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Bell expressvu rant! - No more WFN! Sort of NF!


Rattletrap2

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Sometimes i just can't get over how we are railroaded by these telecommunications giants!

We live in an area where our only realistic option for Television and internet is Bell! I have been subscribing to Expressvu for 13 years since moving here and pay almost $128 per month for a bunch of crap that I never watch.....just so that i could get a package that contains WFN (World Fishing Network). This month, they decide to abandon WFN for something they call the "Sportsman" channel. Unfortunately they dropped a whole lot of the fishing shows I watched, and substituted with a bunch of hunting shows! Nothing against hunting, but it is not my thing!

They don't even have WFN available at any price!!

I could of course download the shows on YouTube, but unfortunately, they limit us to 40GB of internet data for $60.00 per month! That is the maximum I can get (20 GB for $50 + $10 more for the second 20GB)

Third world countries are getting better service for less money than we get in rural Ontario!! It is not like I live in some remote bush area, but right on a major highway!

I am so sick of taking this abuse by these companies. Our Bell Bill for home phone, TV, Internet, and one cell phone is over $340.00 per month! My wife has a cell phone that is on another bell plan.

Sigh.........I need an advil!

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yup

I feel your pain

I am thinking about dropping a bunch of bell packages

I would like to go from 140 to under a hundred for their crappy service

over 3/4 of the channels i get i dont want or dont speak the language but they come with the package

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I forgot to mention, my wife pays Bell over $100 per month for a second miserable internet service so she can work from home without shooting our other plan over its limit. Her internet continually goes down completely or slows to a crawl at random! Rodgers  is not available at all! When she tried to get her plan, Rodgers said they shared the towers (Cell towers), but if they do, it is not a level field. The identical hub on Rodgers would barely work at all, where the Bell exact same hub works somewhat.

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50 minutes ago, pics said:

I have plenty of channels and unlimited data for less than $200... What I don't have is any easy access to a lake for fishing... I would trade the city conviences in a heartbeat if I could.. 

I have both. Liven the life. LOL

Now if I could just break this cold virus and get back to fishing.:(

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Do you guys in rural Ontario not get the option for unlimited bandwidth? That's crazy and makes little to no sense to me.

I pay $96 tax in for a unlimited 10gb fibe connection, basic tv and home phone. Price is locked in for 2 years. Once they raise the price I'll call in, complain, and repeat.

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Had Bell all my life, close to 50 years and dad had 40 years service when he retired from Bell. Last Fall we decided to cut the TV service completely, only phone and Fibe Internet to remain, I call , press 1 for English, LOL,  get some overseas call centre and some heavily accented , barely understandable English and explain I want to cancel about 90 bucks of TV service. Short story, because I don't have 3 services bundled anymore I loose a bunch of discounts and they recoup about 50 bucks of the anticipated savings I thought I would get. I get POed , loose it , probably said some things I shouldn't have, call Cogeco, get a Canadian  and work out a deal for unlimited internet, think it is a 60 gig connection, home phone retaining my present number , bunch of features and unlimited calling US and Canada long distance as my wife is from Florida and my stepdaughters and grandkids are there and 1 in Oregon, all for $104 a month, going to $140 or so after the year honeymoon is over, better than around 200 with Bell for basically the same package.  Between an android box and Cyberflix, 15 bucks for an IPTV package and the Toshiba TV in the livingroom does chromecast for the laptop sitting on the coffee table for youtube, we get all the Leafs, Raptors and Jays game, morning and evening news on CHCH and watch just about any show that was broadcast in the past 20 years. Home is now Bell Free ?

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Amen brother! You hit it on the head, same here. The government gave these holes huge grants to give us rural folk reasonable service for telecom, internet and tv.... bell gives us the worst cell service of any of them, the data plans they have are a joke! My kids eat through that data in a day, then they have a data overage alert " click to continue" .... I had one bill for $1800 in one month! And now it seems like every time I turn on express view I have less channels then before and I only notice because they only take the channels I watched not the 300 channels of s##t 

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So, some of you may recall I worked for Bell on the home service sales team so please take some notes on how to save. ;) 

1st, shop the other options in your area so you can call the household loyalty team to sort out your current Bell situation before you cut them off.  Get the best rates from the others and then the "on-going" price after the promo.  Those rural have Shaw TV as an option.

2nd, check your TV that you have now (the name on the bill - good, better, best are pre-done channel line ups) and then get online and see the Current programming packages.  You can sign up for the 'good' and pay between $4-$7 a channel to add to any package.  Some people can survive with basic and 1 or 2 add on channels and cut the bill in a huge way. 

3rd, if you are on a "turbo hub" internet plan via the cell towers then the odds are there is no DSL internet from Bell in the area via the phone line.  So yeah you are kind of stuck but you can see what the new up to date plans are too and make any changes up or down.  If DSL (phone line) internet is there and working then any plan other than a dial-up plan can be changed to a new package NAME and made unlimited.  

4th, a trio of services with any brand of home service provider IS the best rates because they have nothing left to sell you so yes you get those 'bundle savings', legit.

Now as for WFN, that's not Bell, Rogers, Shaw and others call.  The CRTC tell's them what they can and cannot have.  Some of it is also a contractual obligation.  WFN has been advertising since pre Christmas of the 'name change' and programming changes to come.    

Lastly, no matter how mad you are or may become while on the phone with a loyalty agent you are planning to cancel and go to company ABC for XYZ$$ unless they can do better.  Your call will be MUCH faster and easier the calmer you stay.  Trust me...  I got $427 back from Cogeco as I called often to report tv and or internet issues.  They had zero issue offering me that cash back and the manager that I was dealing with then thanked me many times for not being "an irate caller who's had a LOT of service issues out of my control".

So if you are planning to leave ANY providers shop what you can get and cannot get and know the now and then prices as well as any terms and then make the call while nice and calm.  

Oh and when the auto recording picks up and you press ZERO over and over to get a live person you end up talking to sales who cannot and will not help at all.  You will more than likely be put on hold off and on upwards of 15 min before they even make the effort to get you where you need to be.  Just so you know...  

Have a good one and good luck.

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GBW, There are NO options! Bell has us by the you know whats! I have been hearing about how they are doing study after study to improve or provide high speed internet for 13 years now! Supposedly there were government incentives and what not but with the limited numbers of potential customers, they just can't be bothered to provide service.

You can't tell me the technology is not available to give us high speed unlimited for a reasonable price? They just choose not to.

The hub we have is a replacement for our old WiMax that they no longer support. They would not even give us a second hub for my wife to use. She had to go with something else for a hub and her plan starts at $60 for 5 GB of data and goes up from there. $100 to $120 a month is normal for her usage. Meanwhile anyone on DSL can get unlimited bandwidth for a fraction of the price we pay. They have cable in Orangeville and Shelburne, but we are almost exactly in the middle and get squat!

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If you go to findinternet dot ca you can see what's available in your area and it says Explornet wireless internet is available in Mono at $99 for 25mbps and 500gb limit. Ditch the home phone and add unlimited talk to a cell phone to make it your new "home phone", cancel cable, get Expornet and pay likely half what you're paying now. $340 x 12 = $4080 per year. That is insane. 

We have an antenna with a whopping 7 HD channels and use the wireless internet for Amazon Prime TV, YouTube and various streaming sites. Both of us were born and raised with cable and satellite TV so it was frustrating at first making the switch, but now we'd never consider going back to cable if we did move back into the city.

 

If you ditch cable there are websites with fishing content for low prices. Fishing TV is great and you can pay for only specific shows or you can watch everything (maybe 150 shows with multiple episodes each) for $99/year. 

 

 

Many options for those who want to break free...

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Thanks for the info ch312! I did look at Explornet back about 10 years ago, but the installation of a tower seemed insane. Another place out of Mount Forest area wanted to install a 100 foot tower at the north end of our property for who knows how much? They went out of business while I was thinking about it! lol I will take a look at the site you quoted. Thanks again!

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10 hours ago, canoecarrier said:

I believe bell owns the lines and rents them to the other companies. When I have an issue with my internet, bell has to come and I don't even have any bell services! 

Yes, depending on where the person is located.  Bell and cable companies (if avail.) will rent out the lines to provide an option to the customer.  That is, if it's available to even get via Bell or cable.  

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I never paid for WFN. I would watch their free trials once in a while and noted that its was basically the same show over and over again for the month so never saw the appeal.

Between You tube, waypoint TV and Bassmaster.com, I get pretty much all of the fishing related shows I could ever want.

Living in the sticks sucks for actual internet service but there could be other options in your area.

I am lucky enough to have teksavvy in my area (DSL through a Bell line but it works and is cheaper) but we also have explornet (everyone complains about them) and Storm just came into the area. It is satellite internet and the neighbours that have it, seem to like it better than the Explorenet package they had previously.

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On 1/27/2019 at 8:13 AM, Rattletrap2 said:

Thanks for the info ch312! I did look at Explornet back about 10 years ago, but the installation of a tower seemed insane. Another place out of Mount Forest area wanted to install a 100 foot tower at the north end of our property for who knows how much? They went out of business while I was thinking about it! lol I will take a look at the site you quoted. Thanks again!

 

I've poured the concrete base for a tower and helped the guys erect the tower afterwards. It is a very simple process and it took less than a half hour from start to finish to put up the tower pieces with us taking our time and being cautious as none of us had done it before. The guy found the free tower on Kijiji and had his buddy climb and piece together the tower. 

 

HTHM, what antenna are you running and is it on a tower? Most people think I am full of it when I tell them we watch HD on the antenna...

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3 hours ago, ch312 said:

HTHM, what antenna are you running and is it on a tower? Most people think I am full of it when I tell them we watch HD on the antenna...

Yea and it's better hd than through a dish where the signal is compressed for transmission. Unfortunately around here I can only get two hd channels.

 

Cheers

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cut the cord guys, had Bell for the land line and cogeco for tv and internet, all in $270, cut the cord to all...signed up with a new internet provider, 60mb speed and unlimited, $60 bucks, don't need the land line since we have cell phones, went and bought an android box for $80 bucks and signed up for IPTV for $15 month, I litterly have 500 or so channels ( and every channel Cogeco had + ) unlimited movies, so all in $75 a month, thats a savings of $195 a month.....and guys WFN is now the sportsman channel, has nothing to do with your provider.

Edited by FILTHY OAR
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20 hours ago, GBW said:

Yes, depending on where the person is located.  Bell and cable companies (if avail.) will rent out the lines to provide an option to the customer.  That is, if it's available to even get via Bell or cable.  

Bell only owns the old copper phone lines. this is dial up and is the slowest means for internet.

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2 hours ago, FILTHY OAR said:

Bell only owns the old copper phone lines. this is dial up and is the slowest means for internet.

Yes, they own the copper lines BUT DSL internet is also run through that very same line.  You have to be close to what is called "central office" for Bell to offer DSL.  

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