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Shaw Communications is selling broadband service promising 15Mbps and delivering only 1Mbps to some of its customers.
Shaw’s ‘Extreme’ speed tier, priced at up to $57 a month, turned out to be a very bad deal for Ron Kitamura. After discovering Shaw’s Internet speed test, he learned he was paying for 15Mbps service and only getting 1.5Mbps results.
“That is in the range of their ‘Lite’ speed tier,” Kitamura told CTV News.
Shaw’s High-Speed Lite service is priced as low as $25 a month and delivers 1Mbps service for customers on a budget. If Shaw is unable to deliver broadband service at the speeds advertised, customers are throwing money away buying premium speeds they will never receive.
After a Shaw technician visited Kitamura’s home and replaced some equipment, his speeds improved, but still don’t reach the 15Mbps advertised. Even worse, at night his speeds often drop to a crawl — as low as 1-2Mbps, because Shaw has oversold its broadband service.
CTV News tried to contact Shaw about Kitamura’s problems and western Canada’s cable giant isn’t talking. They did not respond to repeated calls and e-mail contacts.
Kitamura has been offered compensation by Shaw — first a free month of service, which he refused, and then $225 in service credits — 50% off his service for the past nine months, but Kitamura still isn’t satisfied.
He, like many other Shaw customers, just wants the broadband speeds the company advertises, but apparently cannot or will not deliver.
Kitamura is done talking to Shaw. He just filed a complaint with 
the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services, an industry-funded ombudsman for consumers buying deregulated telecommunications services.
“Apparently, if you don’t complain, nothing gets done,” he said.
[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CTV British Columbia – Are you getting the internet speed you paid for 2-17-11.flv[/flv]
CTV British Columbia investigates if Shaw’s customers are getting the speeds they were promised. (2 minutes)
I have been having the same problem with Road Runner Turbo- when I first upgraded I was getting an average of 15-20MBps down except for peak times when it was around 10-12. I was content although I would love more, but that is the top they offer. Then after about 6 months I started noticing speed issues. I’m talking down to about 3-5MBps…and not during peak traffic times either. IMO That’s absurd. Our uptime is on target though at just shy of 1MBps, not sure if that means anything. Our router was a few years old, so we figured we’d… Read more »
I am a technician for a major cable company… To play devils advocate here, the common saying that “anything after the modem is your problem” rings pretty true.. If you’re getting good speed test results connected directly to the modem, whatever is happening past that is not the cable companies concern. Sucks but it’s true.
Thank you, I appreciate the insight. This issue is driving us crazy and we just don’t know what is causing it. Nothing had changed on our end when the issue began, so it’s really mindboggling, hence our assumption it must be TWC. But you are probably right… we’ll see what more we can do on our end to fix it. Thanks! 🙂
Not the greatest story, while there may be an issue there are also a number of things that may be causing the issue as well. During they story they clearly focus on his router yet never mention it. Not to mention the fact he has 4-5 different random toolbars going, who’s to say what else is running on his computer to cause issues?