Swift Celcius

A month or so ago my fiance and I received a rather high Rogers Internet bill. Allegedly, we had passed our bandwidth limit and were hit with numerous penalties, not to mention the cost of the bill itself. Now, normally a regular Rogers bill is between $80 and $115, where as the bill in question was for $299! WOW! I will be candid and tell you now I do not keep track of my accounts and have been trusting my lovely wife to be to handle these things for some time. She had passingly mention that we had a high bill and would likely receive another the following month. The second bill was $315, making a total of $614 for two months of internet! Crazy eh?! So, after the two months that it took me to finally realize the magnitude of how much we are supposed to pay to Rogers, and I made a telephone call to their customer service. The first representative was nice enough I suppose, but had little power to resolve my issue. Not only that, but has no ability to send me a report or any paper 'proof' showing me where these charges came from. She actually suggested to an irate customer that I go to Rogers.ca and print out, using my paper and my ink the potential information that would prove my guilt. And this is where our adventure begins.

So as I am waiting on hold, I am entertained by the twenty second loop of what seems to be an 80s sitcom commercial break wind down song. Great! Waiting, waiting, waiting... Damn I need to change phones, this one's battery is dead. Waiting, waiting, waiting... Ok finally, and only after 40 minutes of delightful looped hold music. Now the fun really starts. "Rogette" the escalation department representative goes straight into attack mode. Accusing me of having downloaded too much. "I don't download." I responded. She thought maybe I had been hacked and asked me by BRAND if I was using any Norton Anti-Virus programs. "Hacked, I'll have you know that I have so much privacy software on my CPU that the CIA can't get into many of my files." (Truecrypt) So after her initial offensive, I went on mine explaining that it is quite rude to interrupt and make accusations without proper information. Now we negotiate! Since I had already paid the first big bill of $299 I gave Rogers an out by offering them this: A) accept the $299 already paid B) waive the $315 C) change the account back from unlimited to regular. D) continue to do business. She put me on hold to make the offer to her supervisor and countered with: 12 months of unlimited at a $24.95 discount. What?! Really?! How about NO. She then told me she can not add any more discounts and would need to create and escalation to management work order, where a manager would respond to my grievance by telephone with-in 72 hours.

I will mention that "Rogette" called me back to try and forward my call to a manager at the 62 hour mark, only to have that manager disconnect the call. And that is where we are, at the 63 hour mark as I write this. It appears to me that Rogers Telecommunication is artificially inflating customer internet usage as to pressure them to a more expensive unlimited plan. This stinks of corporate collusion and general bad business, and I do wonder if anyone would call me if I went over $10,000 worth of bandwidth. I mean Rogers only has one responsibility and that is to the share holders, and rightfully so. But, maybe we TAXPAYERS should remind Rogers who laid the fiber-optic cables they use to transfer their stupid little internet codes through. Rogers, prepare for a roasting. KK