Robert Attrell spent 16 days unplugged this summer — and he’s not happy about it.

“I am trying to start a media business and I require Internet to do my work, as well as in my daily life,” he says.

“I was forced to use my phone’s Internet during the outage, which ended up costing me about $60.”

Attrell deals with TekSavvy Solutions, based in Chatham, Ont. One of Canada’s largest independent Internet providers, it’s known for offering unlimited bandwidth with no restrictive contracts.

“Our price is our price,” says spokeswoman Tina Furlan. “We don’t charge overages and customers aren’t surprised by excessive charges on their monthly bill.”

But TekSavvy’s reputation is taking a hit in the busy back-to-school period as it scrambles to keep up with requests for service.

Some people who use TekSavvy’s high-speed cable Internet service, offered through the Rogers network, have been offline for a few days, a few weeks, even as long as a month at a time.

Rogers spokeswoman Patricia Trott estimates that 300 to 400 TekSavvy customers are waiting for technicians to visit their homes to fix problems.

“There’s been a bit of a spike in the last few weeks, so we’re putting on more resources to expedite these cases. People are working night and day,” she says.

Furlan estimates that 2,000 customers are in limbo, waiting to be connected. They’re a small fraction of TekSavvy’s 230,000 clients, but they are vocal and quick to complain through social media outlets.

I found Attrell on Facebook, where he’s preparing a video and asking friends to give their stories. One friend was left with no Internet for three weeks after a signal issue led to a disconnection. Another waited seven weeks for a replacement modem after a move.

“I feel somewhat responsible as I have been recommending TekSavvy now for almost three years to everyone I know,” he said, adding that he’d been compensated for his 16 days of disconnection.

TekSavvy CEO Marc Gaudrault sent letters to customers hit by the delays last weekend. He apologized for providing poor service, but didn’t name the partner involved. (Furlan said some contracts didn’t allow it.)

“Our customers are our primary concern and we want you to know that we are taking this matter very seriously. We know that you are offline and we understand that this is not acceptable,” he wrote.

“As everything is functioning properly at our end, we believe the extended service outages are due to changes that have been made by the incumbent.

“Our challenge is that they are not giving us proper explanations or expected time frames.”

The wholesale model used by TekSavvy is flawed and must be modified, Gaudrault continued. He hoped the telecom regulator would revisit the issue in the weeks ahead.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

TekSavvy has grown quickly with its no-caps policy. But it’s concerned about the unwieldy service that comes from piggybacking on a larger company’s Internet network.

Suppose you’re offline and you call for help. What is the procedure?

“We troubleshoot the problem as much as we can. If it’s on our side, we are able to fix the problem. This is normally what happens,” Furlan says.

“In special cases, the problem is not on our side and we submit a ‘ticket’ to the vendor to have them look into it.”

If the problem requires a technician, you have to work with both TekSavvy and Rogers to schedule a time to make the repair. This is more cumbersome than dealing with a single provider.

TekSavvy may treat you as a priority if you’re disconnected for a long time. But Rogers says it can’t give TekSavvy clients special treatment or let them jump ahead in line.

Switching to an independent lets you reduce costs and download whatever you like on the Internet without worrying about surprise bills.

But it also means giving up some control if you run into service issues that can’t be diagnosed and fixed easily. You’ll be in a three-way dance routine with partners you can’t follow easily.

TekSavvy’s cheeky and clever ads on Toronto subways may have brought in too much business too quickly. Let’s hope that Rogers catches up and rescues the customers left in limbo.