Rogers Wireless business ethics.

The (common-law) wife and I went into the Rogers store because she was going to get a new pay-as-you-go phone and give me her old one so we could stay in touch when I went on break at work, since I work long and akward hours and we don't get to spend a whole lot of time together.

Immediately the sales representitive aggressively steered her away from pay-as-you-go and would not listen to us when we tried to move the conversation back towards the topic. Naturally they ran a credit check on her and becuase she doesn't have a credit file she was informed that she could get a phone and a 3 year plan if she left a 200 dollar deposit. Our reserves were already drained from Christmas shopping at that point so I was unfond of locking 200 dollars away for 6 months especially since it would be hell and high-water to get that money back in the form of cash in the future.

Foolishly, knowing I would at the very least have 'any-credit' since I had recently started a lease on a new car I gave them my social insurance number to run. I was approved for 3 phones, no credit limit and no deposit. So I figured merry early Christmas to us and we picked out a couple of nice little phones to include on the plans (because I hate malls and just wanted to get out of there.) and we walked out of there spending only a little more on the phones as we would have on the pay-as-you-go phone she wanted. We were assured by the sales rep that it would be a lot cheaper than pay-as-you-go.

Early after we got home we were playing around on the phones and I suggested as a safety net to put an internet plan on the phones (for 5 dollars a month). Immediately I was concerned because the plans were ludicrous, and she got the '8 gig' sony music phone. The plan was 5 dollars for 5 megabytes and 3 cents a kilobyte after that. Being computer literate I knew that meant it could cost 3 cents per ping, and at high quality $150 for an mp3 supplied by a third party website. But I figured no biggie because most mp3s on the mobile web were sample quality anyways.

I also figured like most businesses your services would get cut off for excessive usage to avoid 4 digit bills that would likely end up in collections.

Ofcousre it didn't tell us on the page that linked us to select the 5 megabyte plan that it wouldn't take effect until the next billing cycle. In a world of right-here-right-now technologies I was ready to believe we were already safe. Fortunately the remainder of our first billing cycle was only 3 days long because when we got the bill for the first 3 days a 3 digit dollar ammount of 560 stared me in the eyes with a playful little note underneath saying "you saved 13 dollars this month!". The wife had transfered 9 megabytes and myself 3 megabytes respectively. Also ofcourse the plans hadn't yet taken effect( even though we were billed from them plus a fraction).

Having been in collections in my past I decided to pay it off as soon as possible in one shot. So I figured our bad and I payed it off, which ofcourse crippled us financially for a little while but I figured in a months time we would be back on our feet again.

The next bill arrived a month later and the situation had gotten dire. After we got the first bill we vowed not to use the wireless web anymore and our bill showed that exact moment when data usage plumeted to almost nothing. But the damage was done, the phone bill was nearly 1,100 dollars. Most of the charges wracked up by the wife (I assured her I still love her) although somehow my phone which has about 2 megabytes of free space transfered a total of 9 megabytes of data, likely pinging while idling on the mobile messenger application included. So I'm slowly working on paying it off so that we don't end up starving or defaulting on any other payments. We were already late on a payment to them and wracked up a 22 dollar late charge and interest in the delinquent ammount because our financial capability was crushed by the first bill. That first bill plus the payment I made is already equal to the value of 36 months of our plan fee(for both phones) (we signed onto the 10 dollar mega promotional plan).

Unfortunately I am an honest person and will end up paying it off without question or challenge. Hopefully bi-weekly 3 digit payments will keep them from getting fed up and putting me into collections.

What floors me is that they put somebody with bad credit (My credit file was open and I must have been put onto collections by then, which once again I payed off as soon as they caught up to me in one lump sum of 440 dollars) onto a contract with unlimited open credit and didn't contact them when their bill was beginning to get outrageous. Moreover the majority of the charges were being wracked up by a phone with a name other than the plan holders name attached to it (different last name) and that somehow didn't raise any alarm bells.

In hindsight it SEEMS as though they are preying on younger people with less than perfect credit, people who are likely to use mobile web browsing and who are likely to pay off the exorbitant phone bill that ensues in order to protect their credit. 47 megabytes for nearly 1700 dollars. For 1700 dollars in most 3rd world countries you would be able to transfer dozens of gigabytes.

Suffice it to say I will not be renewing with them after this 36 months is over. The wife's family is all sworn by rogers but I think they might change their minds now.

Sorry for the rant I just want my story to be known. I BELIEVE Rogers to have poor ethics in their practise and is not worth your money.

-Didn't let us consider pay as you go in the store.

-Exhorbitant internet costs.

-Didn't inform me that excessive charges were being incurred by phone in name other than plan holder.

-Handsets sold do not track internet data usage so I couldn't have known until the bill arrived.