Eastlink Internet Complaint

I just have to give this rant about Eastlink because of their appalling customer service to us. There's nothing I can do about it as there's basically only one service provider here in NS (unless you live right in the city and can get Bell). For the past few months we've been paying for Internet 40 so you'd think we were getting nice fast speeds but we usually got 4Mbps, not even close to 40. And yes, we know to disconnect every other device from the network before testing. They tweaked the equipment from their end but the best we ever got was about 15 Mbps and it lasted a half hour before reverting back to it's old ways.

'No Problem', I told the kids and my husband. 'When we move everything up to the farm we'll get proper internet again'. There are often 6 of us on the computer at once. The kids stream Netflix, Steve and I are working online or doing research or blogging, so it's busy. We know that. Which is why we ordered a business bundle to handle our business traffic as well as our day to day computing needs. So we call Eastlink 3 weeks before we need service (they asked us to give them a week to 10 days notice) and find out that a site survey was done last September and that they want to charge us over a thousand dollars to hook us up. WHAT?!?!? The lines run right on the poles along the front of our property and their big pole mounted switch box or whatever it is is a few hundred feet down the line, I can see it from here. So after trying to explain this to a rep. and getting nowhere fast  I asked them to check again and for the survey guy to call me. He does ( 2 days after not coming ot our appointment because he was too busy) and says no problem, it'll be a couple hundred dollars to run the new line from the pole roadside into our building. GREAT we think, let's go!
Fast forward to April 23rd. We get our contract from Eastlink signed and try to fax it back. No joy, their fax won't receive so I just email it back to the rep. Finally we think the ball is rolling. Only it's not. He sent the info to the 'engineering dep't' and is waiting to hear back from them. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. A week goes past and still we haven't heard. We move and still no phone or internet. This is not good for business.
It's now May 6th. We just got emails yesterday saying that we've been approved and they will be another 3-4 weeks getting us hooked up. Seriously!?!? I was absolutely livid and fired off 3 nasty emails to my rep and to the company. Still waiting to hear back, not that I think it will do much good. So it looks like we could potentially be without any internet for another month. And what really gets me is that we asked them to call us on our cell and let us know and they didn't. They just email knowing we can't check it ofter because we don't have internet. We can't speak to a live person because their chat service is only for their residential customers. And their technicians came yesterday and were working not 200 feet from my place, it's like a slap in the face. Sure, come here and work only don't hook us up while you're at it.

Very frustrated and going to complain about it until I get some satisfaction so watch out Eastlink! Bottom line, go with Bell or Telus over Eastlink if you can. If you have to get Eastlink make sure you're getting what you're paying for. In Greenwood they charged us for Internet 40 but their infrastructure only allowed for 20 so they were charging us for something it wasn't possible to get. It's like leasing a luxury BMW and then finding out you're getting a perfectly functional Kia hatchback instead. I am not at all impressed with their service.

This concludes my rant for the day. 

UPDATE: We were finally hooked up yesterday, May 27th. It seems to be working well except for a short range but that may have to do with the location of the wireless modem. We'll tweak it.