I've noticed that sales (new service) and tech support calls are connected faster. Billing takes time to answer. Well, I got through today and resolved my problem.

You need to remember that when you call outside business hours that the call are routed to more "centralized call centers" meaning you might be calling from your city but someone in a different city answers. Also there will be more demand for billing than new connections since more current customers exist than one's phoning to sign up. I however am not condoning the long wait times. They should be reasonable no matter what time you call if shaw is offering 24/7 service.

Here's an email I wrote to a Shaw support manager (I got his address from the reps I was dealing with) about a recent experience with their technical support:
Dear (manager),

I'd like to acknowledge the excellent work of (rep A) and (rep B) on my trouble ticket # xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxx (webspace indicates full with only 2 Meg instead of 20 Meg). The problem itself was not a monumental one, but by resolving it they proved themselves to be exceptional employees.

I'm sorry to say that everyone else involved in the ticket failed me in some way, particularly in the sense that each person said they would work on it and get back to me, or that someone else would get back to me, and they never did. As a result, I had to constantly call back every few days or so to essentially start over again with a new person.

I was getting very annoyed that a seemingly minor problem was dragging out for almost 4 weeks with no resolution and very little progress due to Shaw continually dropping the ball after each of my many calls. I twice requested that my ticket be escalated and when I finally got Service Call # xxxxxx my experience got even worse... they closed the ticket without resolving it and without calling me, not even to notify me that they were closing it! Talk about creating dissatisfaction!

So I consider myself very lucky that, after a month of phoning Shaw, I finally was connected to (rep A). She immediately took an earnest interest in my problem and was very apologetic that the ticket had been fumbled so many times. Unlike so many others, (rep A) followed through when she was unable to immediately resolve it herself. Rather than just pass me off, she enlisted the help of (rep B) and together they worked on my issue until it was resolved (and my sincere gratitude to (rep B) for figuring out a fix!).

As a result of (rep A) and (rep B)'s dedication, in less than an hour they had fixed a problem that nobody else had fixed in almost a month!

If my painful experience with Shaw technical support had gone on any longer, you would have lost a customer. I personally direct the purchase of over $2000/month revenue to Shaw, and at my work I influence Shaw purchases much larger than that. Had you left me an unsatisfied customer, it would have cost you far more than what it costs to hire and keep these two good employees on staff.

I strongly encourage you to hire more people like (rep A) and (rep B). And if it costs a few more dollars to get good people like them, well you can probably save at least that much by not having customer problems bounced to 10 different people before they are resolved, and by retaining customers instead of driving them away.

So my experience with Shaw technical support was not a good one, but (rep A) and (rep B) saved the day, and for that I am thankful. Please let them know that their high quality of work is uncommon at Shaw (at least in my experience) and is highly valued by customers and, I would hope, by Shaw management.

Sincerely,

(me)

I sent that over a week ago. In typical Shaw customer service fashion, I heard nothing back. I'd probably have to send it every few days... and maybe in 4 weeks I'd get a response. ;)

p.s. If you've had to call Shaw tech support very much, you probably know that each call consists of anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes of holding before you can even talk to a real person. Try that every few days for a month, and getting nowhere during each call and never getting those many promised return-calls because they apparently stop working on the problem as soon as you are off the phone. You too will lose patience with them.

I am very close to going Satellite after the few dealings I have had with Shaw the last month. I could almost deal with the crappy HD signal and constant channel freezing , then last night was the final straw. I am going to talk to a Supervisor and if the issue of what happened is not explained to my satisfaction I am switching this week.

I waited on hold for 45 minutes just to get my box "back in communication" with them, only to lose all my subscriber channels for the night after they hard reset it. The Shaw representative was so quick to get me off the phone he never bothered to check if everything was ok, I then spend 3 hours trying to talk to a live person to get all my channels back. After being disconnected 3 times ( twice after 30 minutes of waiting ) I finally chose the option to have one of them call me back. 1 hour 13 minutes later I finally got a call back and it took him 5 seconds to fix the issue they caused, apparently they are suppose to wait on the line to make sure the box is functioning 100% after a reset.....

I will stick with an average product if the support is good. I will not stick with an average product if the support is even worse than the product.

If you are switching, switch to bell cause star Choice is a Shaw company. If you don't like Shaw cust and/or support. Just go to Bell and they have good HD quality. If you live In Sask, Get Sask tel Max HD and PVR Service. They are also good as well.

I had my friend (Shaw employee) book me a service call for audio dropouts and PQ issues and the guy that came was great. First of all he arrived at 10:30am for an all day appointment and called my cell as per instructions I left. Secondly he was very carefull as to make sure that everything he was doing (eg. moving tv, drilling wall for power etc.) was ok with me. He also listened to my long winded explanation of the issues I had documented. He also made sure that all the channels worked and that the VOD issues I were having were fixed by purchasing a movie on each tv and then crediting my account for it. Thanks Shaw for great service this time.

Did you get the audio drop-outs fixed? A LOT of people are having those problems.

When trying to phone Shaw today I got an endless loop of automatic press number sequences. As soon as it said it was transferring me, it would start back at the beginning again >_<

I've had one employee who didn't know what he was talking about a few days ago, then I had an employee recently who had a very bad attitude. Not very pleased Shaw...

Long story short I as far as I know the signals are within the range recommended by Shaw. Obviously I don't have testing equipment so I can only take the techs word for it. When he came to my house he asked which channels were the worst. The signal strength for my analogue channels were great but since my house is at the end of a run the upper channels have significant signal deterioration. In my case it was hard not to have the lower channels have too much signal but still get enough for the higher ones.

I had a tech from Shaw come to the house last week because I had wavy lines on my HD channels. I figured it was a signal strength problem which I've had before. Turned out to be a bad connection on my TV but the Shaw guy was great and switched my digital box to another input until I can get the TV fixed.

I got an e-mail notice confirming the date and time of my appointment and in it was a link to a feedback survey. So I did the survey. It's actually the usual one that's on the website all the time.

But this time I got a reply! Not a standard pre-written reply but an actual, honest-to-goodness e-mail from a human! It addressed all the issues I mentioned and answered a question I had.

This is not the first time I've done the survey but it's the first time I've had a reply. I'm not sure if this is a new thing or not but I think it's great. At least someone from Shaw is reading the feedback and aware of what we say.

Just thought everyone should know.

I received a random customer survey call from someone representing Shaw the other day. They wanted to know if I was happy with Shaw's services.

I politely listed off several issues, like the terrible customer service I reported in this thread a couple months ago, and some long-standing issues with HD dropouts and software bugs on the DCT boxes. I also told him that Rogers customers can add external hard drives to their DVRs and we still can't. He said "That's not good. We need to keep up with the competition."

He said he'd have a tech call me about the problems I mentioned (even though I know these issues are not specific to my drop).

Three weeks later and nobody has called. There will be no call.

I also told him if he really wants to know what people think of Shaw, to come read the Shaw forums here. He had never heard of DHC but said he'd take a look immediately. I hope he's reading this, but I seriously doubt it.

They're not even good at "faking" customer service with their "caring" phone calls.

I had a one year old 6412 box fail. The HDMI port stopped working. Fairly long wait for CSR, but I use the speaker phone and just carry on with my business at home until I hear a real person talking from my pocket. Anyway, the CSR and I swapped cables out to prove the Shaw 6412 HDMI port had truly failed, as I have 4 HDMI devices feeding a HDMI switcher I could prove easily that it was the 6412 that had indeed failed. We, I temporarily set up the box with component outputs to get through the weekend.
( Note: normally I can walk behind my TV and fuss with cables without any bother, but of course, being Christmas, the tree was right smack in the middle of where I needed to be. Some cursing and a belly crawl and I made it. Can I blame Shaw for this?)
Anyway, set a service date for the next Tues., and on the Mon. before, I opened the door to pick up my paper, and ran into the Service rep. standing at my door. 25 1/2 hours early. Is that great service or what! Thankfully I could change some plans around.
He came in and did some checking around and went to his truck and came in with a brand new very shiny 3416. 40 extra Gb for HD storage. There were no refurbished boxes left. I lost my permanently recorded shows, a couple of concerts, and the HD remastered cartoon Grinch. He plugged in the new box, made a phone call to setup. Had me sign for the new box, apologized for coming on the wrong day, and was gone in about 20 min., I waited on hold longer to set up the appointment.

The CSRs are normally reasonably technically trained, and they seem to use a buddy system, so if you confuse one have them pass you through to a more seasoned CSR.

It all worked out, I am happy. Service was not perfect, but in my opinion, very good. Some patience on my part was rewarded with the 3416.

PS.
If you have gadgets that require a USB port for charging stuff, both the 6412, and the 3416 USB port will work. I charge my laptop wireless mouse battery from there and it works great.

Tom

I unplugged my 6416 today to move some wires around, and when I plugged it back in and it came back on, it said DVR service unavailable. I phoned customer service and waited for half an hour before leaving a message. They phoned back in another half hour, and reset my box. Everything works fine. No complaints..

It would sure be nice if a customer could do that themselves though... When I was with Bell, you could go online in your account and request your box be hit. Would have saved me time, and cost shaw less since they don't have to have someone call me.

I had a frustrating couple of days. Bought a new 3416 on Dec 28th, and it's been great since then. Yesterday I got my bill, noticed they hadn't removed my old digital box, so I was getting dinged the 1.99 digital fee twice. Called billing, pleasant service, she removed it and reversed the charge.

A while later, I noticed there was no display on my 3416, which I always leave on. Tried turning it on; nothing. Seems she'd removed the wrong box...

Called Tech services (didn't remember there was HD service, so hit the Tech number as soon as it came up in the menu). She seemed to know what she was doing, and reset my box; luckily I noticed before I hung up that it wasn't responding to the remote... either my Harmony or the Shaw remote. Had to argue with her a bit (she wanted me to put new batteries in the remote...), but after I proved the channel buttons on the box also weren't working, she did some more magic and got it all working fine... or so I thought. We watched some recorded shows, and everything worked. The only thing I noticed was the picture-in-guide wasn't the whole screen reduced; it was just that corner of the original image. Odd... but it was too late to call back and sit on hold.

Today I went in to set up a show to record, and the record options seemed strange... similar to those on my old SD box. When I set it up and hit the final confirmation, it came up with the "Set your VCR up to tape..." message. Not good... tried to get into the PVR menu item, and it said "DVR service is unavailable. Contact your cable provider..."

A third call to shaw, another 1/2 hour on hold (thank god for speaker phones), chose the HD tech line this time. Two resets and a hard power down (unplug) later, and everything's back to normal... except I'd lost my favourites and settings and scheduled recordings.

So two less than competent responses (three if you count the original activation call that failed to remove my old box), causing me something over 2 hours of my time and considerable annoyance. Fixed in the end, and I must say all the reps were pleasant, listened well, understood the problem and tried to fix it. (I've done enough telephone support to know how valuable and difficult that is.) Still, a pretty low-quality experience.

Cheers... Perry.

The exact same thing JUST happened to me. Been waiting on hold for over 1 hr so far. Wonder if they disconnect the wrong box on purpose to discourage you from removing extra cable boxes from your account? :o

Feeling your pain, Roger. Hope everything gets resolved soon.

My parents 1month free preview for activating a new DCT6200 ran out so I called Shaw today at 4:30PM, left my phone number and was called back in about 10min, kindly advised the CSR that my parents had been with Shaw since they've owned a TV (30+ years) and that they have never called in to ask for any freebies so as a customer service gesture could extend the free preview for an extra month. After telling me how they never do this she finally said she would give them another month free preview.:D

After a power failure I noticed that all of the recorded movies (8 plus a few regular HD broadcasts) I had on my DCT3416 I were gone. I called Shaw CS and they set up a repair appointment. Well, that time and day came and went and no Shaw. After my third call I was told that a certain person cancelled the call because they felt it was just a power spike. It was obvious that the person taking my call didn't pass on that I have a $240 AVR unit powering all of my HD components, thus there was never a power spike. They didn't call me to cancel the appointment, I stayed home all day expecting them.

What also started happening was my 3416 would not record any programs as it said the drive was full, 100% with only a 49 minute program recorded. Obviously there was a problem.

Finally the service guy showed up and said "let's swap the machine as I think it is corrupt software, we've seen this before when the firmware is upgraded". So I happily agreed, after all my machine was 2 months old and a new replacement would be an appropriate course of action. Whoa Nellie! The replacement was an older model "refurbished" to be "good as new". He even said yours is the new all digital unit. The case looked like it had been dragged behind the Shaw van for a block or two. I said "hang on a mo" I think we need another option. That's when he said well, I can reformat the drive and download the new software and it will be good as new. Well it is new, let's make it that way.

So how can Shaw do it better? First off, don't blow people off, when you make a service call appointment, stick to it. Second, call the client if you have other plans, as in cancelling. Third, don't make assumptions about how the client has their equipment configured, take notes and pass them on to whomever handles the dispatching. Fourth, when a replacement is called for, do it with the appropriate gear, as new replaced with as new, even the outside appearance counts, after all this thing cost me $730 with taxes. Fifth, offer a couple of weeks of full programming to at least make the client happy that they can record some free stuff that was lost.

avoid this "guy"

Ok.. just a note / update to the sound dropouts (on my end).

I, much like everyone else on here has been experiencing problems with audio drops and the such (hd in particular).... in the last week I have noticed things get a bit worse.
so this morning I call..


first let me say..

im furious... the ignorance that goes on in shaw land is crazy.

I call and after 40 mins I get finally get someone online... I explain the problem, how long it's been going on and that it's not just a problem with my HD service..
I point her towards this site.. she says it doesn't matter..
she hasn't heard of any problems with any of the channels and they want a tech to come out... I say.. no.. not good enough, I have had a tech out twice, they say the same thing. The wires and signal are great here in this building (downtown Vancouver).
she says "oh well, last tech was out in September.. things could have changed."
I reply "umm.. no.. if this would be the third tech, then the problem is still around and clearly has nothing to do with my building/equipment."
her "but if we can get a tech out to change the splitters and check wiring that would help."
me "nooooooooooo.. it's been done twice and it would be wasting my time. I think we should start by discounting the HD since you guys can't provide the service you advertise."
her "ok.. I will discount this month.... but thats it"
me "what does that help? you have proof that its been going on for a year and a half... even your techs know about it".
her "if we make an appointment with a tech, then we can see... it's probably something they missed"
me "this is retarded... can I speak to your super?"
her "ok hold a sec"

time passes and I really can't believe that they are still saying there are no problems.. uurrrgghhh
(the first rep did check the levels and said it was fine..)

super "how can I help you?"

I explained the whole thing again.. sighting this website..

super (Jeremy 6044) "let me start by saying that I have HD and I don't have any problems.. and im not looking at a website, we dont do that.
How about we start with booking an appointment with a tech?"

me "as you can see, I have had techs out here a few times and they have all said and done the same thing."

Jeremy 6044 "well, that was in September, it could have changed by now. Your signal looks a little hot, that's probably whats causing it."

me "no. no. no... do you guys just not listen.. I know that others have this problem.. infact most HD users do. I would like you guys to credit my account till you get things sorted out."
(oh and btw, my levels are the same as before.. when the other 2 techs were out)

Jeremy 6044 "we are listening but we can't do anything till we send a tech"

me "stop with this check list crap! I have had a tech out.. infact, your own techs say there is a problem on your end."

Jeremy 6044 "are techs are pretty misinformed most of the time. our IT dept says there are no problems so it must have something to do with your levels."

me "are you kidding me? calling your techs liars? why would I want them to come out to my place then?"

Jeremy 6044 "I didn't say they were liars, they just dont know. our IT dept knows and they say nothing is wrong. the only way we can solve this problem is by sending a tech out.

me "now your wasting my time, I called to report a problem and you guys dont wanna even credit my account (for more than 1 month) or even admit a problem I know exist!"

Jeremy 6044 "this conversation is going no where.. and we wont do anything till we can send a tech out."

me "your right.. your an idiot wasting my time, calling your techs mis-informed then wanting ANOTHER to come to my place.. $^&%&#%!@$!*(^!(*....... !*^&!*&%^*&%@>>...... %^#^%!$&^%
(I kinda went on a long swearing tirade. )

so to all of you on this great site..
According to Jeremy 6044, we are all liars, there is nothing wrong with our HD.. The techs are hacks and this webpage doesn't know squat.

thanks shaw!

I have found shaws customer service friendly and willing to help. I have had an reoccuring problem since april where I lose 1/2 the HD channels and some timeshift channel. over that time, I have had 8 service calls and numerous phone calls. They finally fixed it last week. It turned out to be a building problem, but they did credit me for 6 months of HD plus, replaced my 6416 with a 3416 and I have had two free months credit for my entire service. What gets me though, it they try to sell me digital phone and internet. Come on, if a CABLE company can't privide me with reliable cable service, how can they expect me to trust them to provide phone and internet?

I will say that the techs that came out were on time, friendly and willing to fix the problem and the reps on the phone were the same, but months and months of service interruptions are unacceptable.