Right.
So this has been an ordeal. At some point about two weeks ago, my internet went spotty. It would bounce up and down all the time. So I called my ISP. They're a Canadian indy ISP called Teksavvy. They lease their infrastructure from a Canadian incumbent called Cogeco. So I called Teksavvy up and was like hey, my internet is doing a thing. Can you please to fix it? The CSR responded that they would engage Cogeco and have them check the lines, and call me back. Wonderful.
So they called me back and told me that Cogeco said that there was no problem with their lines. Just reboot the modem and the challenge should resolve. Well, it did not, but fuck do I know right?
So over the next few days it gets worse and worse until on Wednesday it just ... dies. Completely. No pings, no nothing. On the modem, the upstream light is off, and the downstream light is flashing. No amount of rebooting, resetting, or attempting to isolate the challenge was fruitful. I re-engaged Teksavvy and the CSR said that the modem is probably dead. They can send me one to test with, or I can go purchase one. I advised that they send me one, and I would also source one locally in the meantime. They advised to call once I got my new modem and they would provision it for me and I should be up-and-running after that. Wonderful.
I went out to get a new modem and got it home and called Teksavvy and the CSR provisioned it and said it should be good to go in an hour. I had a funny feeling though, so I checked my account and lo and behold, the wrong modem was provisioned. So I called them back like hey, can you please fix this? And the fellow said he did. Great.
Still no internet after 24 hours. At this point, I've been without internet for over a week. Unacceptable.
So I call again last night, and the CSR said that they would escalate to Cogeco again but make it urgent this time (why wasn't it urgent the last time?) and that it should be up in an hour. The CSR also advised that their support is available 24/7 (is Cogeco's though?). She remitted this ticket at 16h50, so I'm sure Cogeco's service desk got right on that shit /s.
So I made a choice, and headed to the mall to go to Virgin (they're a direct subsidiary of Bell Canada). I already have my cell with them so adding the account shouldn't be too difficult. And it wasn't! The fellow at the kiosk said they would order the modem now and I should get it on Wednesday at the latest. Wonderful. 300mb down, 100mb up for $80/mo (Canadian internet is absolutely trash priced. Our country is like, 3 telcos and a supermarket chain in a trench coat).
So this morning I check and sure enough there's still no internet. The CSR from yesterday called me back today around noon and advised that Cogeco had provisioned the modem. I advised her that was great, but this morning I still had no internet, and I had been unable to ping anything at home that I normally access, so I don't think anything had changed. She hummed and hawed and eventually hung up with me. Fine, whatever.
So I get an alert that my modem from Virgin has already arrived. Terrific! So I stop on the way home and grab it from my PO box. When I got home, my cable was still out (same symptoms). Fuck it. I plugged everything in from Virgin and it fired right up and my speeds are outrageous and everything is good.
I've been with Teksavvy over 15 years, and they burned all that good will in less than 14 days. Virgin has been an absolute dream to deal with so far.
So now I have the Herculean task of migrating my accounts that I had configured with my Teksavvy address to my new Proton mail address. At least I have a password manager (NordPass) to help with that. And when that's done this year (I think this year) I'll probably end up moving everything over to Proton Pass (why pay for multiple things). And when my NordVPN is done in 2 years I'll probably move that over to ProtonVPN as well.
As soon as that is all done, I'm going to engage Teksavvy and tell them to kick rocks. What fucking nonsense.