We have been very busy, more than normal. We have hired about 200 agents to handle call volumes but there have been a lot of changes recently, which have been driving more calls. Email responses are supposed to be within 3 business days and we have been trying really hard to keep it within that. I certainly understand the frustration of waiting on hold or waiting for a response via email.

Jessica - Shaw Direct Employee

Dear Jessica,

It's been years SD is claiming now and then they had hired (insert a number in the hundreds) to answer customers request. Still, it doesn't seem to fix anything. Several employees a leaving because they can't handle the enormous pressure bosses are putting on them and they feel theirs jobs are worthless.

Instead of paying millions of dollars a year for forming new employees who are going to either give bad customer services because of their inexperience and/or leave within months, why don't you invest to improve the working condition of existing CSR/TSR? And I'm not talking about paycheques: I'm talking about actual, working condition? You probably know more than anybody else that after eight hours of dealing with disgruntled customers and complex issues, you're mentally and physically drained. Keeping the working condition as they are will let you with two kinds of agent: a bunch of Superman... but, mostly, several agents going nuts.

Can anyone tell me if Shaw Direct offers Sun TV News in High Def? It says Hi Def on the Sun Tv news web site however it doesn't say it anywhere on the Shaw Direct web site.

It's a typo by Sun News. It's only available in standard definition on channel 149 in the advanced channel lineup or channel 517 in the classic lineup.

What the heck is happening to customer service.. they "used" to have a call back system which at least made a 70+ minute somewhat bearable. Now all you get is a "we are experiencing higher than normal call volume" At some point higher than normal.. is the normal.. high.
And if it so high.. that means lots of customers are unhappy.. things are not working.. is this company in trouble??

I just used the call back feature twice this past weekend, first one was over an hour and the second one was over two hours, didn't mind either, it is a great feature, not sure why it wasn't there for you?

Just got a 630 to replace an old 505. 2 coax feeds were in, called to activate, was told it would be a 30 to 40 minute wait, but an agent answered in less than 1 minute ! Great experience, up and running in 10 minutes or so. Thanks Shaw.

Personally I'm getting tired of getting a bill increase of $2.00 every month and sometimes its pro-rated....whatever thats for, I haven't changed my subscription in years.....only thing I can figure is the cost of certain packages might go up. But i'm not waiting on the phone for hours to figure it out.

Dear Jessica,

It's been years SD is claiming now and then they had hired (insert a number in the hundreds) to answer customers request. Still, it doesn't seem to fix anything. Several employees a leaving because they can't handle the enormous pressure bosses are putting on them and they feel theirs jobs are worthless.

Instead of paying millions of dollars a year for forming new employees who are going to either give bad customer services because of their inexperience and/or leave within months, why don't you invest to improve the working condition of existing CSR/TSR? And I'm not talking about paycheques: I'm talking about actual, working condition? You probably know more than anybody else that after eight hours of dealing with disgruntled customers and complex issues, you're mentally and physically drained. Keeping the working condition as they are will let you with two kinds of agent: a bunch of Superman... but, mostly, several agents going nuts.

I can certainly appreciate your feedback. It has been a little tough recently with call volumes. I can say that we are not losing all of our agents for these reasons. Like any company, some employees move on to other roles, myself included, while others just need to move on. I will definitely forward your comments to the appropriate team.

Jessica - Shaw Direct Employee

Can someone tell me what the constant price increase is for. At this rate SD is gonig to price themself out of business.

Serious problem with one of two 630's, so SD had to go through factory reset with me etc etc. Then when it didn't even come back live, they insisted on a service call. Service call over with a replacement needed.
I'm on a call right now where I was told the wait would be 5 minutes.
The wait is at 40 minutes right now. No call back option offered.
Something has changed over at SD. I am listening to the tape offering me the chance to become a SD customer service rep. Wow they have problems.

Huge push to acquire new customers with sweet hardware/programming + and shortage of CSR"s (they just put on 14 new people in Calgary) = looong wait times.

When I did finally get through (over an hour) I had a decent experience with a techie and we even discovered a few incorrect entries on my account from this past Spring. If the replacement pvr is indeed on its way and the errors in pvr serial numbers are all sorted out then then the hour wait will have been worth it.