To: [email protected]

From: Richard M.

Date: June 6, 2003 8:19 PM

Subject: I hate Rogers

Well I been ranting about WSIB (Workman’s Safety & Insurance Board AKA Workman’s Compensation Board) all week so I figure time to let out what I think of Rogers as well.

I first moved to Toronto 5 years ago. I rented a room in a house and they had Rogers cable tv and internet. Well being from the east coast, I thought this high speed thing was great compared to the dialup I had back there. It was great when it was working that is, as I soon found out. The woman who I was renting from was on the phone more then she was online. Sitting there on the phone for at least 45 minutes each call. I knew a little more about computers then her at the time and I was always going through the motions with 1 of their techs to try and fix it. Within 2 months after moving there I had my own computer and then the fun really started. You may as well say I was back to dialup for the speeds we were getting. Phone call after phone call back to Rogers to get this problem fixed, but to no avail. Well she stands about 5'2" and I call her 5'2" with attitude. She got me to unhook the cable modem, 2 digital boxes and put them in the car for her. Well what happened next I was I had had a video camera. At that time you could return your modem to a Rogers outlet. She walks in and takes piece by piece out of the bag and throws them on the counter. and I quote"Take your fucking shit and shove it!" she tells them and cancels all her acct's. Well after that she went with bell for high speed and satellite. Never had a problem till 2 years ago when we move to where we are now. (sidenote we had gotten married at this point in time) Well we move in and I get the satellite hooked up and working np. We call bell to get our high speed setup and we thought we were set. Turns out we are in an old neighborhood and the phone lines don't run to the closet switching station and there fore we are too far away to get high speed. (that's a whole other rant)

Well in comes the Rogers guy to hookup our modem. He hooks  into the outlet not far away from where the desks are , plugs in the modem and no signal. After resetting the modem at least 6 times he calls in and says I can't do this send out a repair crew for the line. He packs up his stuff and says sorry and he leaves. I traced the line that he had hooked into, it was disconnected outside but did he bother to even look? No off course not, that wasn't his department.

Well the week after the repair crew comes in to see what is up. The guy tells me all the connections into the house are no good because they have all been cut. Well DUhhhhh!!!

So then they run a new line into the house to where I wanted it from the box on the outside of the house. They finished that and left saying tech would have to come back to finish the install. Well after dealing with them in the past I knew the tcp/icp stuff what to configure and away I went. Then I looked at modem, again no connection. Hard to configure if modem is not connecting and slapped my self. Well guess what the tech guy actually came back the next day, I almost fainted when I saw him at the door. He comes in and does the same thing resetting the modem, makes the call and tells me repair crew on the way.

Another week goes by and here comes the repair crew. Big Shiny red vans that sparkle in the sun, Damn what a target if I had a bazooka I thought. As you can tell I was just a wee bit frustrated by this time. Well this time 1 of the guys actually took out a meter and said hey there is no connection to the house. Well bless my soul I thought, I think I got me a smart 1. he went to the box at the road hooked me up, and what do you know I had connection on the modem.

Ok here we go doing the settings to get myself online. After 3 days with techs and doing all kinds of shit, didn't they give me the wrong information on my acct. We finally got it straightened out and I was online to surf away. The next day the tech guy shows up says I am here to get your modem and computer configured. I laughed at him said have a nice day go away.

3 months after this my neighbor is doing some work in his flower garden between our 2 driveways. I was online at the time and then bang modem went back to dead red connection. I get a knock on the door, my neighbor says did I happen to cut your cable line? Out I went sure enough nice small round mouthed shovel split it clean. At this point I wasn't interested in calling Rogers as I had a Tournament to play in 30 minutes online. I go through all my junk drawer stuff , find what I need and in 15 had it back up again. Then I called Rogers, the repair crew showed up 3 days later.

Now we are into last fall. I was having real bad problems with the speed of my connection. I made numerous phone calls and this tech gave me a site to test my bandwidth speed. Well as I was on the phone with him I did the test and my speed came back being the equivalent as a 56k modem. he said that's impossible, I said would you like to come over and see it for yourself? I was hoping he would have taken me up on the offer but he didn't. It took me 3 months of phone calls, tech guys that say well do this do that as they were saying it I said done. But I justed asked you, they said it takes a few minutes. I told 1 guy , you think this is my first phone call? After 3 months I get a tech to the house. This guy actually had a few brain cells not many mind you but a few. While he is standing beside me and doing all his tests and telling me what to do yet again we go through the phone tech play, I guess you could call it. Well then he sees the line that had been spliced from the shovel. That is a problem he says, I looked at him and said if you even say 1 word about repair crew I'll flatten ur tires. That way while you are waiting for a repair crew for your truck you can fix my problem. I think this guy took me serious because he replaced the wire from the house to the box on the street and then came back and ran a few more tests. After an hour he said well hey it's your modem I have 1 in the truck let me change it for you. Brings it in hooks it up and I have been online since but the speeds are still crap and the service keeps dumping me from time to time.

As I said in first part of e-mail if I had another choice for high speed right now I would. But because of the way my phone line works in an old neighbor hood I am stuck with them. Any DSL I have been told would have the same prob in my case. Hopefully soon I will be able to afford satellite connection and get away from all this, at least then if a thunderstorm goes overhead I know why my connection went down and will be back up shortly.

The only other thing i want to say is

I HATE ROGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IhateROGERS.ca Comments

That is one of the best rants I have ever read. If you didn’t marry Miss 5’2" with attitude, I swear on my fido, I’d marry the woman myself! Your point is very well taken and I hope everyone read your whole rant and doesn’t just skim or skip it. It was genuinely funny and very well written. A+ if you ask me. I smell T-Shirt. There’s nothing really to comment on, because you said it all and high speed is better than dial up and if you have no DSL in your neighborhood, you’re stuck with those RAT BASTARDS, like it or not…for now anyways.

I completely agree that if you combined all of the brains of all of their techies and all of the brains of all of their installers you could maybe…maybe make one well functioning brain…maybe.

And if you think you’re frustrated with ROGERS, think of how the last guy felt living in that house. You know…the house you moved in to…with all of the ROGERS connections coming in to the house that were CUT. Now that’s frustrated!

To: [email protected]

From: kimberly g.

Date: June 16, 2003 10:21 PM

Subject: another fired employee

In the following e-mail the references to "Nicole’s rebuttal" and "letter sent from fired from Rogers" can be found at www.ihaterogers.ca/thescoop2.htm and www.ihaterogers.ca/thescoop.htm respectively.

I was just reading Nicole's rebuttal to the letter sent from fired from Rogers. I would have to agreed with him...Rogers Communications Inc. want the community to think that they are a good company. The fact is that they love to rip people off. I would strongly urge anyone who has any services from this company to check your bills as i also worked for Rogers but in the cable side of it..

Did you know that if your bill is 70 days past due they will add 28.75 for a processing fee..you could have this extra charge on your bill every month...I really don't think that is right...I know you should pay your bill but don't they have enough money that they don't need to rip people off.The other thing is the connection fee of 74.99.. That is ridiculous. They will credit that for you if you spend 30 minutes on the phone to argue about it.

If this company is fair...Why do people who live outside the city pay the same price as people in the city of half the services. Examples is some places still only have 13channels and are paying close to 30.00 a month...Myself i think that is worth 10.00...This company is out to make money and does not care about the employees or the customers at all. Another example is...if you want more than 4 outlets in your home they will charge you 75.00 to put an amplifier on the line. Most lines already have one on....They will say anything to make you buy the products. So Nicole i will give you one piece of advice....Shut up....Until you know what it is like to work for the company i don't think you should speak on our behalf....

Sincerely,

Another fired employee...

IhateROGERS.ca Comments

Well Nicole the rebutter…you have been told. I have never been employed by ROGERS so I personally can’t verify any of this information. Although I can say I did have an experience with them where they made a major error and tried to pass the blame and some ridiculous charges on to me. The result was, everyone I spoke to at ROGERS, I called some real nasty names — and I mean nasty. They corrected their error reimbursed me for the charges that were not merited and I felt a lot better calling everyone I spoke to some real nasty names — and I mean nasty.

Oh yeah, then I cancelled my service with them and reserved the domain name "ihaterogers.ca". How could I forget mentioning that?

To: [email protected]

From: Duddy Stick

Date: June 19, 2003 12:24 PM

Subject: I love your site!! Here’s my 2 cents to boycott Rogers

Hey There:

   Great site..... it's nice to see someone speaking and educating the public how to avoid our experiences with the companies who think they are monopolies so can get away with anything.

   My complaint is with their stupidity behind their lack of business savy and how I'm doing my share to not send ANY business their way .... this gets good!

   About six months ago I was approx 9 months away from the end of my three year term with Rogers as a loyal wireless customer .... also a cable user at home.   My job required better technology then the junk phone I was using and opted for the purchase of the top of the line Handspring Treo because my office was all too happy to make the purchase for me.   I was advised that Rogers absolutely would not allow me to switch to a new unit without a large penality since I still had approx 6 months left on my plan.   I asked for their service manager's input and got the same story and was just perplexed!?!?   Here you have a customer (me) who wants to buy the most
expensive model and large plan for work purposes, but they are adament I'm not allowed to without paying a penality of $200!!   Those Handsprings cost $1000!!   I politely told the manager I would take my buisness elsewhere becasue this was ridiculous.
    Here's the real kicker to this story :  guess who just received the responsibility to manager telcommunications (including wireless) for Canada???   That would be me!!    I just signed a deal with Telus for a minimum of 500 cell phones in the next year.    Eat your heart out Rogers..... I gave your proposal to our organization the same courtesy you gave me ..... it didn't fit into our needs and guidelines perfectly so it went to the circular filing cabinet.

Cheers everyone,
Anonymous

IhateROGERS.ca Comments

Penny wise, pound foolish and unbendable policies make this company impossible to deal with. I guess that’s why you’re not dealing with them! Good choice "Anonymous".

The "circular filing cabinet" is the garbage can for anyone not sure what he means. I have to say I’m jealous. If only it was ihateROGERS.ca that provided the alternatives for you to make that choice of not giving them the contract for those 500 cellular accounts I’d be in my freakin’ glory! Please say it was…please, please, please say it was. I do have a link for TELUS on the www.ihaterogers.ca/wireless2.htm page…2nd one down as a matter of fact. Are you sure you didn’t find the link here? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

To: [email protected]

From: Amanda F.

Date: June 20, 2003 9:11 PM

Subject: cellular

Hey there I have a story about rogers cellular services...  I recently tried to take over a contract on a phone for a friend from rogers.  We called in to make the change over with no problems until they wanted to do a credit check.  I said NO problem I don't have any credit line so go ahead well they
said I'm sorry "Miss F." but you don't have any credit rating we cant allow you to take over the contract with out a 1000 dollar deposit a freaking 1000 bucks....  Give me a break rogers get over yourself...  I asked them why I needed to make this deposit they said because they are taking a risk with my contract I asked does it cover the cost of the phone is that how much it is they said no the phone retails for 149.00 dollars I was fuming mad..  To top it off the phone which I did try out before hand, reception was bad and everyone said that they had trouble hearing me on it. 
After my talk with rogers I proceeded to my closest Bell World store where I was helped with no problem I received a better phone with no security deposit...  Funny eh Bell didn't see anything wrong with giving me a chance..  So Rogers I live in an area that I don't need to depend on you to
supply my cable and videos I will just go to the local mom and pop video store or maybe even the compition Block Buster, and bell has me as a coustemer now for all my telecommunications needs....  Have fun sinking to the ground you are not getting any positive feedback from me and I'm telling everyone I know not to do business with you!!!

Amanda F.

IhateROGERS.ca Comments

I have to say I can understand requiring a security deposit. However, $1,000 is a trifle exorbitant. I think they just pick these numbers randomly. But let me ask you a question. You mentioned that the reception was bad with the phone. If ROGERS had let you take over the contract, why would you take a lousy phone? Convenience? I hope people reading this learn a lesson. There are alternatives out there. Spend a little time considering them.

For example, a nice pair of shoes is $300 and you’ll try on 20 different pairs at 6 different stores before deciding who gets your $300 dollars. Generally most people will spend that much on a cell phone for product and plan in only a month or two. But how much consideration goes in to making that choice? Be a smart consumer and shop around. You did and look how things turned out.