Vidéotron, Quebec’s largest cable operator, is secretly filming some of their technicians on fake service calls to verify they are providing professional service to the company’s customers.

But instead of keeping the results to themselves, the company is publishing the resulting videos to their website for customers to enjoy.

A total of 21 technicians were put to the test, and the company set up some outrageous challenges for them to overcome, starting with a single woman trying to convince her mother the technician was her boyfriend, with comical results.

While we are unlikely to see the Vidéotron technicians that failed the tests, the company has launched a publicity campaign to praise itself for excellent service.

“Our conscientious technicians are ambassadors for Vidéotron and its values,” said Manon Brouillette, president of consumer markets. “We are very proud of them. They have achieved an impressive 96% customer satisfaction rate and this campaign is a tip of the hat to their great work.”

Putting technicians to the test, especially those working for third-party subcontractors, might not be a bad idea for some U.S. cable companies to try, especially after some of those technicians were later arrested for sexual assault, theft, and other crimes.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Videotron – The technician trap.flv[/flv]

Watch Vidéotron’s first edition of its hidden camera trap for company technicians, when a single woman gets in over her head with a little white lie.  (2 minutes)

HughesNet customers unjustly cut off from their Internet service for violating the company’s “Fair Access Policy,” or who paid an early termination fee when they realized satellite Internet was not for them may qualify for a settlement payment ranging from $5-40, or “tokens” that can provide a temporary free pass from the company’s usage caps as part of a class action lawsuit settlement.

Broadband Reports‘ readers who subscribe to the satellite provider first mentioned receipt of the settlement paperwork, which provides cash payments for ex-HughesNet customers who subscribed to any of the following Hughes Consumer Service Plans between May 15, 2005 – March 2, 2012:

Home, Pro, Pro Plus, Small Office, Business Internet, Elite, ElitePlus, ElitePremium, Basic, Power 150 and Power 200

Customers who canceled service are qualified to receive the cash payments. Those who paid an early termination fee prior to Dec. 6, 2010 will receive $40. Those who canceled as of March 2, 2012 and did not pay an early termination fee will receive $5. HughesNet also promised to implement a new sliding scale for their early termination fee. Each month you remain a customer under a service contract will reduce the amount of the fee by a proportional amount.

Current customers do not receive a cash settlement. Instead, they will be provided with a minimum of one “Restore token” per calendar month for the next 18 months. That may be nothing special — HughesNet already provides one token per month to every customer.

The HughesNet Fair Access Policy includes a download allowance. Users who exceed their allowance will have their service speeds reduced during the “Recovery Zone” for about 24 hours, after which speeds return to normal. Customers can apply their Restore token as a “get out of jail free” card, instantly restoring normal speeds.

HughesNet was sued for misleading customers about the company’s onerous usage limits and expensive early termination fee policy.

The lawyers bringing the case will receive fees, costs and expenses of up to $630,000. Up to $5,000 will be paid to each of the three Class Representatives that were part of the original lawsuit. Those seeking relief under the settlement have until September 28, 2012 to apply.

Complete information on the settlement and how to apply is available at: Satelliteinternetsettlement.com

Comcast suffered another nationwide e-mail meltdown Wednesday afternoon when customers discovered their messages were no longer getting through.

Customers pounded Comcast’s support forums looking for answers, but it took awhile for a Comcast spokesperson to finally acknowledge there was a problem.

“We’re aware that Comcast residential Internet customers may not be able to log in to e-mail or may experience delays with e-mail at this time,” said spokesman Jeff Alexander. “Our engineers are working to determine the root cause and are making progress.”

Although no mail appears to have been lost, Comcast customers were not happy with another service outage.

“It seems like at least once a month there is some sort of problem with Comcast’s e-mail servers,” writes Tom Judall, a Stop the Cap! reader and Comcast customer. “This was just the latest and our company uses Comcast Business Class service and was also impacted.”

The outage lasted approximately five hours, with a considerable backlog of messages reaching customers overnight Thursday.

Now some customers are contacting Comcast looking for some credit.

“I think this company owes more than excuses for yet another outage,” Judall said. “How about some credit, which might be an incentive to work harder to fix these issues once and for all.”

Judall is still waiting for a response from a message he e-mailed to Comcast customer service.

In general, Comcast will grant service credit requests for outages lasting several hours, but only when a customer contacts them to request it.

Shaw Cable has pulled the plug on its complimentary cable radio service on Vancouver Island, which used to provide enhanced FM reception of radio services from across the province and from the United States.

Listeners in the Vancouver area never received notification the service was being terminated, and a Shaw spokesman said the company did not bother because it was a free service delivered to cable customers.

Some listeners called the loss of more than 20 FM stations devastating, leaving them with as few as three clear stations, and no reception of CBC Radio 2 from Canada’s public radio network.

Kerry Hunt, Shaw’s regional manager for Vancouver Island, said the company is phasing out the FM radio service in order to increase Internet speeds and make room for additional digital cable channels.

“Nobody is installing FM anymore,” Hunt told Canada.com. “It’s just a service that is very rarely even being used.”

Gone for some B.C. listeners

Hunt called cable radio anachronistic in the digital and Internet age, and those customers who value the service are now being pushed to use Internet streaming services, offered by many of the stations listeners lost. But those streams count against the company’s Internet Overcharging usage caps, and with many of cable radio’s fans among the less-computer-savvy elderly, the expense to add broadband service to continue listening to radio stations they used to receive for free is a hardship.

Cable radio service is a legacy service, originally introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to provide enhanced radio service to cable-TV subscribers over cable-wired FM receivers. Some cable systems delivered national radio superstations, college stations not available over the air, or distant regional radio signals not well received by cable subscribers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission used to require all Canadian cable operators provide the service, converting all area AM signals for FM reception. Those rules have been considerably relaxed, and today most cable operators deliver the bare minimum, including one CBC Radio service, over its set top cable boxes.

Shaw says it plans to gradually discontinue cable radio service across its entire coverage area.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Cox Ads 5-2012.flv[/flv]

Cox Cable has slammed its phone company competition in a series of new TV commercials that call out antiquated and slow DSL. But customers switching to Cox have to endure that company’s unjustified Internet Overcharging schemes.  Cox arbitrarily limits your Internet usage in an effort to maximize profits and reduce costs.  Watching the online video Cox advertises could put you perilously close to your monthly allowance. Exceed it once too often and you may find your account shut off.

Cox executives promise they’ll listen to customers and what they want. Stop the Cap! urges you to participate in our pushback against Cox usage caps. Tell the cable company it does no good selling their broadband service for online video when the company threatens to shut it down if you watch “too much.”  (2 minutes)