Recently I had posted an article regarding Acanac’s Online PC VPS service as a way to get around Bell’s traffic shaping. My sister pointed out that on Google, my blog showed up around the third or forth hit regarding Acanac’s Online PC VPS service.
I feel that since my article shows up relatively high in the Google results, I should follow up because apparently Acanac has a big problem with customer service.
EDIT (May-29-08): I realize that some people might get the impression I’m jumping on the ACANAC Bashing Bandwagon so I’ve written a follow-up article explaining more precisely the problems with particular instances of ACANAC’s interaction with the public in the forums. I also encourage people to follow the links provided. The reason I’ve included them is to show that the criticism isn’t baseless.
Here’s some interesting info about Acanac:
- Better Business Bureau (Canada) profile.
- Google search results about Acanac tech support’s alleged rude behaviour:
My sister sent this my way:
Having worked customer service I realize how some customers can be real assholes. They can be completely blind to their own behavior and how they treat company staff and their expectations can be very unreasonable.
So when people complain about a company, I tend to take it with a grain of salt until I can corroborate any claims. However, I think Acanac’s own performance in this review comment thread is particularly revealing.
This is a direct quote of what a manager at Acanac said in reply to a user who was having problems with a trial account:
“I am sorry I could not get to your PM’s earlier, but after all it is a free trial account. You not even a client.”
Whoa! Did I just read that right? A manager said this?!
Acanac gives out select free trial accounts as, I assume, part of a promotional campaign to attract customers, spread the company name around via word-of-mouth and so on.
When I read that response, this is how I interpret Acanac’s attitude:
“It’s only a free trial account so what do you expect? We provided you with this account but you should be thankful we’re even bothering to help you. You’re actually not that important because you’re not even a regular client.”
Okay, I may not be the CEO of a large corporation but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a bad idea to go out of your way to attract potential customers to your service by giving them free trial access and then treat them in this manner.
Sufficed to say, it looks like I’ll have to look elsewhere for service.
Tags: acanac, bell canada sucks, customer relations, customer service, net neutrality, online pc vps, tech support, throttling, traffic shaping
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Nice tip!
Thanks.
Actually, a friend of mine has had similar horrible problems (and more!) as a customer of that company. I just checked with her. I had no idea how widespread their issues are until I checked google, found your site, found dslreports.com … and just what is an “ACANAC”? Is that even a word?
My friend was unable to get regular DSL service for days and days, and when she did finally get it, it was slow. Never once was she able to get help from that company, for 11 days. Any time she did speak to someone, either they were very curt and rushed with her, or the line dropped. She said they sounded like they were on a satellite phone, on the moon - horrible quality. I find that funny. They fought her HARD on refunding the money, and I don’t think the matter is even settled yet.
Etc. etc.
Anyway - I’m glad you pointed all that stuff out. Thanks!
From what I’ve gathered, ACANAC apparently subcontracts a call centre somewhere in India to do their customer service. That’s just terrific, isn’t it?
Tech support is an area where clear communication is very important in helping customers. So what do they do? Put their call centre on the other side of the world in India and have ESL (English, second language) people handle the calls. Brilliant. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is fast becoming the industry norm.
I had to call a support centre in India once. I had a little bit of difficulty understanding the customer service rep at times because of this particular rep’s accent. But at least she was pleasant enough to deal with.
It’s really too bad that ACANAC’s customer service is incredibly poor because their VPS service is something I could really use right now.
Actually as someone who works in IT tech support, I think it’s pretty ignorant to think that one bad tech represents a whole company. It is the same as the people who think all cops are bad just because they met one bad apple.
Your comment leads me to believe that you didn’t actually read through the links provided solely for the purpose of substantiating the article. If you did, you would have realized that the scope of the problem extends far beyond “one bad tech.”
The whole reason I bothered to link to the forums, and to the google results AND to the Better Business Bureau’s records was to show that the criticism isn’t baseless.
I’ve worked IT tech support for a spell. I’ve been on both sides of the fence so I’m not too quick to jump on the side of some customers. I know how impossible some of them can be. But judging from what went on at dslreports.com, there are obvious problems with their approach to customer service.
I posted a follow-up article not long after this article that details, IMO, what went wrong with their customer interaction in the forums.
I have been a customer for about 2 years now. I must agree with all of you that the telephone service is bad. For the price and performance, I am very happy with them.
On the other hand, they are much better with e-mail and the forum. You usually get a reply very quickly. If you want to use the service, I say use the forum for support. If you are uncertain about their service, I would check their forum.
The company does lack the support for high quality service, but I am not paying for that.
Anthony:
It’s good to hear that you’ve had a generally positive experience with ACANAC.
There’s a tendency for people who are dissatisfied with a service tend to voice their complaints the loudest and most frequently while people who are satisfied with the service tend not to say anything at all. This can distort the perception of the company.
The more customers that speak out about their experiences with a company, both negative AND positive, the better informed other consumers will be.
“There’s a tendency for people who are dissatisfied with a service tend to voice their complaints the loudest and most frequently while people who are satisfied with the service tend not to say anything at all.”
That old line doesn’t bear out. Especially when the company in question is well-known for inciting messageboard spam.
Weird. Link was supposed to go –> here. Sorry.
Having your ISP or others instead cancelling your services is easy.. Just continue to post on the net the truth as to what they are like.. and your services won’t be worth anything to them next, they will disconnect you gladly..
” The ISP suppliers, Canadian corporations now even such as Acanac Inc. http://www.acanac.ca 1-866-281-3538 still are big unacceptable Liars who undeniably too are clearly guilty also of misleading, false advertising too now.. Accanac had mentioned on their internet site that they do not cap their downloads.. but they conveniently had forgot to also say to all of the potential customers on their site that they lease their services from Bell and that Bell itself still regularly between 4 pm to 2 am caps their downloads.. when confronted with this they Acanac Inc do reply that they do not cap their downloads but Bell does.. what an absurd misleading play on words. Mind you Acanac headquartered in Toronto did also claims that they do provide a solution to this Capping software by means of a Putty software but unfortunately this Acanac Inc approach is unreliable, requires continual monitoring, and is presently more problems then what it is worth. Acanac’s support services are also non basically existent in fact, or very very inadequate, slow…So why does our pretentious , inadequate Minister of industry, Jim Prentice MP and his useless consumer affairs department fail over and over again to look after the good interest of the consumers, but looks mainly after Big business good welfare?”