James Interviewed on College Cast

This is Dr. Dave's podcast called Thunderb1rd Six.

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SaskTel Customer Service/Policies

I came home from a business meeting this afternoon to find my SaskTel television and internet service turned off. I knew we missed a payment but the 'reminder' letter said we had until June 13th to pay (ten days from now.) We made the payment via online banking the night before our little service disruption.

When asked why our service was disrupted even though their letter stated June 13th, we were quoted a fine print disclaimer that basically allows them to do whatever they want.

And they claimed that our internet wasn't disrupted--that it was only a coincidence that our internet stopped working at the same time they killed the TV service.

Now, we've had plenty of interruptions with TV service as anyone with new SaskTel equipment who uses Joost (the new thing in legitimate online video) or other peer to peer programs knows. Basically our TV and internet black out for a few minutes per hour when those programs are used. SaskTel offers no apologies and claims to be unaware of the problem yet I've talked to several other people experiencing the same disruptions (my wireless network goes out too, rendering my whole operation useless.)

Thankfully, we have a choice now. We can switch all of our phone, internet and television services over to Access (the local cable company) and save gobs of money per month (they don't charge 8 bucks per month for caller ID, etc.)  And when they say you have until a certain date to pay, they don't cut you off ten days early and waste several hours of your time trying to get things restored.

What pisses me off is I'll have to pay for the four hours of SaskTel Max that I didn't get. It's also covered in the fine print. I could have gone for days without service and still had to pay for it once reconnected.

Oh, and by the way. SaskTel Max is by far the worst quality of video compression in North America. Don't waste your time unless your partially blind or have a TV no bigger than 20 inches.