Like so many others, I basically found myself being sick and tired of being a formality with Bell, I investigated some alternatives and here I am. I am now a happy freephoneline subscriber and SuperSpeed DSL customer.
Let me tell you, the entire experience has been absolutely liberating!!!
I made my initial call somewhere around the 20th of March and received my Thompson 784 router within 2 days. My dry loop was setup right on schedule and I plugged in the router a couple of days later. Go figure, a real plug and play device. I had my entire home network transferred over within the day and things have never been better. The performance has been great and I have not had to reset my router every day as I was with my previous unit. When I say home network, I am talking about 8 devices. The unlimited bandwidth will be like a breath of fresh air.
So the next thing became the transfer of my home phone. Like so many others, my home phone has become a catchcan for every 800 number in Canada and every telemarketer outside of Canada. I simply cannot justify paying for that constant intrusion. Well, I filled out my LOA and my phone number was promptly ported yesterday and after a quick call to tech support we are now VOIP home phone newbies too. We have made a bunch of calls since yesterday because we were like kids in the candy store. I think I will even call my uncle in Newfoundland later today. The quality of the calls has been just great. I suspect that I will continue to enjoy my new home phone while I am at home...and when I travel. Again, as a new VOIP user, this is a new horizon for me to explore.
The last step in the completion of this transition is email addresses. I have of course received my first email address in the Squirrel Mail system. It is fine and I do use my ISP email address to conduct my personal business. As I have read from other threads, this is a personal choice of mine and although I understand there is a transition period where I have to advise all those who have my previous ISP address of my new ISP address, I still enjoy having that "home" based address. I use the big freebies for junk. So I have asked via tech support how do I take advantage of the 5 email addresses that I see are available to SuperSpeed customers, but I am not receiving a response yet. I would like to have an address for every member of my family. (4) Once this is done, I will be set.
I am actually a loyal customer. As long as something is working for me and makes sense, I have no will to change. So, as long as I can receive services from FPL/SuperSpeed, I will.
As I said in the beginning, I really got sick and tired of being a formality with Bell. I don't suspect that FPL will take me there too. I am paying a very fair price for a very good series of services. I am converted.
Since I have this opportunity to offer my advice or feedback, I will echo the remarks of others in these forums. It would be a great idea to send or offer a Welcome/Getting Started package for persons like me who are new DSL/FPL subscribers. I did manage just fine and everything went better and quicker than I ever expected, but a package like that would have proven invaluable. I could use a little something that would tell me what non-destructive settings I could change on my router. Administrator Password for example? WEP key settings?
The only other thing I really really need is the email addresses for my family.
So, Thank You to FreePhoneLine and SuperSpeed DSL. I am looking forward to a long and happy relationship.