Comments on: Primus Canada Sucks: A Happy-Ending Update

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:39:36 +0000

I am having a similar problem with Primus. I signed up for Primus Broadband talk a few months ago thinking I had found the best deal in Town. My modem arrives in the mail two weeks later and I find out that they had given me a Toronto number (I live in Fort McMurray Alberta). I called primus to cancel the services since I had not even started using the service and it was their fault. I was assured that the first Month’s advance bill will be returned to me and all I had to do was return the modem and everything was cancelled. I returned the modem a week later after they sent me a slip for the return and I thought all was well. I was wrong. 2 months later, I am on vacation and I received a couple of calls on my work cell phone asking me to contact them. I found out to my horror that I was being billed all along, even after I sent the modem and to date I am owing them over a 100 dollars. I have tried to no avail to have someone fix this, they don’t seem to have records of my communications even after getting assurances that notes were being taken. The call center reps have a tendency to hang up or transferr the call at the least urge. I am frustrated and angry right now that my time is being wasted over such a stupid service I never used. Primus Canada looks like a big scam to me right now.

By: Elmobong

Elmobong — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:44:47 +0000

Hi There, I was trying to find places to share my bad Primus experience and found your blog through google. It seems that many people share some similar frustration. I was wondering if maybe you were interested in hearing my version of the bad bad service PRIMUS has provided!!!

Here is my story:
Hello everyone, I would like to share with you a true story, something happened today and I want to share with the world. You’re about to hear me bitch at what Horrible Service you can get from companies such as Vonage and Primus.

My spouse and I have had phone service with Primus Canada (Talk Broadband VOIP) for over 3 years and the service has always been crappy. But we stayed since it was an easy thing to do and the price is very good.
Lately we figured we would switch to Vonage for the same price… and thought we would get a be better service.

Well, after 3 weeks of trying to get a phone number transferred (so we could keep the same phone number) everything has gone wrong!!! Vonage says the address is a mismatch when Primus confirmed the address is fine.

Tonight, I have just spend over 3 hours on the phone with both ’stoopid’ companies and guess what? My phone number, which used to be xxx-xxx-xxxx has been cancelled and apparently we can never get it back again… so much for this great option we have in Canada to keep the same number while switching phone companies… Never try this at home!

I am now waiting for a supervisor to call me back within 3 business days because those ’so called managers’ working there don’t want to take escalated calls.

In the meantime, I am in the mist of starting some action against both companies and hope to get some kind of compensation for this bad service.

I have filed a complaint with the CCTS ( https://www.ccts-cprst.ca/ots/cf/ComplaintConfirmForm.do ); I need their help because Primus has violated privacy laws… (see below for explanation)
I am also going to try to get this story aired on TV (who knows, if I have the time and the chance to do so)

To make a long story short this is what’s happened:
David at Primus says he spoke to me on Nov 4th around 2pm and I authorized the cancellation of my existing number because I apparently told him the number transfer was completed and successful… that’s bull***t, I never spoke to anyone at Primus on November 4th. Actually, when speaking with Denise, I found out that they called XXX-XXX-XXXX and spoke to a ‘ret**d’ who posed as the consumer and confirmed that the line transfer was done and I was authorizing to cancel my phone number. The phone number they called used to belong to FXXX, it was his cell phone number 3 years ago. I called that number and listened to the personal voicemail message, the ‘l@ser’ who now owns this number gives out his phone pin which is 1234… Basically, anyone calling him can get into his personal options and do just about anything. (If I wanted, I could log in his options and change his personal message or something… maybe even call Telus which is his phone provider and cancel his phone… (but I won’t do that).

So now, Primus has obtained authorization from an unknown person, without proper verification, and has cancelled my phone number. (which doesn’t make sense because when you request a number transfer you don’t need to authorize the old service provider to cancel your phone, it’s done automatically) This is CRAZY!!!

This battle is not over… watch me get somewhere interesting with this saga. I will not stop until I get justice.

Now I am stuck with a new NEW PHONE NUMBER from Vonage which I don’t want… but it won’t be for very long since we are also going to cancel Vonage very shortly… once we figure out who can give us the best service… but in Canada you don’t really have much choice
If this doesn’t get resolved I will have to call over 20 service providers that I deal with to give them my new phone number, including the government, basically everyone and anyone who has my old number… why? Because of incompetent people working at Primus Canada.

Stay tuned for how it ends…

By: Ryan Ryan

Ryan Ryan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:51:32 +0000

I agree with everyone here - Primus bites.

I was looking into upgrading my Primus Dial-Up to High Speed, so I hopped onto their webiste. I went through the entire registration process, but then my children started crying downstairs, so I hit CANCEL to re-register later. I then shut down the computer.

Later, when I went to dial back in, my dial-up account was inactive. I couldn’t log on. I called their customer service number (and stayed on hold to India for over half an hour) until they re-activated my dial-up account.

After that simple problem, I was too worried to sign up with Primus for high-speed, so I went with Bell. The Bell modem arrived at my home the SAME DAY AS THE PRIMUS MODEM! I received a modem from Primus that I NEVER ordered. After more telephone tag, I was told that Primus would send me an envelope to return the mode, which I did. In the meantime, my credit card was charged the full value of the modem.

That was TWO MONTHS AGO. They FINALLY acknowledged receipt of the returned modem, but then, when I called to ask about a refund to my credit card, they said that CREDITS take TWO MONTHS to process! What??? I didn’t even ORDER the modem, and now I have to wait TWO MONTHS to have my money returned to me? I’m sure Primus wouldn’t like to wait that long for payment of a bill owed to THEM. And when I finally AM compensated, will I get interest? Fat chance.

That company is just one big mess. It will have to self-implode eventually.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:28:27 +0000

Primus hides behind privacy policy when the going gets tough.
Basically people, doesn’t matter who your with, and I was an avid supporter of Primus not so long ago. Their service was amazing, support as well - to the point in which i had family and friends convert. Then the going got pretty bad, calling into support was a joke - i unearthed network problems in their core (i work in the industry) It got so bad that I began working through their office of the president. If you don’t have the number here it is: (800) 957-1177. When calling them I will say they responded very quickly and got things moving, solved in 2 days. A few weeks went by and back to the shitter. So i call in again and get some guy quoting privacy laws to me, and that I’m not the primary account holder. (its under the wife’s name), I basically lose it, he hangs up on me 6 times.
Now, this is bad because I have nowhere to go now - so i did a little research. And well all i can say is use the privacy policy in this situation - basically, by them helping me on the earlier occasions they violated my wife’s privacy by allowing me to act on her behalf. So i have faxed into their legal division and will proceed with taking them to court to prove a point.
2 weeks gone by, no response - so on to the CRTC, they should get them to jump a little but I will take them to court unless I get some sort of retribution.
Its pretty sad because all the telco’s will get you to this point. What they don’t realize is that customer service is what people want and would gladly pay more for it. Soon more competition will move into Canada and give the big players a run for their money. We as customers have to keep the pressure on them. Use the CRTC to keep them honest.
Although the CRTC has created “houseleage hockey for telco’s” they are also there to support us customers.
Here is a quick link right to the complaints page:

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/RapidsCCM/Register.asp?lang=E

and don’t forget to call the Primus office of the president to get your own issues moving along – just make sure your the primary on the account.
(800) 957-1177

By: George

George — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:36:30 +0000

I worked for Primus. As you can see the word is worked. Primus is only interested in money . They do not care about customer service. When you call customer service for one thing you get Indian. We had many many complaints about that from the customers and actually from the people who worked there that had to transfer these poor people there over the phone. They were told when they answer the phone to give out a Canadian name like George or David etc. When you know dam well they were not. I gathered they thought people were that stupid to believe them. Technical support fought long and hard about that and did try to help put the customers. Our hands were tied many times. Often clients were waiting weeks sometimes months for a connection. They put you on their platform where you waited at least 2 weeks to get connected only to have them realize after you called in that you were too far away for a connection. Then they would take another 2 weeks to transfer you on a Bell platform. This was done over and over again. They’re goal was money not customer service. One of the companies they bought out was all about customer service. I was one of these tech’s. I was devastated as were many other tech’s were when the company was bought out. We were promised many things. One of them being they would never lay us off. I watched as customer service went down the drain. They wanted the number stats not good service. Every time we brought something up to help the customers we were shot down. Primus was going to do it their way and no other way. Even though our way worked so well. They have recently shut down the residential tech support office in Ottawa to concentrate the support in another province where a grant was given to them to hire students. People who are not qualified or trained properly to handle technical difficulties. Why? because it’s cheaper over there. To hell with paying qualified technicians what they are worth for the sake of the company. They not only lie to the clients, they lie to their own employees.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:51:54 +0000

Hi y’all. I switched recently from Primus to Vonage. For a while the price at Primus was reasonable, somwhat. Then it went up and they gave me a 6 month offer at 19.95 per month. At the end of the offer it went back to 29.95, but with a couple of other features it arrived to nearly 56.00 (tax included).

So to that I said PHOOEY!, and ‘made the switch’.

Primus has invoiced me a 46.00 termination and 4.50 network termination charge.

By: Al

Al — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:56:30 +0000

My God! it is so nice to hear everyone is in the same page that we are, to be honest with you I thought it is only us having problem with them, we are a medium size company and have been using their Data and Voice service and it is been nothing but problems, their techs are rude, unskilled and possibly cheapest possible tech you can get in the market, their customer service really sucks, no one I repeat NO ONE cares about your problems and once we started complaining about poor service that was getting worst on daily bases they politely kicked us out, with a letter stating your contract is terminated because of violation of TOS!!! Go figure!

Any way I am looking for their CEO or CFO contact info so I can directly tell him about our experience, does any one know how to get a hold of him? I got 3 names so far googling Primus CEO but cannot find their direct phone or email, here they are:

Ted Chislett
David Hershberg
Peter H. Kines

I am pretty determined to get my message heard, will let you know the result.

Thanks all

By: Robbin Harris

Robbin Harris — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:46:06 +0000

Primus is absolutley the most incompetent and abusive provider I have EVER had the misfortune to have to deal with in my 30 years on planet earth.
We had service for less than a week when I cancelled because they said they couldn’t transfer our service to the new house we moved to (in the same neighbourhood) for 25 business days!!!! No phone or internet for over a month..not even an apology and they still wanted to charge us for the basic service charges….incredible.
After trying to cancel our service I had to be on the phone 6 times for 30-45 minutes on hold each time to finally get the service cancelled, and still they sent us automated bills to be deducted from our credit card. Finally the credit card company had to cancel our card and issue us a new number.
If I ran my business like this I would be out of business in no time. It is a mystery at this point how they are still running.
Even the call center had terrible connection to some dudes in India that had less than a clue about what they were doing. No offices in canada outside of Ontario…..vigilanty justice is the only way forward with these folks I think.

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:09:37 +0000

I REALLY WISH I HAD CHECKED THIS SITE OUT IN ADVANCE!

Everything negative about Primus Canada here is completely accurate. I’ve never had such a bad experience as I have had dealing with this organization. By far the worse customer service I have ever experienced. I’ve literially spent hours waiting on hold, been lied to numerous times by numerous representatives. Promised call backs which never came, told I was a liar and that I was playing games. I’ve been waiting for weeks to obtain my service, to be shutdown one more with no notice for an extensive period of time and to be given the run around repeatedly. They don’t even know if I’m a customer.

Do yourself a favour, AVOID THIS ORGANIZATION. On my fourth day of service I’m paying $100 to cancel my contract before its barely begun. The company IS THAT BAD!

By: Myrna

Myrna — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 02:53:41 +0000

Having worked a little less than 10 yrs in the industry, I am all too aware of the crap there is out there. Having worked this amount of time, despite being aware of the fabulous rates other companies out there offer for local phone service, I will never switch my line to any other company and regardless of how useless Bell Canada customer service is, they truly are the only company out there who really knows, understands, and can service a land line for you. Here’s news flash…all these other companies… Primus, Rogers and any other company out there offering really cheap land lines, are resellers of Bell’s service. Nobody owns their own network with the exception of Allstream (which now belongs to MTS anyway) and maybe one other. So basically, you get what you pay for. What you save on the line, you end up paying for by wasting your energy time and resources dealing with nimrods who truly haven’t a clue about how this all works to begin with.

As for VOIP, again, having worked in the industry long enough, as most of my peers, I won’t go near it unless it offered by a company that can boast a minimum of 5 years or more experience in it. A service that hasn’t been proven is bound to give you a headache and a number of companies out there have worked years perfecting their product.

Buyer beware is all I can say. As for those of you who don’t pay your bills on time, shit happens and we’re all entitled to our mistakes. Just know that these companies really don’t give a shit why you can’t pay on time. Even if it’s because you have to stop working to look after a bedridden partner, your house burned down, and you haven’t more than 2 bucks to your name until your next pay cheque. Compassion is lost on these folks, people. Listening, and actually hearing what a customer is trying to say is an acquired skill that unfortunately is lost on them too. Or at least most of them. Those that do care, and there are some, have their hands tied and really can’t help you even if they’d just as soon give you the shirts off their back. So be compassionate yourself, and say to yourself “the poor old bugger just doesn’t know any better poor thing”, and move on. Because there is so much more to life to see and experience than to waste this much energy on them.

I have just switched my long distance to Primus from Bell…better rates and have never had an issue with them in the past. Mind you, long distance is what they started with, what they know, and by the sounds of it the only thing they really know how to manage.

For those of you that really have an issue that needs resolving, my best suggestion - based not only on my work but also my personal experience because I have done this quite successfully myself - is go straight to the top. Look at their email address strings and try dropping a line directly to the president or CEO. You can find their name in the “About us” pages usually. Most companies use the string is firstname.lastname@company.ca(com, net, etc). You can be sure to get some response out of it. I once sent an email to the CEO of a major company with a 4 page complaint. Within a week, a customer service rep from the CEO’s dedicated service office called me, I had 6 mos free service and direct line to phone him directly. No hold time, no nothing. I doubt all companies work like this, but it’s certainly worth a try. Oh and don’t forget to copy the CRTC and at least 1 publication. You will be heard.

Myrna

By: will

will — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:27:33 +0000

Signed up with them. Immediately started billing me before I received anything in the mail.

By the time I did, modem didn’t work at all.

Called over the course of a week and waited for a MINIMUM of 25 minutes each time I tried to reach their so called “customer service”.

When I finally did, they agreed to refund the service charges but refused to refund the modem which was friggin broken!

Sent 5 customer service emails and NEVER heard a response.

Beware of this company… total garbage.

By: stephen

stephen — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:42:21 +0000

Unfortunately I to am experiencing difficulties with Primus and ending service with them. You will wait 40 minutes to an hour on hold, and there is the likely hood that your call will be disconnected. It will take months for you to have your service ended and the bills to stop coming, and you will have to pay extra at the end of it.

I blame myself for not investigating Primus initially. If you are considering using them I strongly recommend you find another company with better customer service. My next phone service choice will be dependent on how long I have to wait on hold to speak to customer service.

Best of luck everyone.

By: gonzo

gonzo — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:50:52 +0000

I wish I researched primus better before i signed up for this service. It is very spotty. The hook up and transfer from bell was quick. It took months before my speed was quick enough to be able to watch you tube videos. They tell me I was too far from switching station, so why did you not say that when you signed me up?? The speed then got better. My other problem is phone service. People would say they left me a message but I never got anything. Then few days later, the phone would be bepping to say I got a message and it would be messages from days earlier.
I called to report that and they said no problems with system. Other times I noticed my phone was making a goofy, interupted ring. I never paid attention to it till one time I answeredd and someone was there. Then I concluded when my internet would get disconnected, I called my house with my cell phone and it either did not ring or it made that goofy ring tone. This service is very unreliable and I never had these problems with bell. I guess that is why bell can charge a little more since they have a sound phone network. We try to cheap out and only screws us in long term. I never had billing issues like others said but phone service should never be like this.

By: Muaddubby

Muaddubby — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:05:16 +0000

On a happy note, calling the Office of the President at Primus was the first (an donly) productive and well handled phone call I’ve had with these people. I explained my situation, the attendant saw my long file, and I’m getting a full credit for the miserable time I spent with them. These past six weeks have been a complete disaster from the start, but at least someone over there had the sense to see this, apologize, and offer a credit.

Worth trying out.

Again, the number for the Office of the President at Primus Canada is (800) 957 1177. Good luck to anyone who tries it out.

By: Muaddubby

Muaddubby — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:38:15 +0000

An addition to the note from Nicole -

I called the CRTC to complain about these losers, and they unfdortunately do not regulate Primus Canada so can do nothing about it (and I’m almost certain I heard the lady who answered the phone shudder when I mentioned Primus). They did, however, give me the phone number for Primus’ Office of the President, so I’m calling there next. The number is (800) 957 1177.

As for the CCTS, they have a web site where you can log your complaints (www.ccts-cprst.ca), but they do not list Primus as a member, so they probably won’t be able to do much either. I wonder if the Better Business Bureau will make a difference.