Dear Editor,
If you purchased a vehicle from your local dealership that advertised fuel mileage of 50mpg and once you took it home you found that it only got 5mpg would you not be royally peeved? This is a problem that we are seeing right now in the Town of Ponoka with our Shaw Cable Internet speeds or lack thereof.
I logged my first complaint about my slow internet speed back in October of 2012 when I noticed that my Netflix would constantly buffer or not login at all. Playing online games I would find myself randomly disconnected if I was able to get in at all. I'm sure many of you have also suffered from these same types of symptoms.
Fast forward to today. It has been 16 months since my first complaint to Shaw and many numerous complaints in between. I've contacted Shaw Online Tech Support, Shaw Phone Support, and most recently started posted in Shaw's community forums online documenting on a regular basis my speed tests.
I know computer lingo to a lot of people can be scary and intimidating and hard to understand but here is a short breakdown of the problem I have, and that you may have as well especially if you are a Ponoka Shaw Internet customer.
I paid $80.00 / month for Shaw's Broadband 50 plan which advertised download speeds of up to 50mbps and upload speeds of up to 3mbps. On a regular day I will never see close to 50. My download speed usually hangs around under 10mbps yet month after month Shaw continues to send in bills for the full $80.
I challenge all of you reading this to load up a speed test right now on your computers, go to www.speedtest.net and once the page is loaded click on "Begin Test", it's that easy. Once the program has completed doing a speed test on your internet you will see 3 numbers, "Ping", "Download Speed", and "Upload Speed". Document these numbers and if you aren't seeing close to the numbers you pay for you should contact Shaw at 1-888-472-2222 and request a technician to come out and fix your problem or if they cannot like in my case you may request discounted monthly rates.
Shaw has informed me that we in Ponoka have an oversaturated node and that we will continue to see slow internet speeds until they upgrade their infrastructure. The upgrades that they are planning still have no ETA for completion and until they are complete we will continue to see slow internet speeds and pay full price for them. I have asked multiple times for Shaw to contact their Ponoka customers and let them know about this problem but they insist on only handling them as they come in to the call centre. You may be paying full price for something that you can get greatly discounted just by making a phone call.
As a single complaint we have no voice, but if we contact Shaw as a community we can hold them accountable for their business practices. You can keep up to date with the latest Ponoka Shaw internet news and post your own experiences and speed tests at the following link to Shaw's community forum.
https://community.shaw.ca/message/43658
Get what you pay for!
Cody Gowalko