# Primus sucks!!!! Discuss



## ChristianG (Jul 7, 2004)

I just wanted to know if anyone else has had a terrible time with the Primus Customer "Care" representatives and Tech "support"? At first it seemed like a good idea to sign on with them, i even bought into their talk broadband. Since then the problems have been mounting. First, they diconnected our homeline by accident for a month. Then there's this whole issue of voice mail which hasn't been implemented for two months, even though we requested it from the get go. Then there's the problem of the lying CSRs who said that it was done, then on subsequent calls said that it'd be done in a couple of hours, then a couple of days, then a week. Each time I called it was like they were moving the priority lower and lower, even thought they said they'd up the priority. This nightmare has been going on for moonths now. DON'T SIGN ON WITH PRIMUS FOR ANYTHING, not broadband, not talk broadband, not homephone, or anything else they offer unless you enjoy 40 minute waits on the phone to speak to someone who is utterly powerless to do anything and who'll give you a line of BS just to get you off the line. There, I've said it. Comments? Stories? Post away.


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## modsuperstar (Nov 23, 2004)

My parents and sister had issue with them recently. There are 2 phone lines in the house, 1 in my Dad's name and one in my sisters. My Mom(who didn't have authority over either account), phoned and got my parents phone switched to Primus for long distance. So Primus switched over their account, and my sisters. My sister never specified they should do this and was still a Bell customer. So a month passes and they get duplicate bills. One from Bell, one from Primus. Apparently you have to do the legwork to cancel Bell service, which sounds like a load of crap. So my sister refused to pay Primus, as she wasn't even a customer, then to remove her from the account, had to get my mom to phone to change it, even though she had no authority over that phone line. it was just rediculous.


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## macsackbut (Dec 15, 2004)

hmmm... not sure what this has to do with "Anything Mac & iPod", but anyway...

I get my DSL service from Magma, which is a Primus company now (though it used to be an independant Ottawa ISP and seems to have retained some independance from the mothership since the takeover), and I must say that I'm completely satisfied with their service. It's reliable, customer service has been fast and polite, and the telephone tech support has been great (hardly any waiting, I might add). 

MacS


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

While researching Voice over IP service, I considered Primus, but the overwhelmingly opinions about their service was that it falls far short of expectations. That's a third-party opinion, but hey it's free advice.


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## colinmcd (Jan 24, 2005)

I always thought they were alright...Les Claypool's bass playing saves the band IMHO.


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## iPetie (Nov 25, 2003)

colinmcd said:


> I always thought they were alright...Les Claypool's bass playing saves the band IMHO.


LMAO!


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## jr_junior (Apr 23, 2005)

I as well have been using magma for a long time. Dial-up and now HS. I've been with them since before primus bought them and haven't noticed any difference in the top quality service.

That being said, I've heard nothing but bad news from primus so I wouldn't sign up with any other of there services. I only hope this doesn't trickles into Magma.


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## macsackbut (Dec 15, 2004)

jr_junior said:


> I as well have been using magma for a long time. Dial-up and now HS. I've been with them since before primus bought them and haven't noticed any difference in the top quality service.
> 
> That being said, I've heard nothing but bad news from primus so I wouldn't sign up with any other of there services. I only hope this doesn't trickles into Magma.


That's one of my worries too, but so far so good. Whenever I talk to one of their tech staff, I make a point of telling them that I stay with Magma for the great service. Don't know if that'll make a difference if Primus decides to cut the support staff for some short term gains, but I figure it can't hurt.


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## TheBat (Feb 11, 2005)

This topic probably belongs in the "Everything else" board.

I had Primus as my main long distance provider when I lived in NFLD. Absolutely no problems then.

I moved to ON last year. I have Primus VOIP, and no other phone service. So far it has worked out relatively well for me. However, the customer service is abyssmal. I can remember, at the beginning, I needed to call in a few times (from a cell phone that fortunately had unlimited after hours minutes), and had to wait 45min or more to speak to a live human (maybe all Primus employees are dead??).

For later problems related to billing, I resorted to e-mail - which was answered in 2-4 days. It took a further 1 month to actually sort the problem out!

So, all in all, Primus has gone downhill. At this time I would advise people to stay away from Primus.


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## rodkin (Jan 7, 2003)

I totally agree, Primus sucks the bag -big time. When I signed up with them for long distance, they assured me they would inform the company I was then using that I'd switched to Primus. They did no such thing, and I ended up being double-billed for months. 

Whenever I called customer service to complain they said they'd fix the problem, but instead I think they just hung up the phone and went back to reading their damned Harlequin romance novel. Avoid them at all costs (unless of course you're a masochist, in which case I'd highly recommend them).


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## Vuli (Sep 28, 2005)

What do you peple mean, Primus is an excelent company  

Wait times are 20+++++ minutes.
They are consistent, I'll give them that...
Consistent in a sense that their service is constantly getting worse. Bravo Primus.

Let me tell you about my latest conversation with primus.

I've been waiting for a mail box for month and a half. 
So finally I get the damn mail box (after numerous 20+ minute "on hold" calls)
... and they give me a wrong password... so I have to spend another 20+ minutes to get the actual password... ( really depends who you talk to, since everybody has a different information, go figure...)
Anyway, I call them back to get the right password, and ask them one 
more question about constant, time of day independent, 20++++ minute wait
The Question:
"Does primus have only 3 people answering the calls, or the service is so bad people are calling to complain all the time"

Simple question, right.

By the time I got to 
"Does primus have only 3 people answering the calls..."
I heard CLICK. They dropped the call. That pretty much answered the rest of my question  

At this point I am not pissed off any more, I am laughing .

...and I call them again, and again I am on hold for 20++++ minutes.
I ask the operator to get the manager because I need to talk to him about 
customer service and primus service in general.
Operator puts me on hold to transfer the call...
Couple of minutes latter , to my surprise, the same operator picks up an tells me:
"The manager is on the phone but he can call you in 3 business days"  

Well, that’s where I hang up ... and called Bell. Bell gave me roughly the same deal (about 10% more $$$). I'll be off primus in a week.

If anybody is browsing these posts 
to find out about primus:

*STAY AWAY FROM PRIMUS*

you'll do yourself a favor.

V


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## hungryhouse (Feb 2, 2005)

*i switched*

i switched to Primus a while ago because it was going to save us about 20 dollars a month. We moved into a character, older building and primus wanted to send someone over to "look at our wires". I said "sure" and asked when they'd send them and my answer was between 9 and 5 on a certain day. I work just down the block and so I asked if they could call me first, as I can't stay home all day to wait for them and unfortuantely they couldn't.  Because our building is old we don't have a buzzer system, you either call first or knock on the window. Long story short, they sent a guy, who they couldn't contact directly, to our building about 3 times. Anyways, they said they were going to cut off our service, even though we pay our bill early every month, every time and finally just forgot about it. And they over charged us 60 bucks for a period of time when they cut off our old phone and took their sweet ass time starting up our primus service. (that was about 3 weeds sans phone). But, at least they don't phone me twice a day anymore. I don't like them and would gladly switch, any suggestions?


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## iMatt (Dec 3, 2004)

Good: ordered a land line from Primus and everything works fine so far. They charge $30/month for services that were costing roughly $50 from Bell.

Bad: when the switch happened, it knocked out my Sympatico DSL, which it wasn't supposed to, launching a 13-day saga in which Primus committed some errors, specifically in failing to communicate the circuit number for the new line to Bell, and then in taking about 48 hours to communicate the circuit number to me so that I could communicate it to Bell.

The rest of the saga involves customer service and tech support failures on Bell's part, though it did end with good work by senior people there...definitely not front-line staff, who were extraordinarily unhelpful.

Conclusion: I may well stick with Sympatico (undecided), and will definitely not be ordering DSL service from Primus: one or two tastes of the long hold times and general cluelessness were warning enough. I expect to keep the landline, since that shouldn't cause many support issues over the long run. Knock wood.

In fairness I did encounter some clueful and helpful people on the phone at Primus, once I pierced the phone system to reach some real techies. But it was too much hassle to reach them...


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## DoNotPokeTheScreen (Jun 9, 2005)

Well, it's me talking about Primus again...

refer to this thread about the nightmeres i've had with them http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?t=31751

On top of that, FOR THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SWITCHING TO ANOTHER COMPANY FROM PRIMUS. BECAREFUL. A few years back when we lived in Winnipeg, we used Primus. When we moved to Ontario and discontinued our home telephone number. They continued to charge us for our home phone number for almost 7 months, when my father finally notices on his bill (my father is not a moron, but i'm not quite sure how he didn't notice, i'll ask him about that when i have a chance).

So make sure you call them SEVERAL times to make sure all of your services from Primus are 100% disconnected, or else you have to call them back several months later when you discover they are still charging you on your credit card.


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## Myrddin Emrys (May 24, 2005)

I just dropped Primus DSL, personally I had little need to call their Care line but the one time I did it took me 4 months to solve a problem and Primus had no hand in solving the problem.

The problems I had was the new spam filters having way to many false positives, and the virus filters snagging too many messages.


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## gklotz (Oct 2, 2005)

I got Primus VOIP (Talk Broadband) three months ago, no problems. The service worked great from day one. I had a question about a bill once, and got through to customer service in a few minutes. If you don't want to wait, you can email them. I needed my voicemail password reset, and they did it a day after I emailed.


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## gklotz (Oct 2, 2005)

Oh yeah, and I pay $34 including taxes per month for unlimited calling in North America, with every phone feature (call waiting, answer, display etc.) imaginable. I don't have any relation with the company, but I am happy with their service, and especially their price. If you don't like it, why don't you stick with Bell, pay them $85 per month, and see what their customer service is like.


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## TheBat (Feb 11, 2005)

Have been using Primus VOIP for a full 12 months now. Besides the few teething problems in the begining, I have no complaints. This is the only phone I have, which runs through Rogers extreme service.

I pay around $16/month, which includes the most basic service and rental of the VOIP router. Can't argue with that price! If I decided to buy the router ($99), I could save another $4-5 per month. Combine that with excellent long distance rates (to overseas countries), and I am saving a bucketload of money. I would never switch back to analog lines!!


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

I've stayed clear of telecommunications companies altogether, include Telus, Bell, and Primus. I've had bad experience with Telus and Primus and don't expect any better from Bell. I get awesome digital TV and internet service from Shaw who's customer service is second to none besides the sometimes 30 minute wait, the friendly representatives more than make up for that. I get home phone service from Vonage VOIP, awesome stuff. Cell phone service from Rogers, if they responded to my calls any quicker they'd be calling me before I needed to call them.


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## DoNotPokeTheScreen (Jun 9, 2005)

gklotz said:


> Oh yeah, and I pay $34 including taxes per month for unlimited calling in North America, with every phone feature (call waiting, answer, display etc.) imaginable. I don't have any relation with the company, but I am happy with their service, and especially their price. If you don't like it, why don't you stick with Bell, pay them $85 per month, and see what their customer service is like.


I'm getting the impression that you are directing that question at me. I could be wrong, but just in case, here's my reply...

I would love to go with Bell, the problem is that we thought we wanted to give primus a shot since their service is cheap.

It's true, their service is CHEAP. There's so much hassle and fees that were UNEXPECTED. If we knew we would have stuck with Bell.


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## iMatt (Dec 3, 2004)

iMatt said:


> ...will definitely not be ordering DSL service from Primus: one or two tastes of the long hold times and general cluelessness were warning enough.


I'm a dumbass and a sucker. I dearly wish I'd remembered this vow. 

When I moved recently I figured I might as well cut the last tie with Bell. Instead of going with Videotron (lots of good reviews), I fell for the "triple value bundle" deal from Primus and have had no end of headaches. 

I'm too frustrated by the whole thing to recount the saga, but suffice to say the "support" people are as hard to reach and as unhelpful as ever. (If you don't mind timing your call for *precisely* 8 a.m., when they open the lines, you can usually avoid the customary 20 minutes on hold.) 

When you do reach a rep, most are perfectly pleasant, perfectly powerless, and perfectly clueless. Those with a clue have no power to do anything. Those with the power to do something have no clue. 

Aaargh.

I never thought any company could make me nostalgic for Bell, but there you go. Primus really is that bad. Don't fall for the low prices.


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## btqt (Dec 18, 2008)

*Primus can't provide the servise they advertise*

If you're lucky, you'll find a rep that will truthfully and knowledgably answer your questions and perhaps even solve your problem.

I get a max download speed of 1.3Mbps when paying for "up to" 7Mbps. This has been going on ever since I signed up in Sept 2008. They have admitted they have a "saturation problem" in my area, are working on it, but can't estimate when the problem will be resolved. They have also stated other people in my area have the same problem. 

Since they won't release me from my contract without penalty and will not warn you of the service problems when you sign on, all I can do is try to prevent others from making the same mistake. Primus advertises "up to" 7Mbps downloads and believe there is nothing wrong with providing less than 25% of what was promised and are not interested in keeping their customers happy. I believe Primus will go out of business in the near future as current customers leave and potential customers are educated about Primus lack-of customer service.


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## yann (Mar 12, 2011)

*Primus Charges for unreturned 'lost' modem*

After 5 years with Primus on my cell phone and VOIP land line telephone, I called them to cancel my service November 2010. Shaw cable is now charging similar rates for a superior service with practically 100% uptime compared to Primus' lousy phone quality and constant busy line tone (or no tone at all sometimes) Unfortunately I just found out, like many other Ex-Primus customers that in my last invoice I've been hit with "lost equipment" charges even though I returned the PrimusVOIP modem (and with a Canada Post tracking number provided by Primus). This seems to be standard practice for Primus, after you cancel your account and return their equipment - they charge you anyway pretending they never received it! Google "Primus unreturned modem" and see what I'm talking about

Just to get the facts out, I cancelled the service in November, got charged a full month and a half extra, return shipping+ $168 ('lost' modem + HST). They did not send return postage until February 2011. That's 4 months after I cancelled, after which I immediately shipped the modem back with all their cables and in the original box. I placed the box inside a waterproof padded plastic shipping bag to ensure nothing got damaged along the way.

I have opened a complaint with the better business bureau and will post the story on as many websites as I can. If they do not reverse charges on my invoice, I will have to pursue legal action not just for the money, but because this will create a negative impact on my credit score. I think some media coverage might be in order, CTV, CBC that sort of thing.

It seems like Primus is losing the VOIP wars (the shaw modem not only sounds better but has so far 100% uptime) and as a result, their corporate policy dictates they make their money by ripping off their customers. I should note I had been using their VOIP service for almost 5 years= before cancelling.

Thinking about using Primus for your VOIP phone ? DON'T DO IT !


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## bhattikj (Sep 23, 2011)

*Primus is awful*

Primus customer service is terrible. I have been with them for a few years. I put up with their 400 dollar billing error. "but that's ok sir, we applied it as a credit to your account and then deducted from that amount every month". Yeah they did, but they first stole 400 bucks, then didnt provide me with a single bill as to what they were deducting. 

Now they want to charge me with a cancellation fee because I cancelled without giving them 30 days notice. I asked to speak to a manager, "Sure sir, please wait a moment" .... click ... Dialtone .. 

They have the WORST customer service I have EVER dealt with.


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