my modem. I had paid a usage fee for it over the course of a year. When I cancelled I was never told that the modem needed to be sent back. Of course, it seems obvious; and in retrospect I should've remembered that it was technically only borrowed. However, a year after the fact is a long time within which to forget a detail like that, and B2B2C, helpful as always, declined to let me know otherwise. Because every other internet company from which I rented a modem has informed me that the rental was due at the end of the term of service I'm going to count this as a strike against them. The clincher comes now, in September, four months after cancellation, when I begin receiving charges from B2B2C. I call them to ask where these have come from and I am told that they are for my modem. The modem that they also told me I had already paid for. Now the $30 charge from June becomes an overage fee for downloading in excess of the 20 GB limit. The new fees they tell me are for the modem -- and, on top of that, will not be one time. They will be charged to me every month for three months and then B2B2C will send a collection agency after me. A collection agency? They wait three months and begin charging me for something they had already said was paid for, and then threaten me? I do not think so. I would recommend that this service be explicitly avoided by all potential customers. If you want cable service go with Videotron. They are a faceless giant but they live up to their promises and are, when it counts, straightforward. ------=_Part_108462_22645365.1158608715603 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline I have very little to say about B2B2C that couldn't also be said about child molesters. They are easily one of the most underhanded internet companies available in Montreal; their tactics are to provide their customers with as little information as possible or to outright lie to them in order to disguise unexpected and often fraudulent charges. I used their service from September of 2005 until May of 2006. During this period I experienced very variable download speeds and oftentimes my internet connection would flat out disappear; their technical support passed these instances off as maintenance problems. But I'll put the shoddy service aside because it pales in comparison to the billing. After cancelling my service in May I received a $30 charge to my account in June. When I called about this charge I was told it was for my modem. I had paid a usage fee for it over the course of a year. When I cancelled I was never told that the modem needed to be sent back. Of course, it seems obvious; and in retrospect I should've remembered that it was technically only borrowed. However, a year after the fact is a long time within which to forget a detail like that, and B2B2C, helpful as always, declined to let me know otherwise. Because every other internet company from which I rented a modem has informed me that the rental was due at the end of the term of service I'm going to count this as a strike against them. The clincher comes now, in September, four months after cancellation, when I begin receiving charges from B2B2C. I call them to ask where these have come from and I am told that they are for my modem. The modem that they also told me I had already paid for. Now the $30 charge from June becomes an overage fee for downloading in excess of the 20 GB limit. The new fees they tell me are for the modem -- and, on top of that, will not be one time. They will be charged to me every month for three months and then B2B2C will send a collection agency after me. A collection agency? They wait three months and begin charging me for something they had already said was paid for, and then threaten me? I do not think so. I would recommend that this service be explicitly avoided by all potential customers. If you want cable service go with Videotron. They are a faceless giant but they live up to their promises and are, when it counts, straightforward. ------=_Part_108462_22645365.1158608715603-- Followup comments:
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That's not the end of the world, but I just didn't like the way their system is set up. Tech support did a good job in answering my general questions and got me on line with newsgroups, which is very important to me. Their newsgroups seemed pretty good. Then DSL got installed in my area, and I was quick to jump on that bandwagon. I signed up for DSL with B2B2C, which worked blazingly fast... for a couple of weeks. A strange phenomena began to show up, which I have read elsewhere in this review board: I would get on line for anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes then get kicked off. It seemed more frequent in the evenings, but got worse and worse. I called and emailed tech support several times to report the problem, but it was never resolved and eventually got no responses from tech support. So I called my good friends over at Ontario web (read my glowing reviews of them elsewhere here - I HIGHLY recommend them) because I had heard they were going to offer DSL - I signed up on the spot and was one of their first customers. I couldn't help but notice that the following month, B2B2C had still billed my credit card - even though I had cancelled the service! Even after leaving them, I still had to call them and argue with them for my money back. Ontarioweb offered DSL through PowerDSL (I'll review them elsewhere on this board too), which was noticeably not as fast as it was with B2B2C, but it worked... for a while. Then it started showing similar problems as it did with B2B2C. I called tech support to report it. They were baffled at first too - but didn't give up. I spent three hours on the phone and on line with two technicians in Ottawa and Utah over two days. They found the problem was with the Bell line (so you guys who had this problem, it's Bell that's the problem). It was fixed within a day of locating the issue. Unfortunately, this past couple of months, Ontarioweb encountered some billing problems with PowerDSL and migrated all of their DSL customers over to ... B2B2C! (they didn't ask me my opinion) I got an email notification of this while on the road to Alberta, where I was going to be for a month. I figured I would stick it out and bite my tongue until I got back home and could deal with it. The relationship didn't last that long. My roommate is a day-trader in stocks. This can be dicey enough as it is when things work well, but the DSL went down for two days, immediately after ordering some stocks. He called B2B2C to report the problem, only to find out that they had cut us off - apparently my credit card they had on file had expired. No phone call, no notification, no nada. They just cut us off. They claimed they sent an email to "V34903808@B2B2C.ca" or something like that, which of course I didn't even have with me, nor a password to access that email anyway. You guys never heard of a phone? Canada411.ca? But that wasn't the end of it - I called Ontario web and expressed my very strong frustration with B2B2C and my very strong desire to be put back on PowerDSL. Fortunately, they had made ammends with PowerDSL and the amazing folks there had me on line with PowerDSL in about 12 hours!!! Problem was, the DSL line was still down. Why? I called B2B2C from a pay phone in Longlac Ontario, in the middle of my 50 hour drive home. They had BLOCKED MY DSL SERVICE. Nope - I was not even allowed to go to the competition! Who do you guys think you are? That's MY phone line - I paid for it, not you! Unfortunately, I got handed around to several people there, spent an HOUR on the phone. Seldom have I ever found myself so peeved in my whole life - in the meantime, my roommates stocks (which he was no longer able to access) lost money. B2B2C absolutely flat-out refused to release the line until I paid up for the service - service I did not request, nor sign a contract for. I explained that that was not good enough, I want to talk to the manager. "You can't." Alright then, how about the owner? "No, I'm sorry. But you can email a complaint..." Oh ya, that's brilliant - cut off my DSL, and ask me to email a complaint? I explained to the nice girl that I was not going to pay another penny to B2B2C and in fact I was already within inches of calling my lawyer. But she's only doing her job, and she wasn't allowed to do anything except take a payment. I had to cancel my account - but to do that, I had to pay the amount owing, and that would take until the end of January before the line would be released. There was no concessions, no manager or authority to talk to about my case. Tough beans. So I conceded and paid the bill because my roommate was still at home and unable to access his stocks - which he lost some money on and lost the potential of several hundred US dollars in gains because he was off-line. The nice girl in accounting gave me a *FAX* number to send the complaint to. I will be insisting management give me my money back, and will report the results of that request here later (if there is any results!) This whole mess could've been avoided with a simple phone call. I am a very reasonable person, b2b2c has proven some five times now that they are completely unreasonable to deal with. I signed on with them because of good customer reviews, so I am making a point to let people know to stay as far away from this company as possible. If you're with them - drop them fast, and keep an eye on your billing so they don't double bill you. If you're shopping around, stay away from them. Ian Followup comments:
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I just moved into my house and this is the first DSL ISP I've tried and the speed is adequate (1300 kbps down/500 kbps up)...not great but I'm in an older area so there are probably line issues. Overall I'd recommend them! Update----------------------------- Everything has been solid up to this point. I occasionally lose sync but I think that's more a line issue than anything else and it's back up in about a minute. Followup comments:
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cost roughly 41$ (i'm renting the modem) the first 3 months (29,95 + 5$ modem +taxes) in 3 months its 39,95$ +5$modem +taxes, so i'm guessing roughly 52$ i'm guessing the low price the first few months is to get some more ppl to join them, but hey.. it's still 3 months worth of unlimited for the same price they sell their 10GB plans , i'll test .. no contract for the other months afterwards, gotta like that part. Followup comments:
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B2B2C High-Speed Internet
Lasalle,QC
$200 per month (36 month contract)
about 45 days
Bell Canada
"Sales Rep"
"Very bad commercial ethic when things get complicated"
"The Good, The BAD and the UGLY."
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B2B2C lousy tech support and customer service