Thanks for the suggestions. I asked 3 times to speak with a supervisor but the CSR's refuse to put me through. The CSR's says a supervisor will get back within 24 to 48 hours. One called me last night and said he had contacted the field supervisor.

Fortunately our "local" tech arrived today and swapped out the temporary HD box for a new DCH 3416 and all is well. He had been away on vacation. "Local" tech used to work with our former cable company, Wood Lake Cable.

Guru, is Shaw Kelowna operating differently to other centres by not allowing CSR's talk to dispatch and not allowing them to refer calls to supervisors?

Many thanks.

Any time a customer ask to talk with a supervisor if one is available to take the live escalation they should be and if there is not one available then a call back should be filled out. As for dispatch most areas do not call directly to dispatch but use others means of ciommunication to talk with other departments. This can be time consuming and it usually depends on the area and the person on the phone using their best judgement.

OK, thanks.

Hey everyone,

I don't know if anyone is aware of this, but there's something you can do to contact us other than phoning us.

I work at Shaw as part of the technical support department, and I'm also part of a team that handles what we call "E-service" where, we receive emails in a bin, then we answer the emails, in a first-come first-serve order (in the same way when you call).

However, if you email us with a major problem (like having no dial tone on your phone) it is immediately flagged read, and whoever next enters the bin will see it, and right away answer that email.

The best way is to fill out this form: https://secure.shaw.ca/need_help/Request_Help_Form.asp which will send to our bin. We have teams in pretty much every major city, but pretty much anybody will be able to help you.

Just so you guys are aware of this, if you have a concern but were waiting for far too long, just send us an email instead.

Hi Baldur,

Thanks for the suggestion but I am still waiting for replies to emails I sent over a year ago. How long should I continue to wait?

Hello Jetranger,

If it's been that long, you'll want to re-send the email.

As far as I'm aware, the feature and bin we currently use for the emails has only been around very recently, so we likely do not have records for your email. But if you re-send it we'll be more than happy to answer it :).

It may be a day or so, because when I was in today we were able to clear up the two or three emails pending from Wednesday. We have a few more from yesterday, but those should be finished up on Saturday.

Normally we can get to the email within a day or two. But you will certainly get an answer.

Had the tech over today as my area is going all digital so they had to install a box on my analog tv. Here are the things he told me:
Bell and Rogers use motorolla boxes too
You cannot expand a bell pvr or regular hd box with an external hard drive
You can expand a shaw 3416 box by fiddling with jumpers
Shaw has more hd channels than rogers and bell
the majority of bell's hd channels only show sd programming.
bells hd is analog.
shaw is paying him to review the bell hd pvr and the interface is way behind what shaw has.
there should be about 10-20 quality hd channels coming, "really soon" to shaw.

i was shocked that this guy is a "tech". at least he was able to plug in my cable box correctly.

Well MTS in Manitoba is using AT&T technology and will likely soon have whole home dvr.

Just to be accurate, Shaw has invested heavily in Motorola infrastructure. It is simply not economically viable to rip out an entire platform and replace it. Second, Shaw is a broadband cable system, not a telco. There really are only a couple of platforms in use by cablecos in North America: Motorola and Scientific Atlanta. Shaw is relatively current on the hardware available to its customers operating on the Motorola platform. Leading edge? Maybe not, but few cablecos are. Shaw has pretty much as current hardware as there is for the Motorola headends in their system (don't believe DCH hardware will work on non-M-card systems).

The DCX hardware from Motorola is brand new and not yet deployed by a cableco in Canada. I would expect to see it here, and from Shaw, at some point in the foreseeable future as Motorola winds down DCT manufacturing. However, Shaw does have very current hardware from Pace in its consumer channel.

The bottom line is that AT&T hardware will not run on Motorola infrastructure. It won't run on Comcast, it won't run on Novus, it won't run on Rogers, and it won't run on Shaw. It also won't run on SA infrastrcture, again meaning it won't run on Rogers.

What exactly would you have Shaw do?

With respect to "paying through the roof" ... I suggest you go to a US cableco website and start pricing out services. As soon as you go beyond basic cable, and as you start to bundle more services, you will see pretty clearly that we pay less in Canada for services from Shaw (and Rogers for that matter) that you would in the US. By comparison, Canadian cablecos are a bargain and the more services you add (eg. phone), the better that bargain becomes.

Lastly, your complaint about the CRTC has nothing to do with Shaw and this forum (Shaw) is not the place to discuss it. We have plenty of threads about the CRTC in the Canadian Television Industry / Channels and Providers forum (http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=12).

DCX boxes have been deployed by Kincardine Cable (http://www.tnt21.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16&Itemid=30). Compton Cable soon to follow. :)

Hadn't seen that. Thanks. Not much doubt that they're clearly coming ... rumours include Cogeco as well. Pretty sure they'll roll out on Shaw at some point as well.

What new Moto boxes?

Shaw specifically introduced Pace hardware because Motorola wasn't putting anything new into the retail channels. DCH boxes will not work in Canada. DCX boxes are brand new and just showing up now. If Shaw is two or three or four months later than some of the smaller cablecos, how is that "behind the times"?

There's some valid complaints about Shaw. The STB hardware side just isn't one of them. They are offering current Motorola hardware. They have introduced Pace hardware because Motorola has been very slow to introduce new product. Shaw had Aspens in their system contemporaneous to launch.

Name a Motorola STB that will work in Canada that Shaw hasn't introduced in a somewhat timely fashion? Just looking for you to back your complaint with some facts.

shaw is coming out with a new reciever this fall.. it will retail 500$. this info was found watching the shaw auction, where they said if you bid and win an item valued at over $1000, you will get one of the new pvr's free.

What features does this new receiver have?

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3830/279/

Shaw has the biggest percentage in HD subscribers 2.3 million yet we also get the worst HD programming thats great.

I don't know if I would say Shaw offers the worst HD programming, but like anything definitely can be improved. If anything, the amount of people upgrading to High Def is growing so maybe this will encourage Shaw to improve their HD channel lineup. It's probably a challenge to add new HD channels given bandwidth considerations and the fact they probably want to add them to every region at the same time.

If they have the largest # of HD subscribers maybe they are doing something right.

Thats a lot of people willing to put up with frequent audio drop-outs and subpar, overcompressed picture quality. Including me. (for lack of option in apartment). I DO like bundling my services though.

I Really Need Help Un muting My Shaw Box i did it by mistake and i have no clue how to undo it its not dvr or anything its just the shaw digital tv terminal i really need the help

press the mute button again