Wed, 05 Oct 2011
My wife and I used to have mobile phone service through Rogers Wireless. We had been customers for over 10 years.
Rogers has an interesting approach to mathematics: In the Rogers world, 20 + 15 > 50. Huh? Well, we have a special deal: We have two phones and pay $20/month for one and $15/month for the second. That means we pay $35/month, right?
Wrong. Rogers adds a $6.95/month "System Access Fee" per phone and a $0.75/month "9-1-1 Emergency Access Fee" per phone. That brings the pre-tax total to $50.40. Why does Rogers do that? Simple: It's Rogers' "policy".
Anyway, I lost my phone. So I wanted to cancel one of the lines to give me time to shop around. The Rogers customer care [sic] person informed me that I could cancel, but it would take 30 days to take effect. Why so long? It's Rogers' "policy". Also, if I only canceled one phone, I could no longer continue on the existing plan with the other phone, but would have to sign up for another multi-year contract. "Policy", don't you know.
OK. How about unlocking our phones? Easily done, but it costs $50 per phone. Why? "Policy".
So I ran out to the nearest WIND Mobile store and bought two cheapie Huawei phones for $48 each (yes, that's $2 per phone less than Rogers would charge to unlock our existing phones) and ported our numbers to those phones. That means our Rogers account was cancelled immediately; no 30-day waiting period.
Our WIND plan costs $15/month per phone, except we get a $5/month discount because we have two phones, so it costs $25/month plus tax. No "System Access" fees. No "9-1-1 Emergency Access" fees. And we get Caller-ID thrown in for free (costs extra according to Rogers "policy")
Oh, and if we do want to cancel our WIND plan, it's done within 48 hours rather than 30 days. And after we've been with WIND for 90 days, they'll give us the phone unlock codes for free.
Unfortunately, we're now stuck with one (possibly two) useless locked Rogers phones which will likely end up in a landfill somewhere. Isn't Rogers' unlocking policy ever so environmentally friendly?
All of this brings me to my new policy towards Rogers:
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