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Twitter roars over Rogers Internet outage in Toronto
Last night wasn't a good night for Rogers home and cellular customers: a major outage affecting much of Southern Ontario and possibly parts of New Brunswick cut home and mobile Internet services to cellphones and computers. In the age of ubiquitous connectivity, that's a big problem.
This morning, the company confirmed it had restored service to its customers but not before hoards of disgruntled Twitter users had a chance to unleash their collective fury on the microblogging site (presumably after finding another way of getting online.) No reason was given for the prolonged issues.
Much of the rage stemmed from the lack of information from the company, possibly because it was having problems getting online itself. Messages on Twitter and Facebook explaining that customers should stop dialing its tech support lines were unlikely to have been seen by those endlessly rebooting their computers in search of a solution.
Here's the best of the #rogers and #rogersfail hashtags from what remained of the Internet last night.
Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.
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My phone data plan is pay as you go, though, so I get annoyed when I have to use it.
But it wasn't just socializing that was affected. Because I work in the cloud, I now have hours of lost work to catch up on.
But I think the somewhat over-the-top reaction by a lot of people would indicate that many of us could use a small dose of perspective. Temporary disruptions in utilities are a fact of life, even in countries like Canada - where they are remarkably rare compared to other parts of the world. But when the lights go out, people don't go crazy on Twitter.
I spent the first 17 years of my life without even knowing what the internet was, and we got by just fine. I have a hard time believing that the 3 hours it was down last night had a lasting impact on anyone.
I'm not a huge fan of the "first world problems" meme, but it was tailor-made for the hysterical reaction by some to a pretty insignificant event.
Oh yah and they have never once in 2 years tried to pull one over my head with hidden fees. Wish I Had discovered this company earlier.
It's like voting Rob Ford and complaining about transit. You do this to yourselves.
PR lose: just apologize
take a wild guess which one they'll pick
They might even be forced to read a book--well, until the battery dies on their iPad that is. Pathetic.
Unless the terms or service includes a clause giving a refund every time something stops working (which you must admit happens very rarely) then it just proves these babies are attached to their tech like an umbilical cord. The normal people just did something else.
I don't have Rogers for my internet access or cell phone only for cable. Well my cable went out last night while everyone else's internet and cell service was out. Well it took me over 5 hours to get through to someone on the cable side and the only apology I got was, sorry we were busy.
If you pay for premium service you expect it. If you don't get it then your only ammunition is to take your business elsewhere, but this is a company that locks you into contracts so they will charge you to take your business elsewhere. You get one shot once every year or two to walk away.
The biggest problem is that most consumers don't know just how bad the technology we have is compared to other providers outside of Ont or Canada. Do your research don't buy into Rogers messages.
This is also a company that refuses to respond to customers. Their twitter feeds, facebook feeds were black last night while all of this was going on, in fact their Twitter feeds were selling products instead of responding to thousands of customers messages.
This is what a premium communications company is suppose to be?
Like anything until people take their business elsewhere and force the CRTC to make changes we will be stuck with this. Let the CRTC know how you feel.
Rogers does NOT guarantee ANYBODY 100% uptime or a 10 min. RTO. READ A FRIGGING BOOK!
I'm no fan of Rogers, but according to their website they offer download speeds far in excess of anything Teksavvy has available. Of course you pay more for the higher tier packages, but Rogers' maximum download speed is 250 Mbps while Teksavvy's is 28 Mbps.
If you compare packages with similar download/upload speeds, the price difference isn't that much, not to mention that Rogers' rates are discounted if you use more than one service. Again, I'm not saying they're a great company, but they do offer things that smaller companies like Teksavvy don't. If I'm misreading their website or missing something, please clue me in.
And to the people complaining about those who are upset over yesterday's internet outage, you sound like old people who endlessly complain that things were better in their day. The internet is part of our daily life now, accept it or live in the past. Reading the comments, it's amazing the assumptions people are making about others' internet use (people they've never met), as if people use the internet only for reading Charlie Sheen's latest tweet or whatever. Sorry, but the internet is a vital part of our society now just like phone service was in the past century, and so it's understandable that people are upset when it goes down.
On a side note, if Rogers didn't have so many other problems this would not bother me so much. It's a culmination of a company that continues to make money off the customers it cares nothing about.
If you must be online in order to earn a living, you should have a backup connection. If you can't do that, then go to an internet cafe or a library. Not Roger's fault.
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
I experienced no blackouts, my friends on the same network did though. I switched their DNS to those, and they were back online.
B) Our internet is always turning off randomly anyway. Rogers' has replaced things a few times but it keeps happening. I don't know technology. All I know is that I have to unplug and plug stuff back in all the time to make the internet work. So last night, I naturally thought that that was the problem and kept on unplugging and plugging cables back in, not knowing that this was a DIFFERENT issue! If I had known, yeah I would have taken a nap/read a book/ etc. But I thought it was our recurring issue which was annoying and made me hate Rogers more.
Overall yeah, big deal….. I'm actually shocked that people were tweeting and stuff about it. It's just annoying because Rogers is such a crappy company. Hello Tecksavvy??……...
If you compare packages with similar download/upload speeds, the price difference isn't that much, not to mention that Rogers' rates are discounted if you use more than one service."
This may be true, but the average person needs no where near 250Mbps download speeds and it costs $225.
for the more reasonable packages Rogers offers 6Mbps and 20Gig cap ($38) for slightly less Teksavvy offers 14Mbps and 300Gig cap ($37).
The real issue for me is, what can you do with a 20Gig cap. I watch all my TV online and streaming from Netflix is about 1 to 2 Gigs per hour, so that could be as little as 10 hours a month and that's not including doing anything else on the internet.
Also, on that package of Rogers it's $4 for each additional Gig. That could add up rather quickly
They constantly rape customers and bleed them for every cent they can get so that they can waste it on Sky Domes, sports teams, etc. (i.e., toys and high pay-checks for the execs). To be blunt, I am glad Ted Rogers died and hope the other execs die too.
If there were an alternative where I live, I would dump Rogers faster than a 50¢ syphilitic hooker. Everybody who has a choice should leave them immediately.