Shaw customer service

[fredr123]

We are missing HD on one of our boxes and about 1/3 to 1/2 of all channels on all of the boxes. "This channel will be available shortly" is all that will display.

I bitched about it on twitter last night around 11:00 pm to the @shaw account and @shawhelp responded almost immediately. It was a bit of a pain to describe the problem 140 characters at a time but it was still much better than waiting on the phone. We weren't able to diagnose or resolve the problem but they scheduled a tech visit for the evening of November 1.

[red sky]

Can I return Shaw's phone modem to their downtown office?

[mac_gurl]

I'm pretty sure you can drop the equipment off downtown, the macleod store, or barlow.

We've finally said enough with Shaw, after increasing the price of the HD rental, 2 hour phone call waits for problems, and not wanting to do anything to help us. Telus comes Saturday.

[DementedReality]

2 hours on hold, no one answering their online chat .. what the hell is wrong with Shaw? They should be ashamed of themselves, this is clearly planned. I could understand if by fluke they were short staff today or there was a catastrophic incident in their system that caused their office to be swamped with calls but this is their standard operating procedures

this is sofa king stupid.

[Hanni]

Originally Posted by DementedReality

2 hours on hold, no one answering their online chat .. what the hell is wrong with Shaw? They should be ashamed of themselves, this is clearly planned. I could understand if by fluke they were short staff today or there was a catastrophic incident in their system that caused their office to be swamped with calls but this is their standard operating procedures

this is sofa king stupid.

Same thing has been going on for weeks, twitter was the only way I could talk to someone and it was within 10 minutes.

On a side note my internet seems to have returned to normal so yay. I wish I could get Optik here, sadly Shaw is my only option for decent TV/Internet combo.

[Cluelessboy]

Shaw is going through a huge turnover rate right now, lots peeps coming and going.

[PeteLFan]

Was put on hold so they could cancel my service.

[Sr. Mints]

Thanks Shaw, you've made the decision for me to can you.

Got my bill today, with an issue that's been plaguing my account STILL not fixed, after talking to four different people since August, the last three assuring me that they've corrected it.

My bill is now at 400-something dollars. I've just been paying what they say (customer service people, not what the bill says) every month, and I suppose any day now I can expect to hear from a creditor.

I am so sick of this 'once we have your money/business, we don't owe you #### all' mentality.

It's the same when you want to return something defective at Canadian Tire and there's one person moving 15 customers through returns at a glacial pace; same thing when you pre-order something from an online retailer, and once they have you committed to buy from them, they don't process your order; same thing when you deal with Shaw.

#### 'em.

I suppose I'll have to go to the Shaw office and wait behind the other 50 people in line and get it sorted out before I cancel so I don't get stuck with this billing error when I cancel.

[fredr123]

The tech guy came by our house last week on the agreed upon date, but wanted to come by early. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal but I tried to book an evening appointment to accommodate my work schedule. Whatever.

We had been getting horrible reception (skipping, stuttering, freezing picture and no audio) on about half our channels during most of the day, especially during the morning and evening. CTV, Comedy, and seemingly all the Bell-related channels were affected. Global/Shaw channels always worked without incident. Hmm...

Anyways, he decided that the problem was with the Honeywell box we had in our basement. That's the device that split cable and internet throughout out the house. Similar devices are found in pretty much every new home to make wiring easier. He said they weren't of the best quality and was interfering with some of the channels. He put in a Shaw-approved box and bypassed the Honeywell unit completely. We have not had a problem since.

I asked the tech why the problem would only be appearing now when we've had the same hardware configuration for a couple years now. He said with the digital conversion, Shaw's been moving their channels around. It was his theory that the ones were were having problems with were ones that had recently been moved. For some reason, the Honeywell box was causing interference on those channels.

This, I think, doesn't seem like a plausible explanation. It doesn't make sense to me why only non-Shaw/Global channels would be affected and why it would be a problem during certain times of the day and not during other times. Whatever tinkering the tech did worked, though, so I can't complain too much.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by fredr123

This, I think, doesn't seem like a plausible explanation. It doesn't make sense to me why only non-Shaw/Global channels would be affected and why it would be a problem during certain times of the day and not during other times. Whatever tinkering the tech did worked, though, so I can't complain too much.

I don't know the actual channel distribution, frequencies, etc, but this could actually be a plausible reason as to why you were seeing the problem. Each channel is going to be transmitted on an offset frequency from the carrier frequency. The Honeywell box sounds like it's a digital filter box. Any filter will have a bandwidth that it is supposed to filter, it will also have harmonics that it might filter with less gain, or it could not have a very sharp bandwidth edge so there is some filtering of frequencies that those channels might be carried on.

Sorry to go all science on you.

[monkeyman]

had to bump this thread. I hate Shaw. not only have i had ongoing issues with their crappy hd pvr's, at least 4 or 5 house calls with no resolution and no offer to swap out the equipment, but today i phoned and inquired into getting my bill reduced, it's ~$155.00 a month for all services... long story short the girl told me shaw was no longer in the business of "bribing"(her word) customers to stay... i canceled my cable and telus will be contacting them shortly to move my phone over. if i wasn't locked into the email, i'd cancel that too. nothing like being accuse of trying to solicit a bribe to turn a customer off. They did admit they offer incentives to new customers... whats the difference exactly?
so now I have a decision, back to bell or should i consider telus? Are there still issues with telus tv? To be honest, i liked bell, i only hated having to run two lines for the dual pvr.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Monkeyman

[Violator]

Originally Posted by fredr123

The tech guy came by our house last week on the agreed upon date, but wanted to come by early. Usually that wouldn't be a big deal but I tried to book an evening appointment to accommodate my work schedule. Whatever.

We had been getting horrible reception (skipping, stuttering, freezing picture and no audio) on about half our channels during most of the day, especially during the morning and evening. CTV, Comedy, and seemingly all the Bell-related channels were affected. Global/Shaw channels always worked without incident. Hmm...

Anyways, he decided that the problem was with the Honeywell box we had in our basement. That's the device that split cable and internet throughout out the house. Similar devices are found in pretty much every new home to make wiring easier. He said they weren't of the best quality and was interfering with some of the channels. He put in a Shaw-approved box and bypassed the Honeywell unit completely. We have not had a problem since.

I asked the tech why the problem would only be appearing now when we've had the same hardware configuration for a couple years now. He said with the digital conversion, Shaw's been moving their channels around. It was his theory that the ones were were having problems with were ones that had recently been moved. For some reason, the Honeywell box was causing interference on those channels.

This, I think, doesn't seem like a plausible explanation. It doesn't make sense to me why only non-Shaw/Global channels would be affected and why it would be a problem during certain times of the day and not during other times. Whatever tinkering the tech did worked, though, so I can't complain too much.

were the channels higher ones or lower that were messed

[Reneeee]

Just as an aside, anybody else have a little black dash on the bottom third right of their screen when watching the ABC East feed, channel 205? I know my dad gets it too and he is about 10km away from me. I figure it's a problem with the feed they are sending to Shaw. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by Violator

were the channels higher ones or lower that were messed

They were all over the dial. The only commonality between them was that most seemed to be non-Shaw Media channels (i.e., TSN, CTV, and all those owned by Bell).

[Gobsgraham]

I have a gateway so naturally I have had some issues but the last few months things seem pretty good. The callback feature has been on the 3 or 4 times that I called. They booked a tech for a week after the call. The tech was great and 10x better than the original installer. All he ended up having to do was move the box to the basement and it fixed a whole bunch of issues and seems way faster now.

Sorry to derail the Debbie Downer thread but the tech was so good and explained everything that they deserve some positive feedback for a change.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by Gobsgraham

I have a gateway so naturally I have had some issues but the last few months things seem pretty good. The callback feature has been on the 3 or 4 times that I called. They booked a tech for a week after the call. The tech was great and 10x better than the original installer. All he ended up having to do was move the box to the basement and it fixed a whole bunch of issues and seems way faster now.

Sorry to derail the Debbie Downer thread but the tech was so good and explained everything that they deserve some positive feedback for a change.

Ya, I was unhappy with them when I got my Gateway in July. Kept having to reboot the system, my BB50 modem never was sent, and took 2 months to finally show up, hold times were awful.

Since then the Gateway has stabilized, no issues now. I was given a $250 credit on the Gateway due to price drop, which the didn't have to do, but did the right thing. Plus for all the screw ups I got $50/month off my bill for 6 months. I haven't paid Shaw in 3 months, and still have a credit.

Anyways, they are far from perfect, but they did do enough to keep me with them. I am glad I never switched to Telus, I think I would be even more mad at them right now than Shaw.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by monkeyman

if i wasn't locked into the email, i'd cancel that too.

When I switched from Shaw to Telus, Shaw had an "email only" option for something like $3 per month. You could only use it for 6 months, but it gave me the time to switch everything over.

As for television, Telus Optik is a lot better than it used to be; but I still find Bell better for picture quality. Telus HD is a lot better than their SD- looks like that is their focus now. Which is good; but some channels are still in SD.

Telus is cheaper; and I would probably put up with the picture quality difference for the price if it wasn't for satellite's flexibility in being able to use a receiver at the cabin.

[Static]

Shaw's new "Personal TV" bundles are much cheaper now. I was able to get my bill down from $155/mth to $115/mth. Just customized a plan at https://shawpersonalizer.ca and had a customer service rep call me back the next day. Now i'm paying $40 less for the same amount of channels and a bit faster download speeds.

[Mazrim]

Yeah the prices are getting pretty good. Regular High Speed Internet, Regular Cable with Choice Picks HD, and you're pretty much set for all the good channels and decent internet for $80 a month. It's not mind blowing fast like BB50 but the speeds are more than adequate for me to play games online.

I've used Shaw since I permanently moved to Calgary in 2005 and still can't complain. Then again I haven't had to call customer service in quite some time so I haven't had to deal with that problem, but their service (not customer service) is excellent, IMO.

[Vulcan]

double post