What's up with customer service being so bad?

I would really like to have a Rogers customer rep on here ... but then again they probably don't give a shit anyways

Being one of the largest Media companies in North American, they clearly do not give a crap about customers.

A friend of mine moved to the UK and needed to cancel her cell phone account and she got charged $400 for canceling early and Rogers would not unlock her 3G phone so that she could use it overseas. The little unlock kiosks charge around $20-$80 for unlocking them. So it was cheaper for her to buy a new cell once in the UK.

I also signed up for a so called "Vision" plan and under theory it would cost me only $50 for 2 phones per month. The first bill arrived and it was a little over $190. The idiots had activated 400 minutes per phone plus the Vision plan on top of that. The original shared account only needed 100-200 minutes max. I called the so called "Customer Service" and they did not know about the Vision plan they offer and they did not know anything about my phone either... I was actually helping the Rep. because she was clueless after 1.5 hours on the phone she told me to go and talk to the store manager where I had bought the phone. I went back to the store and it took Rogers 3 hours to find out how they had come up with the $190 charge.

I told them that I wanted to return the phones. Then they told me they had a "30 minute" talk time policy in which if you use one of their phones for 30 minutes that equals a non-refundable purchase. SO, here I was stuck with two useless $200 cell phones trying to figure out why I was being charged $190.

Once everything was worked out I walked out with a $45/m plan for two phones. This so called $45 plan came out to be $65 after all the so called promotions they toss on your plan.

One month later Rogers no longer supports my phone and they do not sell chargers nor batteries for it. Apparently way too many people had problems with their phones and their Vision plans. Rogers decided to change their "Vision" phones ASAP and not support them so that people would not return them.

I used to live in Europe and I loved the "no strings" attached plans they had over there. you could add minutes to your phone online and if you wanted to change phones you could at any time without being charged. You would simply bring the old one they would transfer all your data over to the new phone and recycle the old phone for you free of charge. Try that at Rogers, you can't change phones for at least 1 year, you can't change phone numbers without paying a penalty. You are simply locked under their contract for 3 years if you decide to cancel you get slapped by a $200-400 cancel fee.

Even their free "UR" Magazine they offer to cell phone customers is nothing but crap. It is a bi-monthly advertisement for Roger plans and products, that's all nothing more. It took them 4 months to send me my first issue because they wanted to make sure I would be "locked" in their "loyal" customer plan...

I know what you mean. Rogers purposely understaff their call centres so you can't get through when you phone. And when you do finally get someone, they haven't had sufficient training to sort things out. Which works fine for Rogers - basically if they screw up, you still have to pay because there's no one to correct it. And if you don't pay, they send your account to a collection agency and trash your credit rating.
It's ironic that Virgin Mobile win awards for their customer service.

This makes me nervous as I am headed into a Rogers location at Customer Service instruction to get an upgrade they say I am eligible for due to the age of my phone and the fact that it's broken and no longer will charge at all. Will I get bamboozled and will they try to mak eme buy a iPhone for $500 or will they just fix my phone and let me go on my way. I don't want a fancy whistles phone, I want to make CALLS on it. I have an iPod for everything else.

Something very similarly happened to my fiancee and I like it did with Alex.

We got our first cell phones together in January 2005. They had a deal where getting a second phone was free with you got into a 3 year plan. So effectively we got two phones for $30 with a service plan that was to cost $50 a month all together. Didn't seem unreasonable at all, and felt like a good deal.

They were supposed to have unlimited weekends and evenings, unlimited calling between the two phones, both having call display and voice mail along with 120 minutes a week shared daytime usage.

In short order we found out they didn't have 911 access enabled, which carried a $15 surcharge each. The first bill hit us soon after which came to about $240 for reasons that didn't make sense. Our first regular bill came to about $60 which didn't bother us, so all seemed well. The second though was at $120, which we immediately phoned in and asked why. According to the rude rep, we went over our minutes usage. This boggled our minds since apparently we had unlimited calling time between the phones and had only used them that month to call each other.

Well, supposedly adding on the 911 "feature" defaulted us to a 'standard' plan without that even being remotely explained to us. So the $100+ bills followed the next couple of months until we called in to see if it could be rectified. My fiancee spoke to a rep and explained what was going on and what was promised, what we wanted, and all was supposed good with us getting our $50 a month bill like promised. Except it came with 120 minutes a month period on both phones combined, no voice mail, no call display and unlimited weekend evenings only between the phones. None of this we were told about mind you, just that our problem was fixed.

To make matters worse both phones broke within the year. The LCD on my inexplicably cracked while I was looking at it, and her's lost all ability to make use of any battery put in it. Repairing them would have cost between $150-250 so we just said screw it. We phoned them up asking how to cancel out of the plan and were given the run around by numerous reps until finally being told what we had to do.

Yet, seemingly to wringe every last penny from us, Rogers said we could only cancel on the 16th of the month (February '06). Our bill for the next month was due on the 14th, and we asked if we had to pay it since we were canceling their service anyways and were told no. Lo and behold, we got a $120 surcharge because of "late payment" somehow. Suffice to say $560 later we were free of their crap. Have never used Rogers since and don't plan to.

Their sales people lie, their contracts are draconian and outright insipid, their customer service is horrid and the products do not hold the value for the money they want.