London-England-Lads

A quick question. Today I went to visit both a Bell and Rogers Shop.

Bell - No wait, very knowledgeable member of staff. Spend time with me and talk ed me through a number of packages, also knew what Sentanta was.

Rogers - Waiting in line for 45 mins, sales rep did not really have much of a clue. Had no idea what Sentanta was. To top it all one of the other Rogers Rep was on the phone trying to get through to the customer service line for at least the hour I was in the shop !

Question - is Rogers superior to Bell ? If not think I know which I perferred. Also told Sat is a better reception anyhow ?

Rob4BC

We have Rogers Cable with HD PVR. The feed quality for normal channels is okay to rubbish. The HD channels are fine to good. Sometimes they're awful with sound issues. We love the PVR features so we continue with it, but HD is all that important to us.

I've not seen the Bell satellite feed, but I know much like Sky in the UK it is subject to weather condition interference which cable does not. A small difference the significance of which I'm unqualified to comment on.

We have Bell internet which I can say is excellent and consistent and true to claims suffers little from bandwidth "shaping". Again, have not used Rogers so can offer no comparison.

Might be worth evaluating bundles of services (cable, interweb, phone and cell) from the two providers to see who offers the best package for your needs. Don't be afraid to play hard ball when negotiating.

We recently cancelled our landline due to lack of use. Use cells and Skype.
We were paying $37 a month. While trying to convince me to stay with them, Bell offered the same service at $27 if I stayed. I refused their offer and wished to end the service. They then offered the same service for $17. As tempting as the offer might have been I refused it on the basis that they had then been ripping me off for the past 10 months and they now owed me $200. The call centre lass didn't have much else to say at that point.

Rob

Mikey B

Ive Had bell expressVu its ok, friends have rogers cable again its ok. Big issue is Bells customer service is nothing short of the worst on the planet, I dont think I know anyone who doesnt hate bell for that here both Canadian or Immigrant! Rogers customer service for wireless and Internet has been good for me for over 3 years.

I wouldnt go with Bell if you paid me

flirble

We had rogers when we first arrived about 14months ago in Kitchener... after moving to Waterloo we decided to ditch Rogers - customer service sucked, prices were high and quality of service was poort - wouldn't call their HD really HD far too much compression being used... Oh and the PVR stinks, hardly user friendly or intuitive!

We went to Bell and have never looked back, the PVR is fantastic (as long as you get the 9242) and you can even attach an external USB drive and expand the storage (upto 750GB I think extra) we went through last winter and only on 1 day did we lose any signal, we needed to bash the snow off the dish then all was ok again, apart from that it was very very good. HD channel are clear and crisp as you'd hope.

We kept Rogers for internet, and Bell for Tv all is good.....

As said by other customer service is not great, but we've only needed to call them twice so that hasn't really bothered us....

Canada Dreams

we will be looking into a cable + phone + internet package when we arive in oct, can anyone point us in right direction, i have tried aliant but cant provide a bundle package, so looking for someone else now

who are you with and whats the cost per month

thanks

Surrey Expat

Perhaps this might help. http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/f...ogs/furch.html

Even the phone store I went into for a cell phone told me that Bell customer services was terrible, but if i had a problem the store would deal with it for me. Then saw the Marketplace program and as I was not looking for problems went back to Telus, who have been helpful all the way through. The bit about the customer service rep who said he did not care, was a clincher. I will never deal with a company that does not care about me as a customer.

Personally, I have nothing that is anything to do with Bell, nor will I ever do so. For satellite TV we use Starchoice ($60 a month), for all of our telecommunications & Internet we use Telus.

Mikey B

I too use Star choice for TV and its cheap and good quality and customer service is good, they have done 4 instillations due to moving and cottage ownership in 2.5 years for me without a hitch.

stepnek

In the four years that we've been here we've only used Bell and that's for the phone, internet and TV. Despite reading bad things about them we've never had any real difficulty in dealing with them and feel quite satisfied.

Canada Dreams

our these cabke companys, as the house we will be renting the owner does not want a dish on it, so we are stuck with cable

iananddave

Rogers is comparable to Virgin Media and the on demand channels are good - the one thing I don't like with Rogers is the station listing will say KBXY etc... but it will be CBC or ABC etc... so I usually wait to see what screen logo is showing to figure out which station it is. We bought a new LCD and the image is sharp much better than Sky. Setting up was easy. We went into Rogers Video on Friday and Cable and Internet was installed Monday. We went for VIP cable and Express internet all discounted for the next 12 months. They are also running a promotion if you take out 2 services get a 50 dollar gift card or 3 services 100 dollar gift card - this can even be used to pay your bill. I am averaging 7mb download speeds and not had any interruption - even using Vonage to call office in UK and the line quality is great. If you want to bundle with a already owned UK cellphone your choice is only Rogers or Fido (owed by Rogers). Better to bundle as much as you can so as to make savings.

Bell wasn't an option as apartment is wired for Rogers - but my preference would always be a cable service over satellite.

Canada Dreams

can i ask what the csot is ?

compchris

Hi, I use StarChoice for my TV, great prices and customer service - agreed it doesn't have as many channels as the competition but I'm very happy with it.

Kriss