Cogeco gripes more than triple

Company says all major issues are now resolved

Complaints about dismal Cogeco Connexion services went up by 359 per cent this past year, according to an annual report tracking such grievances.

The annual report — from the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-Television Services — comes as no surprise to local Cogeco customers.

The Spectator wrote in June and August about complaints, and received about 250 emails and dozens of phone calls from people who read the stories and wanted to relate their similar experiences.

Cogeco spokesperson Gabriel Beausejour says that as of October “all major issues are now behind us.”

He said the increase in complaints was mostly related to the company’s implementation of a new system integrating 22 of its technological systems into one.

Gail Tessier of Hamilton says she finally got her issues resolved, “but not without a lot of hassle.”

Her issues included a defective PVR that prevented her from watching TV. Tessier’s several calls to Cogeco, asking for management to call her went unanswered. She finally got an answer after going on Cogeco’s Facebook page.

But even after that, it was still difficult to get her PVR replaced, she says. She was told to wait two weeks for a service technician to go to her house. After several calls again, she was finally allowed to exchange the PVR for a new one at Cogeco’s store in Lime Ridge Mall — something she had earlier been told was not possible.

“It was disappointing that I had to go to such lengths just to get service, when their services are so expensive,” she says. “Who knows what I will have to do the next time.”

Andre Simard of Ancaster says his service has improved in terms of outages, but he is still frustrated with Cogeco.

“No one did get back to me. So when they say a manager will call, there is no way they will call.”

Most aggravating for Simard is that he has no other option to Cogeco internet services. In his area of town, Bell only offers satellite TV, he says.

Deborah McPhee of St. Catharines said it took a drastic move on her part to stop Cogeco’s collections from calling.

“Each time I went through the story, repeatedly, they would totally understand it was not my fault, left me feeling it would be resolved, but did nothing to resolve it.”

Michelle Dube, of Hamilton, says she is “very, very disgusted” at the way she was treated, and that Cogeco is still allowed to be in business.

“I called about 10 times for weeks and weeks. I could not contact one single person,” she says about her internet trouble. “Once I waited five hours (on the phone).”

She is not at all surprised that complaints went up 359 per cent.

She finally got fed up and switched to Bell, but Cogeco kept billing her. Now she warns everyone not to authorize payments for TV, internet and phone services through automatic withdrawal at the bank. Even her bank manager has since advised her to never do that, she says.

Cogeco Connexion, formerly known as just Cogeco, has the second largest number of cable customers in Ontario and Quebec, according to their website.

The company has 782,000 internet customers in Ontario and Quebec, says Beausejour.

Beausejour invites customers still having issues to phone Cogeco’s call centres — and says that today, the average wait time is one minute, with a maximum of 10 in some periods. Customers can also contact Cogeco’s social media support on its Facebook and Twitter pages, he says.

The complaints commission received 546 complaints about Cogeco, which is 3.8 per cent of the total complaints across the country.

It has been able to resolve 340 so far.

The commission received 4,734 complaints about Bell Canada, one of the largest providers, a jump of 46 per cent; 1,449 complaints against Rogers, a 10 per cent increase; and 337 complaints against Shaw, a jump of 120 per cent.