Shaw Hi-Five service $5/month

[northhillca]

Just saw this on shaw website on revised bundles page.

With shaw's new bundles now you can add Hi-Five service which includes,

1. Front of the line customer service
2. TV series on demand
3. Increased bandwidth
4. Phone value adds
5. Exclusives on new hardware and services

there is no explanation on how much bandwidth or what tv series or exclusives etc.

Also their new bundles reminds me of old ones they used to have few years back, like total home package etc.

Very very similar.

[Shaw Guru]

The info we have indicates that only triple play (digital, Internet & Phone) qualify for the High 5 add on. The Bandwidth I believe is an additional 50% the allotted amount (60GB/month on HS would then get 90GB/month). The on Demand series and shows would be ones like Global TV Series (Glee, Family Guy, Bone, Lie to Me, etc.)

[Tyr]

Talk about a slap in the face to people who aren't triple play. I heard through the grapevine that people abuse the system as it is, trying to cut ahead of the line by calling a department that isn't busy and getting transferred over. Ever have long hold times? I betcha it's because a bunch of people cheated to get ahead of you.

Now customers who have all three services can pay 5$ and cut in front of you all the time. Feel the love when you're waiting forty minutes to get through.

[JasonB]

If that's the case, calling this increased bandwidth is false advertising; it's increased data transfer allowance. If I'm paying for increased bandwidth, I expect higher Mbps. Not that I am unappreciative of the free upgrades that Shaw has provided there...

I called about Hi-Five. The only info I got other than what ShawGuru posted was that front-of-the-line was a special phone number, and that the phone features were "Coming Soon". Sounds like a premature launch of an underspecified bundle; pretty hard to make a decision on this without more info unless you're needing higher transfer allowance.

I have triple-play, mostly for convenience, but wouldn't lose any discounts by dropping TV and going to Bell. Shaw is missing an opportunity to both incentivize triple-play and increase customer lock-in by making Hi-Five standard with the third service.

[Sith]

Hi there,

I noticed on the Shaw Bundles page that the services are included.

It doesn't mention an add on of any cost. "All of our Shaw Bundles include Shaw Hi Five".
Perhaps I have misread it? I am in a triple bundle.

I was on Vod the other day and the series were not free...an episode of the Office was still 0.99.

So maybe it's something that is not yet available? No complaints if it's included at no charge. I can't see paying another $5/month though.

Oops...sorry I did misread it...when you go forward on the screen it then says...$5.00. It should say that upfront.

[worldboy79]

40 minute wait on the phone? I guess it could be, last time I called it was at least 20 minutes, maybe longer. Today I wanted to change some channels but I had to go to the mall anyway so I stopped at the Shaw office/store. There were a few people in line ahead of me but the line went fast. They had 4 staff working and I was in and out in about 10 minutes or so.

[jachal]

I guess i can save $60/yr its good to know frontline techs at shaw that come after they are done work

[roopster77]

I added the Hi-Five... yet to see if the phone number gets me to the "front of the line" - heck, I would prefer they add staff to answer everyone, but an hour on hold to me will be worth the 5 bucks on its own...

Cute how they don't know what phone features will be added.

I presently have 100 gig download, they give you an extra 50 gig with the extreme account.

Don't have a clue about the extra VOD stuff... seems to be TV series stuff from global? Like they have any original programming...

Bottom line, 5 bucks for an extra 50 gig... or a shorter cue for tech support...
priceless...

for everything else, there is alcohol...

[jb_008]

I can't really see myself paying for this, just not enough value there. I hardly call for tech support (if I do most of the time its to tell them about an outage they don't know about), and if there is a huge wait time I will just use that call me back feature.

There is also almost nothing on VOD, I think I seen only about 6 programs showing on their site for that hi-5 thing.

Bandwidth, well if I really need to do a lot of downloading I can just go to work and get it a lot faster than I ever would at home, with no usage caps either.

[googler]

Its wierd, we don't pay the extra $5/month, but are a triple play customer. .When on the VOD site it does show that some tv shows require hi-five subscription and apparantly we have it.
Regarding phoning tech support, I had to the other day, and I got someone instantly, which has NEVER happened before, this could have been fluke though.