u/UX_test

Did a side-by-side on my home internet recently and the results were interesting enough that I figured it was worth a writeup.

The setup at home was Cogeco for over 15 years. The plan had been on a promo rate of $59/month for a while. At some point the promo ended — with no notification, no email, no heads-up of any kind - and the rate jumped straight to $140/month. Worth noting that Cogeco's own standard rate for this plan is listed at around $99, so the bill wasn't even matching their published non-promo price. With tax it was landing at roughly $160/month.

Reached out via their chat to ask about long-term customer pricing or any kind of retention offer. The response was straightforward: no loyalty program, no tenure-based discount, no offer to match new customer rates, no explanation for why the billed rate exceeded the standard rate. Polite, but nothing on the table.

That's actually the more interesting finding here - there's no mechanism at Cogeco for rewarding long tenure, and the post-promo pricing isn't necessarily aligned with their own published rates. New customer promos exist, but once you're past the promo window, you're paying whatever the system rolls you onto.

Looked at the alternatives and oxio stood out. Worth noting: oxio was acquired by Cogeco in 2023 and runs on the same cable infrastructure. Same physical lines into the house, same underlying network - different billing entity, different pricing model.

oxio's structure:

• 1 Gbps for $55/month, flat rate
• No contract, no activation fee
• Modem + Wi-Fi 6 router (eero 6) included, no rental
• Unlimited data
• 60-day money-back guarantee
• Stated policy of never raising existing customer rates (and apparently they've held to it since launch)

The switch itself: Equipment arrived in a few days, self-install took about 15 minutes. Speeds match the plan. Support is chat/email only, which is a tradeoff - faster response times in my experience, but no phone option if that matters to you.

Net result: roughly a third of the previous monthly cost on what is functionally the same connection.

The takeaway from a UX/pricing perspective: The big providers' pricing is structured around acquisition, not retention. Promo-to-rack-rate transitions often happen silently, and the rack rate itself isn't always what you'd expect from their public pricing pages. Independent resellers running on the same infrastructure are increasingly competitive precisely because they're not playing that game. If you're past your promo window with Cogeco, Bell, or Rogers, it's worth at least pricing out the smaller ISPs that use the same wires — and worth checking your bill against the provider's own published rates, because they don't always match.

For anyone who does end up trying oxio, I have a referral code:
R6WNMHT - gets you a FREE first month (and me as well, full disclosure).

Happy to answer questions on the comparison if anyone's curious about specifics.