STOP CALLING ME!

[@annonymat]

We had internet problems for 3 years and we contacted Telecom about it very often. They mostly denied that we have a problem. In the end they sent a technician who checked the box in the street. Turns out our connector on their end had rusted and only worked when it was humid enough. 😂

[@termiterasin]

I've had similar problems, only connected properly when it was cold enough, due to a loose coax connection

[@gaborkeresztes1739]

I had heard from my friend they said, they seen it connected as he had the end of the internet cable taken out of the router. But what you said is happend to me too it became very bad as it disconnected around every 30min for 3 weeks when i tried to do things on internet then they fixed it last month.

[@gaborkeresztes1739]

@Trevor Phillips Brother! It's Hungary :D

[@partycatplays]

@Trevor Phillips *sighs in O2*

[@Whitecat372]

Summers must have been a bad time for you.

[@PyPylia]

Here in Australia we have an ISP called Telstra. They're horrible, but provide the most expansive network. About 20 years ago, my dad owned a building company, eventually it went under and he went bankrupt. He was using Telstra for our internet, so obviously when he went bankrupt it voided his account with Telstra. However, a couple years ago he went to the bank to get a loan, but they said no. The reason was, is that even though he went bankrupt, Telstra had been illegally trying to charge him all these years, obviously not being able to, and so was draining his credit score to basically 0. He had to spend weeks talking to Telstra and other government offices, and it was only when the Office of the Governor-General stepped in that Telstra decided to dig up the paperwork, figure out they were in the wrong, and finally give him back his credit score.

[@longbow3082]

Credit score is such a disgusting creation

[@FireAngelOfLondon]

@@longbow3082 Some kind of credit score system is essential to prevent idiots who don't know how to handle money from causing lenders excessive losses, and to prevent fraudsters from causing lenders even bigger losses. If you want to use credit then keep your side of the street clean and your score will usually be fine. The big problem is not that a credit scoring system exists, just that it is far too difficult to get it fixed when a company hurts your score unfairly.

[@FiatUno2003]

Credit score is such a dumb thing. Why would a company trying to ILLEGALLY charge you drain your credit score? Makes no sense to me.

[@Bigrignohio]

@@longbow3082 I am curious. How else would you propose companies determine someone is a bad risk or not? Just have them accept that a large percentage will default and to pass the added losses on to the rest of the customers?

[@fakjbf3129]

My grandfather didn’t use the internet much but he had a connection and WiFi for when family and guests would come over. It was always super slow but we assumed that was just because he was paying for the cheapest plan since he didn’t really need more than that. After he passed away my parents moved into that house and as they were getting all the bills sorted out they finally figured out what had happened. My grandfather had originally had a 10 mb/s plan before eventually upgrading to 100 mb/s, but they never actually gave him a faster connection. So for years he had only been getting a tenth of what he had been paying for.

[@pablon333]

Maybe you would win if you sue that company, that's straight up a scam lol

[@hamasaken]

we wwere exactly the same we paid for an upgrade and we never got it tried to get refund the comany just said sorry nothign they can do i guess they figured that we could not prowe just how long we had substandart internet

[@TheB3gamer]

@@pablon333the leagal fees from suing a ISP definitely aren’t going to be worth the couple hundred dollars you might win

[@dergunter1237]

@@pablon333 you have to proof it plus you have to be able to outlast the company financially in court both of which you wont be able to do and they know that

[@maverick9708]

​@@dergunter1237depends on the type of case, if it's small claims court none of that matters and if you have a lawyer that works on contingency it also doesn't matter because you aren't paying until you get a settlement

[@sedawk]

Exact same thing happened for me - my internet nearly doubled (1 Gb Telus fibre). I called, complained, got a credit and a new better deal. Also put a reminder in my calendar to call in two years.

[@theflash9068]

I wish we had Telus here in Québec. Bell fiber just needs a good knock down.. too expensive

[@sedawk]

@@theflash9068 Linus and Luke are totally right - Telus fibre is amazing. I've had it for 3 years now - its been rock solid - 1Gb down/1Gb up. Truly is the best, most reliable internet I've ever had.

[@rkr8959]

As an Indian I'm feeling very fortunate to have Amazing Isps with dead chep prizes.... No cap 100gig unlimited fup is lesser than half of what we pay for 4g for a month i don't remember last time I worried about paying more or getting disconnected about it for real.. we believe in internet for all policy hopefully things get better there

[@theflash9068]

@@sedawk same for Bell but darn $140 for 1.5 gbps??

[@sedawk]

@@theflash9068 I'm $99 for the 1Gbs. To me that is a great deal. If I had the option for $40 more for 1.5Gbs I wouldn't take it right now - I don't feel limited in any way for speed at the moment.

[@shapelessed]

If the ISP registered me for a bunch of marketing crap without notifying me about it then it'd be 100% illegal in Europe... Sometimes I'm comparing the laws between US, Canada and Europe... I gotta say, you got f'd on that one...

[@shapelessed]

@Pavan Kumar As far as I remember from the video they didn't really tell him about that, instead he got to know it after he started getting a bunch of calls.

[@CanIHasThisName]

Also, I believe that they can't just change the price like that anymore. There used to be a few providers who did that thing where it's cheaper for like 6-12 months and then the price goes up, but I think that was a long time ago. My previous ISP, whenever they got better offers, used to just automatically increase the speed because they couldn't touch the price (even if it was lower). They had to email me about the change and offer either a discount or to keep the faster speed.

[@nathanielhill8156]

It's illegal here as well. However, it gets complicated considering luke asked to be put on a call list for a different thing.

[@maxbooth8738]

Idk why but I read that in the high pitch Linus voice

[@CatsMeow_]

"I wanna be a real company"

[@gratanrata6654]

high pitch voice?

[@maskettaman1488]

On Linus's comment at 3:08, Bell was charging my (not tech-savvy) parents over $100 CAD a month for 7mbit down, 1mbit up in 2021. They'd be doing it for about a decade until I found out. When I got my mother to call in, the rep told her this was the perfect plan for them and insisted there was nothing better. We called another ISP (Eastlink) and a few days later they were set up with 150/10 for a fraction of the price. Can only imagine how many unaware, elderly, etc people they're taking advantage of and absolutely fleecing.

[@KimboKG14]

it's oddly wholesome to know ISPs still doing the same scams as 20 years ago.

[@LautaroQ2812]

Not only in time, but across the globe. I'm not NA and a lot of these stories are literally the same, but in English. Lol.

[@GlorifiedGremlin]

@@LautaroQ2812 All monopolies behave the same

[@vampire847]

@@GlorifiedGremlin Oligopolies*

[@Ksportin]

The reason why they stopped making those calls is money. Firstly as mentioned on the show, a lot of people use automatic payments, prices outside the contract are usually incredibly high and people typically won't notice for a few months. Secondly I'd wager it was also a cost cutting measure in terms of staff wages. If they changed company policy and just stopped making those calls, that will probably decrease the number of staff they need to have and pay the wages and benefits for.

[@omfgblondie]

Staff is always the biggest cost to a company. A full-time minimum wage worker in BC would cost them $32,552 per year.

[@BBC600]

That's one reason why I plan not to use pre-authorized payments. I'd rather write cheques ✍️ or use internet banking to manually pay.

[@CanIHasThisName]

​@@BBC600 Same. Usually takes me about 10 minutes to pay everything and banking in Europe is really simple, you just scan a QR code and confirm the transaction with an authenticating app. I wanna be aware of what I'm paying. Once my ISP accidentally sent me the wrong modem, so they took it back and gave me a replacement, but they charged me for both of them (honest mistake, they fixed it right away). And relatively recently my carrier sent me a bill to pay nothing (unsurprisingly, they fixed that as well).

[@kanedaku]

In the UK, almost all big business (banks, loyalty cards, phone carriers, ISPs etc) used Covid to slash the amount of call centre staff they had, and the recorded hold message always said to "attempt to resolve your query online". Now that everyone should be back to work, and I even know people who are distance working and answering calls via VOIP, it still takes an eon longer than pre-pandemic to get through to someone. I think this may be also influencing outbound retention calls.

[@Ksportin]

@@kanedaku Completely agree. My brother was working from home through the pandemic when he was handling calls for a car insurance company and very few staff were working from the office. Anything to save money, even at the cost of the service

[@silentdebugger]

I just checked with Comcast and it turns out I've been paying $90/mo for an "outdated" internet plan that is identical in speed to a newer plan which they promote at $50/mo. Conveniently they have never informed me about this.

[@AnExPor]

3 out of 3 of my most infuriating phone calls have been to ISPs. Just typing that sentence and starting to think about the calls is already pissing me off.

[@andrewmcewan9145]

Here's a great one from cogeco southern Ontario isp. If you have the tivo cable package or the iptv tv package "WI-FI" is forced on on your modem. So if you set it to bridge mode it works for about 3 min till it phones home and reboots and turns on wifi. (Disaabling bridge mode) Same if you actually dissable the radios. 4+ hrs on the phone and nothing. Except a low tier rep who could only change the settings but not the profile. They also managed to break the ip passthrough feature. Using a vpn used to be against there subsriber agreement at the time so calming needed port forewording for work breaks there policy.... that clause is gone now. Afaik the only way to get the modem in bridge mode is to make a post on dslreports fourm and hope it catches the attention of the active cogeco rep. Rep clamed they where working to fix it. Its been 3 years no fix. That is by far the worst experience I've had with a isp. I'm running dual nat with broken ipv6 👍(of course the inner router is in a dmz so it has full acces to the ports but still)

[@IvyLeather13]

I work for an American telco and they're right that if we try to change people to new, cheaper, and better plans a statistically significant group of customers get angry and say it's fine the way it is. Not defending Telus here but plenty of people are upset at change of any kind

[@termiterasin]

I believe they are called "boomers"

[@KuldarJ]

Yeah, kinda understand that. My father constantly tells me that the telco. calls him and tells him that it's gonna be faster and cheaper, but how would my father know what the f**k 20mb faster means? So no s**t he just doesn't want to change

[@lanye2708]

@@termiterasin luddites, boomers, same thing honestly lmao

[@bvbvf]

My parents are the exact same way. Up until earlier this year we had 5mbits download /500kbits upload for 52€, and when I told my parents "hey we could have 20down/ 5up for 10€ less AND even 100down/50up for the same price we pay now" they were like nah its fine... Thankfully out ISP in march sent us a letter " hey we will discontinue our support for your prehistoric Internet connection, if you want to still have internet contact us" (paraphrasing) and voila now we have 100down/50up for the same price than before and we didn't even have to pay to get the fiber set up, they did it for free because they "forced" the upgrade.

[@IvyLeather13]

@@bvbvf the CDMA network retirement was/is a complete nightmare even after sending letters for almost 2 years. We forced upgrades to LTE and its just been a mess.

[@RGudmetalhead]

I had issues with main Belarusian ISP, they kept calling me once a few months, asking if I want to switch to a package deal that had x2 speed internet, landline phone and tv. I told them no every time and even explained most valid reason- landline and internet contracts had different owners and merging them wasn’t an option at the moment. Also it was much more expensive than current plan and an I had no use for tv stuff. After few years of me answering and explaining my answer they gave up and proposed to switch to a plan that just has x2 internet. And here’s fun part: from my plan I was able to upgrade only to an expensive x4 speed by myself, to get -x2 speed you needed to either get that plan with landline and tv or wait till they call you to offer you that secret “just x2 internet” that’s not available on their website to choose by yourself. I’ve googled it and found out that they’ve been doing it for years, so all that time they were expecting me to give up and get expensive plan with bells and whistles I don’t need. And they’re a biggest government-owned ISP that doesn’t even have competition in a lot of places around the country. Yikes.

[@benlea4332]

I can relate to this for Virgin Media in the UK. They call me multiple times daily from a call centre if I am not on their highest plan with TV. As soon as I am its radio silence until I then downgrade and the calls start again. I made a formal complaint and they stopped for about 6 months before starting again. Unfortunately its the only provider in my area so I just blocked the number.

[@T.A.C.S.94]

BT nor sky do this. Switch

[@MrDissiuk]

Luckily never had that issue with Virgin. I am only with them for internet though, and it's "business broadband" so maybe that's a factor?

[@thecriticaleffect3849]

The only people I've ever known get a letter in the mail abiut piracy were virgin customers, since hearing those stories is vowed to avoid virgin wherever possible.

[@1996connor]

Honestly the worst ISP in the UK, I had nothing but problems with them speed and latency issues. I remember ringing them up to have a look at why I was getting a max of 2mbps down at peak times and the Indian guy over the phone said it was my Ethernet cable... Luckily I have FTTP now which is rock solid.

[@james.telfer]

@@1996connor err, what about Talk Talk - they're definitely worse in surveys... 😆

[@efftee]

Thought it was going to be TeamViewer again

[@matrix07012]

I answer every marketing call with "No thank you I'm not interested" and hang up not even letting the person finish and I kinda just stopped getting marketing calls.

[@ninjoun]

I don't even bother saying anything and hang up right away.

[@maxafc4695]

Who answers the phone to an unknown number unless you are expecting a call these days anyway lol

[@petenielsen6683]

People claim to answer them with "FBI fraud division" all the time online, but I wonder if any them actually do.

[@JackPorter]

​​@@petenielsen6683 that would be illegal. you think impersonating a police officer is bad? how about a government agency? phoowee

[@maverick9708]

​​@@JackPorter somone quick, arrest those kids playing fbi detective in the park :P

[@Its-Just-Zip]

As much as I hate my bank and ISP I have only had 2 calls from either in the last 10 years.... And the bank was calling to verify the only 2 checks I have ever written. The ISP usually just sends us a post card I think I have had one company keep calling me despite my asking to be on a do not call. I eventually picked up the phone and interrupted the person on the other end and asked for a manager before telling them that I had explicitly asked to not be called and that next time I would be filing a complaint with the FTC and considering harassment charges. Have not heard anything since.

[@SyntaxNation86]

In Australia we have a Do Not Call Register which is backed up under law. Registration is free, and once on the list, companies are required to check it against their internal lost and are not allowed to call anyone on the register. If a company does call, you tell them you are on the Do Not Call Register and they have to remove you from their internal list. If they don't then they can potentially get into serious trouble (dependant on the seriousness of the issue)

[@playtester6635]

We have one in Canada too, also bacjed under law. It's unfortunately almost entirely uneorced and it's ben used as a call list by scammers.

[@FireAngelOfLondon]

We have a similar list in the UK, and fines can be up to £200 for each individual call to a number on the list. It is more difficult than it ought to be to get a complaint through, but once you do companies usually back down really quickly.

[@TheSiriusEnigma]

@@playtester6635 That's because scammers are not Canadians to begin with. With VoIP, having offshore call center is trivial.

[@DrBojanglez105]

Always threaten to cancel, and then you go to their retention department. Keeping a customer becomes more important than cost. I also schmooze them and align. If it’s contentious, I hang up and call back until I talk to someone that sounds “cool”.

[@TotalxTroll25k]

Not related to plans, but while I was out of town my dad was just telling me yesterday that our internet was out for 4 days when a house near us got their internet set up. Apparently the box in our back yard only had 4 ports and the people being added were the 5th. The tech decided to just unplug our cable so that the new houses cable could be set up and left it. It took them 4 days to come back and fix it. My dad is not sure what they did but thankfully our internet is back. My dad works from home and my mom is on a hybrid schedule so they were both working off of hotspots. I also work from home so I would have had to work from a hotspot as well if I was in town.

[@Kingdeathtrooper]

They unplugged the third house to give you yours back.

[@kyunikoi]

Had the same thing when I moved back home with my parent's. They were paying 60 bucks a month for 15mbps. When on their website, the same plan was literally Gigabit. All it took was one phone call and the service was 1000x better and we saved 20 bucks a month. Which begs the question, if they can fix my shit connection with the flick of a button, and the whole network was upgraded anyway. WHY DIDN'T THEY JUST DO IT BY DEFAULT, OR AT LEAST CALL. It's not like anybody would ever COMPLAIN about faster internet for the same price OR LESS!

[@randomlyhandheld]

Possibly the reason you are getting those calls, from my experience with working for an internet service provider, their system has possibly changed, just like my companies did a few years ago. They possibly have check boxes for just marketing they can select and nothing in regard to calling when your promotion is about to end. I believe they usually call if a customer leaves the service to try to get the customer back or if you're planning on leaving the service. Just a theory though.

[@RipleySawzen]

They probably stopped calling people about promotions because it was losing them money. It wouldn't surprise me if it was also due to new management.

[@JohnKerbaugh]

I agree they probably had this "contact me for promotions" setting and people who had it off, got the upgrade call, complained. Now it's all bundled into nagging promotions.

[@1BigBen]

damn I was sure that this was round 3 of the software the Linus bought that wanted him to be come a subscriber and pay more

[@FarazMazhar]

If anyone is curious, the software was TeamViewer.

[@1BigBen]

@@FarazMazhar ty my head become blank didn't remember what is was

[@notcorrect]

Team Viewer

[@TitanreaperYT]

The Cloud Service? Oof

[@topaz1756]

in my country, i dont know if its the same but its like this to mine, call centers work with giving an employee a list of numbers and if they hit the goal of finishing a certain amount of them in a day, they get certain bonuses on their income (ofc hidden from the goverment) and when you ask for them to remove you from their lists (emphasize on the plural please) they just ignore it and sell the lists to a different call center. Known phone number sellers are super markets. electronic stores and in general a variety of shops that ask for a phone number, even banks here give your number away for money, hell even phone number providers. Phone number providers even tell to university students that start a new student phone plan that "we will add a block list to your number for some known spam call centers"

[@JessicaFEREM]

I really love the way straight talk's auto-renew works. once you have the dollar amount locked in, if they make a change to the plan, you're automatically upgraded, the only sign that you've been upgraded is a single text that says "congratulations, due to our price changes, you've been automatically upgraded to our higher gig plan for free, we won't charge you extra, ever"

[@TheMetroidblade]

I’ve have had them randomly charge me for a month twice in the last two years of me paying annually. Other than that I’ve had no issues, it’s just like why?

[@kostiemuirhead8187]

This is the tip of the iceberg as to what it's like to deal with Telus these days in my experience. They had a brief period for a few years in the mid 2010s where they were OK, but on both ends of that timeframe they have been one of the WORST companies I've ever dealt with. I refuse to give them a single red cent at this point. Also the idea of forcing people into multi year contracts for home services like phone or internet is just beyond dumb and anti-consumer IMHO.

[@termiterasin]

Especially since there is already systems designed in the ISP space for recouping the cost of installations by leasing to other ISPs

[@user-iy6ko1bz4y]

Rogers is worse.

[@kostiemuirhead8187]

@@user-iy6ko1bz4y I couldn't comment on that; Rogers doesn't provide internet services here. If that is the case though, then I would strive not to support them either.

[@rkr8959]

As an Indian I'm feeling very fortunate to have Amazing Isps with dead chep prizes.... No cap 100gig unlimited fup is lesser than half of what we pay for 4g for a month i don't remember last time I worried about paying more or getting disconnected about it for real.. we believe in internet for all policy hopefully things get better there

[@prezlamen7906]

My ISP is crap af but they have internet without contracts on full price per month, and thats ok but if you wanna use internet w/o contract you need to rent that box on the street pole, 100€ for 2yrs.

[@jamesray9009]

I used to work for a call center that sold calling services caller id call waiting call forward all that good stuff .. These were cold calls to telephone customers trying to sell them phone services they never heard of at the time.. My greatest feeling sale was caller id to a blind woman .. told her where to get a talking caller id and when it came up unavailable that it was likely a call center trying to call her lol

[@phxsisko]

It's good you have a choice even. In America, we allow monopolies to pop up and control entire markets. SoCal has 2 options, Spectrum and some other ADSL/fiber option. So essentially, most people are stuck "choosing" Spectrum and rectum has some of the worst customer service humanly possible (so bad, they changed their name, formally Time Warner). There is no negotiating on price because they know they don't need to.

[@JohnBoyGamer1]

Same in my area in NC, either rectum or nothing, and the rectum you do get is very unstable.

[@swirrllfolfsky9803]

Same here in Wisconsin. Spectrum or CenturyLink

[@GoldenHalo]

I've been a lot of places around my state and depending on where you are, it changes, but in my general area, it's either Fios (Verizon) or Xfinity (Comcast). If there's other options, they haven't been here long, as the entire neighborhood almost has Fios. The only issue is that their pricing is crazy, and if you go for Comcast for cheaper, their routers are ass and will often go out. Not normally for long, but if you're in the middle of some gaming tournament or something, those 45 seconds can mean you're out of it.

[@SlyNine]

I've never had a problem with spectrum here.

[@petenielsen6683]

The reason for the name change is that where it is called Spectrum the old Time Warner was taken over by Charter Communications. Since not all of Time Warner was taken over they could not legally keep the name for two different corporations. Time Warner still exists in a few remaining states. I have Spectrum but I have college friends in other states who remain with Time Warner. Unfortunately in places where Charter had taken over they did not replace the personnel. My experience was so bad the last time I needed to call Spectrum that I told the customer service representative to go backing to (having intercourse with) her brother-in-law before hanging up on her.

[@chinesepopsongs00]

My country has a do not call me register if a company keeps calling you when you are in the register for that they can be sued. You dont leave that up to the goodwill of the companies as a government, what is wrong with Canada.

[@bobthecannibal1]

AT&T/DirecTV here in the 'states got in deep doo-doo for unilaterally adding channels with an "introductory offer". So they started calling and any answer other than an explicit "No, I don't want that. I decline. Undo any changes you made to my account." ended up getting you a new charge after 3-6 months. Then federal regulators got off of their asses. and reminded them of the penalties for that kind of activity. They're shiesty.

[@fragalot]

With comcast, they just fire off an email saying speeds will be faster on whatever tier service you have, but no mention of any price change up or down since the emals are generic and are mass-mailed. It's implied the price won't change but the inevitably do go up.

[@menacingdonutz]

Prices suddenly rising and not being notified is why I have disabled autopay on literally every bill I have, I’ve been screwed by it before and don’t intend to have it happen again. It’s definitely more work to remember all my bills but imo it is worth the extra hassle to avoid wasting money on surprise increases.

[@Kingelfdemondevourer]

i dont know how true this is anymore as this was a little over 10 years ago.. but with apple if you wanna get escalated to someone higher up the chain all you gotta do is say something like "i wanna speak to your manager/boss" and we were told to tell the customer something along the lines of "i gotta put you on a brief hold while i get someone on the line for you" then fill in the higher up about what was going on and why theyre getting this pissed off customer.. most of the time it was something like "soon as they talked to me they wanted to speak to a manager and per the rules/what we were trained to do was to connect them right to you" then we transfer the call and move on to the next call.

[@linck7up]

years ago my mom and dad paid for all this but when i got older i look at their bill and ask "whats this help fee?" they where paying so if u need help they will come over but they never used it. so i went on their PC and turn it off

[@zandadoum]

in our country we can register to a special "governement list" and telemarketing is not allowed to call or mail anyone on that list. it still happens, but since i registered, calls i have been getting have dropped from 3 a day to 3 a month

[@dragon1130]

3:08 "you just need to sub in the word Tellus(sp?) With whatever your isp is and you can share in his misery" I was doing that before Linus pointed it out.

[@MrAetherGaming]

4:26 if you still want to be called once your contracts expire, express interest into looking into a new isp and your isp will 100% discount you to keep calling you to keep you on their contract

[@MrCrouleau]

Luke, I'm with telus too, and pretty much since I signed up 3 years ago, I've had those Monet Studio calls the whole time. And they never called about my "loyalty" plan expiring either, which doubled my cost. Glad I caught it on my first month past the price plan expiring.

[@Illuminationsfromtheattic]

Flooding takes out my DSL internet all the time, plus the lines throughout my area are in really poor condition. We've had CenturyLink technicians diagnose these problems and assure us they'll be fixed, but then later after the issue is diagnosed the next person we talk to about it tells us everything is fine. Basically the company doesn't care and doesn't want to spend money, so they gaslight us. The service is incredibly slow, very expensive ($80 for 12Mbps) and unreliable, but there are no other options since CenturyLink has a total monopoly in my area.

[@SqueakyNeb]

Linus screaming "A DON'T CALL LIST" at 12:03 touched my soul

[@microcolonel]

Nice thing about Spectrum here in Wyoming; I just went into the shop, picked up a modem kit, plugged it in, and paying my bill gets me gigabit. No fuss.

[@plumjet09]

In California you’ll sometimes get 400kbps

[@InsecureCrab]

I finally got 500mbit fiber from AT&T and have never been happier with internet. I'm used to 35mbit so this feels like the space age.

[@fursphere2]

Not saying its a good idea - but some call centers have rules about 'hostile customers' - meaning they can't make their call center agents call known hostile poeple. Simply swearing on the line can get you put on their "Hostile Caller List". At least in the USA.

[@mittensfastpaw]

Honestly ISP's just need to be turned into state utilities at this point. Every country is giving them money to do things they never do. So lets cut out the middle man and take it over.

[@michaelcorcoran8768]

Absolutely, internet access is just as important as having a landline ever was

[@ILoveTinfoilHats]

Have you seen how anything government run goes? You don't want that dystopia thank you.

[@mittensfastpaw]

@@ILoveTinfoilHats Yes, because the dystopian society of monopoly corporations is so great.

[@comphoto6451]

@@ILoveTinfoilHats have you not paid attention to ISPs now? A monopoly you have no power, if it's city run you can quite literally vote to change it. Not to mention we already pay ISPs to install infrastructure which they routinely "forget" to do

[@nihongo_jouzu]

I had a similar situation happen to me when buying a car with my wife! The car salespeople would just keep directing the conversation at me, and would kinda rudely ignore my wife. Joke's on them though, she's the one who makes the final decision. 😉

[@PauloCesar-td9xo]

Here in Brazil my state has a program called "do not disturb", you just go to a website submit your number and literally nobody from marketing call centers call you

[@PauloCesar-td9xo]

@Deadpoppin indeed, recently they passed a bill demanding call center numbers to use the "3" digit before their actual number, so people can recognize that is in fact a marketing call before picking up, among a sea of useless laws those are actually pretty useful

[@bigamish879]

A local company here in Texas charge $100 for 100mbs a second, while if you did any research at all... You could pay $100 for 1gb with unlimited data... They have so many customers, I see their fancy trucks everywhere.

[@lw8882]

I used to get texts occasionally from my phone company about changing plans, because I've been with them for like 13 years now and the plan I was on had almost no data, like 500mb, and they would try and offer me new plans. They called me exactly once. The plan they offered was like 10 bucks a month cheaper, had 4 times the data, and included some international texts. I failed to follow up on signing up for it, but they still didn't call me back about it and harrass me about plan changes. Gotta love it when they just leave you be cause they realise you're not going to leave.

[@RobVespa]

We only have two local ISPs in my area. It used to only be one. Both ISPs were bought out by larger companies, who both raised the prices while lowering the service quality. I'm presently with a company that markets their service as fiber optics, but it isn't. The company has jumped through some type of legal loophole. As anyone with common sense knows, your connection is only as good as it's weakest link. For example, in my case, there are several. One being the distance from, let's call it a hub. Second, from the line (e.g., curb) to your home, they run what appears to be a coaxial cable (?) that's connected to an adapter (at both ends) that's connected to what's supposed to be (but may not be) a fiber optic line (on the client side, the adapter is connected to an ethernet cable port). This is still better than the competition. The situation is just like cable TV from the days of old (or perhaps today - I don't know)... which, in turn, is most likely similar to your local power company. Edit: Luke's experience reminds me of any time I have to deal with Amazon. Funny enough, in a trend I've consistently seen in companies, Amazon's customer service policies and employees have changed progressively for the worse while their prices have gone up (in this case, the Prime subscription - although the changes impact everyone).

[@ottojagenstedt9740]

Having worked for a carrier I totally understand them deciding to not actively seek out customers about renewing a discount and giving out deals. That being said, as long as there is any sort of comperable competition the customer should definitely be able to contact them when a plan runs out and be able to be offered a better deal than what is standard.

[@gerowen]

I am literally in the head of a holler in eastern Kentucky and I've got a fiber optic cable right to my house, 1Gb up and 1Gb down, incredibly reliable, for $110 a month and I NEVER hear from my ISP. I literally couldn't be happier with the service I'm getting from Foothills. It's one of the reasons that I love living here.

[@tundralwhisper7345]

I once tried to apply for an internship at a car dealership / repair shop, and their contact form required email address and phone number, as well as selecting how and when you wanted to be contacted. I selected to be contacted by email, not by phone. I selected to be contacted in the morning, midday, and afternoon, not evenings. 3 days later, at 7pm (while I was eating dinner!), they called me. My phone was upstairs, on vibrate, while I was eating downstairs with my parents. They never called back later, they never emailed, and I went to a different repair shop for my internship.

[@underthelidar]

Whenever my isp called, they offered me a bundle. I didn’t want “deal” rates bundled with TV, I wanted the cheapest plan, period. I wanted to avoid seeing my bills jump up unexpectedly. When they eventually canceled the bottom tier they put me on a deal rate for a faster plan (I genuinely did not notice the speed increase) and 2 years later I called angry when my bill went up. They canceled and it’s fine. But not everyone wants the best possible “value,” or “deal,” some just want the cheapest, and for the price to be stable with no maintenance.

[@Zeldur]

Living in the states, yeah it sucks. It took until a random person from the business trying to find the issue in the neighborhood looked at the line and said it was destroyed by squirrels. Since then, plus getting our own motem and wifi booster, the internet has been a lot better. But, our power sucks. This year alone I've lost power for..... 27-30 hours. 25 hours were out at the same time because of a massive storm that's the worst I've seen yet. But, since then, the power goes out roughly once every 1-2 weeks for either a small amount of time or 30 mins- 1 hour.

[@supervegito2277]

3:20 Idk, im not sure changing the bill without informing me is legal where i live. My insurance changed (accident) and they had to forewarn legally. No surprise changes, rent as well. Or atleast both my internet ISP and phone carrier has informed me if anything changed. In both cases ive only had positive notifications but still. Admittedly i dont think my carrier informed me that my current plan was switching from 100gb a month to infinite, but nothing negative, like massive price hikes. This is foreign to me, but i might just be new and/or a special case.

[@Sam-gf6ue]

It would be in the contract that "after 24 months your price will be $xxx

[@majoryoshi]

Oh god, the do not call list. The American Red Cross loves to call me every two weeks or so and with that frequency I can tolerate it but it gets to the point where they call once a week, once every other day, once a day, then multiple times a day. I'm generally a patient person so I'll answer the phone and they ask if I want to schedule a blood donation and the answer is always "No, now isn't a good time to do that." Eventually I got fed up and and told them to put me on their do not call list. The first time, it worked. I don't know what triggered it, whether it was me donating blood or a flag went off on my account saying that I hadn't been contacted in a couple months, but they started calling me again, with that same frequency pattern. After getting woken up at 8 am or whatever time it is about if I want to donate blood, I got rightfully pissed and yelled at them to put me on a do not call list. And holy shit they fought tooth and nail to keep me on their calling list. "Oh we can call you once every quarter about upcoming blood drives." "Oh we can lessen it to once a year." The only words that ever came out of my mouth that entire phone call were the initial "Hello", "Yes this is {name}", then multiple variants of "No, put me on your do not call list" even emphasizing that I know it exists because I was on it briefly. Thanks to them, its now harder for me to get a job because I automatically decline any phone call that's not in my contacts. If it's that f*cking important then you'll text me or leave a voice mail.

[@mehdishirazi3]

We have Verizon Fios here and I would go from $149 to $289 a month at the end of contract but everything stays the same and they throttle the internet. They don't call, never have, you always have to call them a few times to fix everything. I monitor all my accounts so I do know when they try to rip me off.

[@ZenEmu01]

UK here. A few years ago, my Father In Law passed. He had lived alone and was also in the early stages of dementia. He had never been particularly tech savvy. Even before he was unwell, He basically browsed sports websites and old hifi / sound system forums which was his hobby. He could turn his PC on and off, and honestly, he got a bit confused with text messaging., often signing them with Dad, just so we would know it was him. When I got around to dealing with his paperwork, I noticed how high his ISP bill was. This company is the UK’s main fibre ISP. Just over a year before he passed the ISP had called him, and I’m guessing in his confused state he just agreed with whatever they tried to sell him. He was paying over £400 per month (roughly $450 US at the time). They sold him EVERYTHING, every service, their fastest package and their full channel selection (he rarely watched TV at home) and put him on a terrible mobile tariff. They even sold him a second land line in an upstairs bedroom which never seems to have had anything plugged into it.

[@plumjet09]

How to make money 1. Take advantage of old and non tech savvy people 2. Profit

[@GlaucusBlue]

I like that part of the standard, if those features weren't turned off. Companies would ramp them up at the detriment to the qaulity of the image just to get higher rating. As you say better than nothing. I keep looking at a new TV and it's so impossible to actually find the info I want.

[@PetarNNenkovski]

I can relate on some parts, but not on others. Some of the most frustrating things here is that loyal customers or even new customers don't get any kind of a new deals or even most of the deals are just really bad every year, no matter how much upgrades or new things they might include.

[@TheSiliconSoul]

Yep I had the same experience with my local coax based ISP. I took the opportunity to switch to fiber optic to the home and when I called to cancel the old service only then did they try to offer me incentives to stay with them.

[@CMDRSweeper]

I had a similar problem with my ISP calling about all their other products, but rather than discounts it was more like an upsell everytime, and they called often. My solution was I changed my phone number in their system, to their customer support phone number and the calls stopped. Guess hooking their auto dialer to themselves did cause them to really stop, still have the same rate and service though.

[@mochimejika]

What kills me is if the rates go up they have no problem changing you plan and charging you more. If the rates go down they never tell you, and keep charging your old price and it's "your job to keep and eye on the rates and change it if the rates drop" I just had that happen with my cell provider. My old plan was 60 dollars a month for unlimited talk and text + 5gb of data. That plan doesn't exist anymore. The closest in price now is 50 a month for the same thing but at 15gb's of data. No idea how long it's been that way. It sucks knowing you've been paying more than you need to for who knows how long when there were better cheaper options.

[@nalorin]

Telus' treatment of its longest-standing customers degrades as they make mind-blowing speeds more widely available. I love Telus' fibre internet! But I HATE how they treat their most loyal customers... My parents have been EXCLUSIVELY with Telus for over 40 years (when Telus was AGT), and their property borders a small town that got fibre over 4 years ago. Their next-door neighbors (who are inside the town limits) can get up to 1.5 Gbps fibre. But the best plan that my parents can get is 15 Mbps DSL that's spotty and and rarely performs above 3 Mbps. And here's the clincher: THEY PAY OVER $110/MONTH for that crappy internet service! Meanwhile, their neighbors pay only $75/mo for 300 Mbps fibre. There are many things I love about Telus, but this one issue shreds my loyalty for them.

[@Crojo]

I worked for 2 different ISP-s and I can with certainty say that the people that call you or the ones you get when you call them are obligated to push and offer you bew services and extras wether they be cheaper or not. It does not matter if you are calling to report an issue with your service, technical or othetwise, the person you get on the phone must offer something. They also have goals of how much stuff they have to sell per month and if they don't, they get a talk with their boss about why they are not reaching their goals. Doesn't matter if you are very knowledgable and competent in your job, like technical support for example, if you don't get sales, you are a bad worker in the company's eyes.

[@everadept]

My ISP did the same and signed me up for TV and internet for a lower cost. I made sure the math was done including the tv service fees and the like. It was lower. First bill comes in and there is a tv installation fee. No one came to install the tv package. Since I made sure they wouldn't send a tech for a service i would not use. Customer service was adamant they could not remove the fee since it was part of the installation. Eventually I just told them to cancel my whole plan since I did not want the Tv package at all. They started backtracking at that point. Eventually they removed the fee.

[@nicholaswoodruff6890]

I had the same issues with Rogers kind of. I had been with them for mobile, but I had swapped off, and then every 3-4 weeks I'd get a call from a call center for Rogers asking why I switched. I'd request to be added to the no call list, and then the volume would increase before scaling back to the 3-4 weeks.

[@RobTheSquire]

I have a mixed bag with my ISP when I used to live in Bristol my ISP was very good in helping me out. So when some road works going on a few miles away and they snagged the line my ISP gave me extra data on my phone until the problem was fixed. Recently they've been a little bit on the difficult side most likely down to the area I now live. Which has an older network in dire need of upgrading which is slowly getting worked on. My provider has me on a certain package that is discounted until the work is done and I can enjoy the data speed i've signed up for. There are some ISP's I do steer clear from due to either cost or the hardware provided being absolute trash.

[@KibaSnowpaw]

i get calles form sellers all the time and i hate it i know a way that i legal can sue them for putting me on there list called the Robinson list "A Robinson list or Mail Preference Service (MPS) list is an opt-out list of people who do not wish to receive marketing transmissions. The marketing can be via e-mail, postal mail, telephone, or fax. In each case, contact details will be placed on a blacklist." i don't want to bother with that because many time they call you anyway i have a a friend that is on that list so what i just do i block the number i know they change number from time to time and i think i have over 200 numbers so far on my block list but i just keep doing so the more i block the less calls i get and someday i will get 90% of all the numbers been used.

[@Fender178]

In my area we have 2 ISPs the phone company and the Cable company. When we upgraded our service from I think it was like 600 Mbps to 1.2Gbps it was faster and cheaper with the 2 year contract and that was with Comcast/Xfinity. I think the worst thing about ISPs now a days is when they charge you rental fee for their modem/router on top of the per monthly fee especially when you can't get a 3rd party one that can do the job without the rental fee. After like a few years of doing that you could have paid for your own Router by then depending on how much the rental fee is.

[@walkermorales337]

We had a really stable experience with century link. It only went down due to vehicle accidents knocking out some things or city road construction, and even then it didn’t go down for too long. Then we moved and our service was extremely unstable and would go down frequently so we switched isps.

[@NebulonRanger]

I live on the east coast and I find it weird that Telus doesn't have fibre in literally every town and neighborhood of any size. Bell Aliant does out here in NS, so I didn't have to tell them to dig up sand and roll fibre LOL

[@dustin8889]

I mean, the issues with gaming might not be due to the ISP, not having a proper network setup in house is also something. Also, here in the Netherlands, a certain company is offering 600 down and 50 up over COAX, which is fine, though they said if we were to replace coax with fiber from the distribution box to the houses, then the upload speeds would stay the same... -_- Happy to say that another company has finally got in some Fiber her so now waiting for someone to come over pull the cable into my home, then I finally pay less for 1gb up 1gb down. :D

[@djbeathound2989]

Van Ziggo naar KPN 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@petenielsen6683]

It isn't just the banking and communications industries that are the problem. I have very good health insurance here in New York because as a disabled person I have Medicaid and Medicare. My third party provider sends me letters to remind me of flu shots, colon cancer screenings, annual wellness visits and called me to ask why I was not getting testing supplies on their dollar. So they have it on record that I am physically incapable of testing my own blood. A testing supply company called me twice a month for 4 months to try to get me to sign up with them for diabetes testing supplies. Worse than that, it was the exact same woman who made those calls to me every single time. So eventually she let it slip that the reason she was calling me is that the insurance company had me listed as diabetic and therefore I must need the testing supplies. She just had assumed this instead of looking at where it said "patient does not need testing supplies" or for that matter that the calls were in violation of US Federal law once I said never to call me on the first call. If you are on the federal do not all registry here in the United States businesses which you have never done business with cannot legally contact you except via the mail. The problem is that most telemarketers now fake the number from which they are calling so reporting them does no good. I think the reason I stopped getting these calls is that she got tired of my telling her what to go do... with her own brother or sister, by the way.

[@martinshoosterman]

This reminds me of a funny fact about scotiabank. If you have a checking account with them, if you are under 18 you can get a special student account which is cheaper than normal (I think its free). Automatically once you turn 18 they increase the price to the normal amount. Similarly they also have a discounted plan for people over 65 years old. Funny story though, that one is not applied automatically.

[@WigWoo1]

I wish they would just make these "cars extended warranty ETC" calls illegal. Should make laws requiring mandatory tracking on your phone when making outbound calls so you can be tracked if you engage in malicious phone calls

[@DBGMLV]

I had a similar problem with Vodafone here in Germany. At the time I didn't know german that well and a guy showed at my door to offer me a "better and cheaper" internet contract, but I didn't see the "free TV" in the contract. 6 months later the "free TV" ends and I have to pay for it. It took me about a year of calling a couple of times a month, but I finally got it take off my contract and I got reimburced for the extra money I paid for the "free TV", so I guess that's an option.

[@makatron]

I once after an hour on the phone trying to cancel my land line had to go in person and still had to waste 30 minutes because even a supervisor had to co-sign, and even she wanted me to keep my line.

[@Grimhof]

I went with Bell Aliant and they increased my bill in January twice instead of once. So when I changed my billing amount the emails I got were not telling me that I was not paying the full amount. They never called me, just one day in August my internet shut off, apparently my bill went from $110-$187 not $124. I owed them almost $600 and they didn't think to call me in 7 months. Turns out that they changed my plan without telling me. I called but the Manager I spoke too told me if I didn't like it then they could shut me off and I could find another company.

[@Martin-kc1xj]

It's crazy how aggressive and downright manipulative the "customer retention" people can get. I made the mistake of taking the free 3 months tv package a while back, and when I called to cancel it at the end of the 3 months, the guy literally started to ask me "Can you tell me how you're getting the news?", "How are you going to get news now?"... I was floored... I laughed and replied that's not their business, and then started asking repeatedly to confirm that my tv subscription was cancelled, regardless of what the person was saying. After 4-5 times, they said yes before going back to the manipulative tactics, I then cut them off by saying thanks and hung-up. How is this even legal?

[@alexyoung3986]

I feel so bad for you not having OFCOM! it's a recent change but ISPs in the UK now *have* to contact customers before their contract runs out to prevent things like this happening. admittedly the default is an email or letter, but you can change your preferred contact method to phone and boom, you'll get that call every 18 months. also, no call lists in the UK seem to be vastly better, I never receive any nuisance calls

[@RevolverLancelot]

Here's the thing about just switching to whatever new plan you're pitched: They will change the game on you. My folks used to have a internet plan from Comcast with no data cap. Dad got a call one day where they pitched him an upgrade like this, but they snuck in a data cap too. For months my parents were paying tons of money for going over that cap before they could get it resolved.

[@rusty3493]

I was expecting Teamviewer from that title.

[@ChrisPkmn]

My isp has a fun habit of disabling auto pay. If this happens to other people in my area without proper notification, I swear this is a shady way of making an extra buck

[@Patrick_Bard]

What Linus says at 3:08 is so true. Here in Brazil all major ISPs do the exact same practices Luke describes, with the exception of the good one of calling to improve connection for a cheaper price (it can happen, but you need to ask, or better yet, threat them leaving for another company), so it is a lose-lose situation.

[@JewishMusicToronto]

Thank you for the reminder to add a note in my calendar for two years from now! Just signed up for a 1.5 Gbps plan with Bell for $49.95 (+ tax) per month for two years. Don't want to forget to look into what's available then!

[@dievilifygaming8489]

I have cox communications here in Oklahoma and I keep having my modem reset itself. I've had 3 different modems and a tech come out and its still having a problem. He said it was the cable and replaced it but it's still disconnecting itself

[@EoRdE6]

Thats why I avoid the contracts with ISPs. I go for the base rate plans, unbundled, with no optional extras or rentals. In the US that locks your rate unless you speak to them again

[@Novur]

7:45 I had this EXACT SAME EXPERIENCE, to the LETTER, with the condo I ended up in. We had to switch to 4G because the lines are buried under a 40 year old shared concrete driveway with no access points, so the ISP and the landlord keep arguing about whose fault it is and WILL NEVER fix it 😤

[@edwardmaged3194]

Here in Egypt we have a monopoly in the ISP space by a company called WE (previously called Telecom Egypt) and we managed to get #Unlimited_Internet_in_Egypt trending for a couple of weeks but the whole thing just died off. It's crazy to think that in 2022 we still have a quota and the companies doesn't compete with each other and why would they if they made hundreds of millions of dollar by just selling quota add-ons.

[@mitchellbrusseau]

I think this is why I'm glad I get message with a text message in an email for every transaction that takes place physical or virtual you're virtual automatically with my checking or my debit card or any card in general because I keep a watchful eye on my finances and that's what's prevented fraudulent charges from going through cause I've had a lot of fraud before. And that way I can also take a note to know what I'm actually paying versus what I signed up for

[@Chapter7Certified]

Spectrum would always send contractors instead of their own techs and then after years of back and forth their own tech finally came and was like oh there’s your problem you’re in florida and they put the box at the end of your driveway in a hole that floods daily. That was after they had to rebury the line that apparently was barely buried to begin with

[@GaviLazan]

In Israel companies are required to give you a notice that your limited time discount pricing is expiring (though it doesn't have to be a phone call, usually just on the bill). On the other hand, every building around mine has at least one fiber provider, but we have none. I have no idea why. The fiber for the other buildings comes out of OUR parking lot! The ISPs are like "we have no plans to connect your building", why? "we have no information as to why". 😩

[@NotTylr]

3:38 I feel this, I work customer service so I feel like I understand how the person on the other end feels for the most part, and I try to remain super chill with them because they're just their to help. But with my old cell provider I had talked to customer support 4 times and got nowhere until they made me mad and I had to start yelling, then boom, escalated, problem solved.

[@crackers127]

My family realized that our Shaw tv and internet bill was more expensive than better advertised plans. We went to Shaw to ask why. They said it’s not their job to tell us we could be getting a better deal. Wow.

[@mikeymaiku]

because it isnt, last i checked its not thier responsibility to compare thier prices and thier own and advertise them why "telus is better than shaw" when you want competition, its your job to research your plans availible.

[@crackers127]

@@mikeymaiku ur fun eh?

[@jonzo22]

I had the same issue with Bell for my phone a long time ago... they were so expensive and never offered any good prices so I told them to lower my bill or I am cancelling, but they did not agree. So I switched to Fido forcing Bell to transfer my number to Fido by Canadian law, and then Bell phones me 7 times to which I did not answer.

[@vorgon]

In the US, we have a national do no call list run by the gov and backed by fed laws. USELESS.

[@Michalosnup]

We have a problem with internet, which makes loading sites between 19:00-21:00 almost impossible. Our service provider (Vodafone) knows about the problem. They have written on their site that it will by fixed by 16.08.2022 (it is 19.09.2022)

[@better-than-a-bunch-of-numbers]

I work at a call center type job, and if you say to put yourself on the do not call list, most companies, at least in America, are LEGEALLY required to do so, and if they don't, everything is recorded, you'll get fired, the company and yourself get fined, and the company is opened to litigation. Very big no no

[@lmitz]

They probably did some really self-serving surveys where they were like "are you annoyed with the money saving phone calls or the shitty marketing ones?" And then noticed that everyone complained (about the shitty ones) and decided it was about both