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Pure Fibre Outrage

Cherns
Coach

A while back I recounted my adventures in switching to a "bonded copper" system for my Internet and tv.

 

Recently, I got an attractive offer to upgrade to Telus Pure Fibre (my building was recently set up for this). I figured, sure, why not? The installer was friendly and competent. The main part of the installation was running an ethernet cable from the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) box to my T3200M modem/router, replacing the two DSL phone lines. My new tv, and the VIP5662W set-top box, can handle 4K shows, but my Home Theatre can't pass them through, and there isn't much non-paid 4K content available, but at least I'm trying to be future-proof.

 

The next day, I noticed that a couple of my scheduled programs hadn't been recorded. Checking, I found that my lists of scheduled recordings, and of my scheduled series recordings, had disappeared--all of them. I called Telus support, was transferred to Fibre Support, and was told that my switch to fibre had meant that I now had a new account, and that scheduled recording was tied to the account, so that's why they disappeared. OK, very annoying, but I can probably re-enter the schedules, and so I did.

 

Then I tried to play a recording made before the switch, All previous recordings showed up in the list, but when I tried to play one, then several, all showed nothing--black screen, no sound. Back to Telus Fibre Support. "Oh, all programs on your pvr are encrypted with your account; new account, new encryption; can't play recordings made with old encryption. No, sorry, there's no way to associate the old account encryption with your box. Didn't they tell you?"  No, they bloody didn't, not the salesperson who called me with the offer, and not the installer. I would never have switched to fibre if I had known that it meant giving up my 280 recordings (there are a lot of programs I find interesting, but I don't have a lot of time actually to watch them.)

 

I am extremely upset about this.I suggest that all Telus pitches for fibre should carry a warning: Note: Switching to Pure Fibre will render your current pvr recordings unwatchable.

 

A message or two on this forum suggested to me that a fibre account doesn't come with email accounts. So far, it seems that my telus.net email accounts can send and receive email, so maybe this doesn't apply to me? I'd appreciate confirmation that my telus.net email accounts aren't threatened by this switch. Thanks.

7 REPLIES 7

Chicnstu
Leader

Sorry to hear about your lost recordings. Agents who process the orders are trained to mention this when doing the "change of technology" but unfortunately they can forget this bit of information sometimes. The reason you were given is correct though. The process to move a customer from copper to Fibre means the old copper product is ceased and built anew on Fibre so the Optik TV account in the back end is new and this everything on the old asset will no longer work.

 

As for your email accounts, I believe existing telus.net email accounts are automatically carried over to standalone products and a discount code is added so they don't show up on your bill. If it is that important that you don't lose them I would maybe use live chat or email in to support and just make sure they confirm that they were properly carried over. I would hate to see them disabled due to a mixup. Last time I ran in to that kind of issue the backups for restoring lost emails only lasts for about 7 days before they are wiped for security purposes.

Thanks for your  reply. I am guessing that Telus sales staff get commissions on successful sales, and, if so, don't have much incentive to mention the downsides of a switch to fibre.

 

As a sometime computer programmer and system developer, I don't admire systems that "require" new accounts for a change in a service (including my landline??), and especially ones that require an encryption key that can't be carried over from an old account.

 

I managed to connect to my new account using the Android My Telus app, but it doesn't show anything about email. As I recall, sighing in via the web page does show emails and aliases, but I haven't been able to make thiat work yet.  I'll keep trying.

It happened to me as well about a month ago.  I can understand the loss of recorded programs as the encryption changes.  But, I don't see why they can't transfer the recording schedule.  It was always kept at their servers and it should be a simple copy of a text file.  There is nothing proprietary about that.  Anyway, I haven't yet finished the programming.

Kalhas
TELUS Employee
TELUS Employee

Due to the nature of the account in the backend database, carrying a recording schedule is tricky and has a great potential on messing with the account. This is my educated guess on why the transfer of recording schedules does not occur.

Well, I guess that there are several system design decisions:

  • Everything--encryption, scheduled recordings, etc.--depends on "Account" (like, using the account number as encryption key or something?)
  • Encryption keys cannot be changed or copied over
  • A change in service (like copper to fibre) "requires" an account change, including changes that have nothing to do with whether the signals are carried by copper or glass.

I'm not sure which of design choices I consider the dumbest.

Turns out that this move also killed my Telus email accounts and aliases. Oddly enough, I can  log on to webmail, see old messages, and send new ones, but mail to the address bounces. Tech support says that it will probably be able to set them up again and maybe retrieve the queued messages in a couple of days ("It's a different department"). (Another post on this forum suggested that this might happen, but since it didn't happen soon after the switch--it's been a few weeks at least--I figured that I was ok.)

 

What kind of shop is Telus running? What were they thinking? "This sucker signed up for fibre; guess that means that he doesn't want to watch his recorded programs or use his email any more." Bah.

rcf
Just Moved In
I am also EXTREMELY upset about the recordings issue. it is either laziness or extreme technical incompetence on Telus' part.