[I-Hate-Hulse]

From an ISP *not* Shaw, browse around on the Shaw.ca website looking for plans (try Telus's too). You'll find Google targetted ads showing up on websites extolling the virtues of Shaw and giving you teaser 2 yr Valueplans as per my last post. (At least this was 3 weeks ago)

I took a picture of this and used the online chat feature with Telus and after 30 minutes of waiting nicely asked if they would match Shaw's deal for new subscribers. The guy was nice and asked me a few questions before referring me to loyalty and retentions. I made it clear I was with Teksavvy and was considering either Shaw or Telus. Being nice is key here to get the magic referral. Who you get is also key to getting to the next step. If you get an agent who isn't going to play, try calling again and getting a different agent.

L&R called me 2 days later (I had given up hope to be honest) and a friendly guy answered. I went through the same story and I was prepared to send them the pictures but they didn't ask me to send them (they hate giving out direct means to contact them) as they knew of the deal already. He would match the 300 service, but not the 600 service price. Since I was battling Shaw's mysterious outage at the time I jumped and could have had installers in as soon as the next day.

So it takes a bit of patience but good deals can be had. I hate that this is the way you have to deal with telcos to not get ripped off and genuinely wanted to support Teksavvy because of this. Unfortunately, in this day and age, outages with only indirect support to resolve them aren't going to fly with the angry mobs of family members with "no internet" and that's not worth $10 a month.

I can send you the pic if you want, but it might be better to try and get one of your own to see if the deal is still going or not. These L&R guys seem to have some good market intelligence going on.