My Experience With Teksavvy (If you're looking for an ISP Keep Looking)

If you are looking for an Internet Service Provider ( ISP ) or phone service in Toronto I strongly caution you against going with Teksavvy.

I moved recently and placed an order with Teksavvy for phone and DSL Internet Service. 16 days later the phone works, but I never got internet from them and have finally placed an order with a different company.

Teksavvy, a name I find ironic now, would like to blame all of the problems that occurred on Bell (Teksavvy is a re-seller and buy their bandwith from Bell). I'm sure that Bell was part of the problem. Bell has a well earned reputation for mediocre service and hostile customer service but Bell is surely not the entire problem. Sadly I think blaming Bell has become a crutch for Teksavvy. If anything goes wrong they simply blame Bell and go about what they were doing. No effort is made to investigate the problem or to keep the customer informed.

A timeline of events and phone calls is listed below. During several of those calls there were exchanges that went something like this:

Me: Why isn't my internet active?
Teksavvy: We can't activate your internet until your phone is active.
Me: But my phone is active, it has been for a week.
Teksavvy: Your phone is active?
Me: Yes, I'm talking to you on it right now.
Teksavvy: Ok, let me look into it and call you back
(no one calls back)

It wasn't until July 27, 15 days after my initial order, when my phone was disactivated that they realized that my phone had been active and that there was a problem (despite my trying to tell them that days earlier.) At this point Teksavvy went into full blame Bell mode. I didn't have a single conversation with them where Bell wasn't mentioned several times - we've called Bell, we've emailed Bell etc.,

They finally gave me August 4 as an activation date for my internet - but as that was the 4th activation date they'd given me I had no reason to believe that it would be accurate and switched to a different carrier. At no point in any of this did Teksavvy seem at all remorseful about any this. Their attitude at all times was more along the lines of "that's just the way it is and there is nothing anyone can do." The reality is that there was something they could have done. They could have listened why I tried to explain the situation to them. Their frantic phoning and emailing of Bell could have started on July 20 - when Internet failed to activate the first time and not 8 days later. They could have tried to explain the problem from their perspective. They could have been proactive in keeping me informed instead of my having to take the initiative to find out why the things they said would happen weren't happening. They could have called me back when they said they would. Teksavvy did none of this. They did not, in short, act like a professional organization or like a service provider.

There are plenty of organizations out there providing phone and internet service. You should pick a different one.

The full timeline of my experience with Teksavvy goes like this:
July 12 placed order
July 13 was told the phone activation date was July 16
July 14 was told the internet activation date was July 20
July 16 Phone was activated
July 20 was told internet activation date had been moved to July 23
July 23 11 am - internet wasn't active, called to find out why and was told that they would check into it and call me right back
July 23 3 pm - No one had called back yet so I called again and was told they would find out what happened and call me back
July 23 7 pm - No one had called back so I called again and was told that internet activation date had been moved to July 30 - I asked to speak to a manager and was told that the manager wasn't available but would call me back - the manager never called me back.
July 25 Subscribed to 56k Dialup service as a backup to Teksavvy
July 27 phone stopped working - I called and asked to speak to a manager - I was told that a manager was not available but someone would call me back. This time a manager did call me back and I relayed my experience so far. The manager (Sean) said that the phone should not have stopped working and that he would look into it and either he or someone from tech support would call back. No one called back.
July 27 4 pm - the phone started working again
July 27 8 pm - the phone stopped working again
July 27 9 pm - Mellissa (?) said that the problem was on Bell's end and Andre (escalation mgr) would look into it in the morning and call
July 28 am - Phone working again
July 28 11:30 am - Scott called to see if the phone had been activated - said internet now delayed until August 4
July 28 Cancelled Teksavvy Service filed an order with Start.ca