Tech
Rogers: Now with More Bullshit (and Baseball)
On Monday I got mail from Rogers that made me curse, and on Friday I got mail from Rogers that made me (for a microsecond) think they're not so bad after all. Only a monopolistic telecommunications company that owns you (and a sports stadium) could possibly pull this off.
So what do I have to whine about and cheer about? Paying more when exceeding bandwidth caps and free tickets for baseball games, apparently.
The bullshit:
I'm assuming this applies to all Rogers internet subscribers. In a letter sent my way this week (and as part of the ongoing saga of the big Canadian internet service providers essentially milking the masses in any way they can), Rogers revealed that they are soon going to be implementing "upcoming changes to help them meet our online needs". The long story short - if you exceed the bandwidth transfer cap for your service level (the cap varies from 2Gb to 95Gb depending on your package) come June, you "can pay for additional usage on a monthly basis". Wait a second, Rogers. I "can" pay? That's a really nice way of making this change look like a customer-empowering, positive change. What you meant to say is "if you exceed 60Gb monthly, you'll HAVE to pay us more."
It's a good thing I'm not video-download-happy and nowhere near my limit. Some of my friends, however, are not happy campers. Congrats on coming up with another creative way to milk more money from us, Rogers.
The baseball:
Did anyone else out there also get a voucher for free tickets to the Jays? Rogers values me as a customer, so much so that they want me to enjoy a baseball game on them. The seats aren't bad, and the selection of games is decent. Were I an avid baseball fan I might actually be excited about this.
More importantly though, is the timing. Is this free Jays game supposed to detract my attention from the fact that in addition to sucking about $250 from me monthly (for mobile, net, landline, and television combined) they'll also penalize me further if I download more than my service package includes?
Nice try, but the smell of the bullshit is sure to linger well beyond 9 innings.
UPDATE: Reader "David Toronto" has made the wonderful suggestion that we pool our free ticket letters and vouchers and donate them to a local children's charity (organization TBD). If you've received the free ticket offer and would be willing to donate your pair for such a charity concept, please express your willingness in a comment below (and use a valid email address so I can contact you). Thanks!
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having said that, now that rogers is moving away from so called umlimited usage to multi-tired bandwidth caps, they should stop their practice of throttling torrents. will they do that? don't know.
bell has been beaten up lately for their practice of throttling torrents, deservedly so. but rogers has been guilty as well.
I understand why Rogers is doing this. I do not feel that a few select users should be allowed to consume 100% of their alloted bandwidth 24/7. I realize it's an unlimited plan, but when bandwidth usage is beyond reasonable, I feel Rogers has the right to step in. It's unfortunate that "regular" users have to now worry about a bandwidth cap.
This year, I have another frustration. I'm being double billed for Digital Services yet I have only one set-top box in use. The previous set-top is in the hall closet. Somehow they decided that I should pay twice because there are two on my record even though one is inactive and they know full well it is.
Every month, I go through the same routine getting the extra 2.99 removed from my bill which takes up a lot of their time. Try as they might, they can't get the problem fixed.
This is costing them more in clerical wages than the amount in duspute. Talk about throwing good money after bad!
It seems to me that Rogers cares more about the shareholders than the subscribers and profit is more important than value for money for the subscribers.
John Tory was once an officer with Rogers--among others.
Even he couldn't do things right when he was at Rogers.
We'll not talk about this CFL days.
If I get tickets this year, maybe I'll give them away or maybe blogTO readers could pool all their tickets and give them to the Scott Mission or Good Neighbours' Club.
Would it be possible to do that?
Ridiculous.
I like your ticket pool for charity idea, but I'm unsure that it's possible. On the letter sent by Rogers, it says "It's simple; just present your voucher at Rogers Centre... and you'll receive two free tickets..." but on the voucher, it says "Letter must be surrendered with tickets."
The letter is addressed to a specific person, so if the Jays/Rogers insist that only the specified customer can pick up the tickets, your idea is busted.
But if we collected a bunch of letters and vouchers and went down to get tickets for a large group for charity, and they turned us away, that would be truly evil.
I say we go for it.
They claim that with 60Gb of transfer, one can play games online for 2040 hours in a given month. Anyone else see why that's not possible?
Come to think about it, they haven't phoned my cell in a few days to let me know about the home phone service either. Maybe they've finally gotten the hint.
But i did sign up 10 years ago when it was
"unlimited speed, unlimited usage"..
lol, BUT.. as far as a cap goes..
it ain't ~that~ bad of a cap is it ?
in my craziest downloading month of the last 6,
I reached 48 gigs (and that is an abnormality for me)
Like, it could have been worse,
could have been 50gigs or 40..
Though I do strongly agree,
if were on a DL cap, then the speed cap must go.
lol.. its better for us, and its better for rogers too ! :P
(cause then were more likely to be "tricked" in to going
over our DL cap and having to pay them more money.)
where's anonymous when you need them.
Those ideas are all terrible, IMO. We need less control and more freedom of information. Pay per Kb?! I can only iamgine how unfairly that would be priced.
see this quote from the globe:
He [Phil Hartling, vice-president of consumer services for Rogers Cable] said the new service fees are similar to those of other ISPs ... Mr. Hartling said Rogers's plans will not change the company's policies regarding traffic management.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080327.broadband28/BNStory/Technology/home
if rogers ask high usage users to pay more, then why still restrict usage on a specific type of traffic (ie encrypted)? this is like the worst of both worlds.
heavy torrent users need an option so that they won't so-called 'ruined the experience for others'. rogers doens't provide such option. nor does bell. nor do bell's resellers. who else is there??
You should look into that further (and let us know why there's a discrepancy). It may be that you're on some sort of special limited time introductory package that gives you more bandwidth transfer limit. It may be that after a few months it'll return to 2Gb and then "you can pay" $5 per Gb when you go over your cap.
"Ultra Lite and Lite customers who signed up prior to January 14, 2008 have a usage allowance of 60 GB."
I figured it out by reading <a href="http://www.hispeed.rogers.com/bband/content/keepingpace/howbigisagig.html";>the fine print here</a>.
I actually think Mark Dowling's idea is a good one. But the price would probably have to be regulated, given the lack on competition in Canada. The idea being that if ISP's charge per KB, they would have no justification for throttling and filtering.
However, a better idea might be for the CRTC to get off their asses and require that the bandwidth purchased by resellers (such as TekSavvy) be completely unfiltered and unthrottled. Also, I'm not sure why I haven't seen any Rogers resellers, but they should be required to participate in that as well. This country needs competition so badly in the telecommunications space.
If regulated it could work, but unregulated it would be a complete disaster under the current monopolistic arrangement.
Rogers has sold me a service and allotted me, and each of you who subscribe to their Internet service, a maximum data rate. If their infrastructure cannot handle customers utilizing what they've sold, shouldn't it be on their shoulders to provide this? They need to increase their capacity rather than punishing customers who are simply using what they've been given. An example of this is their throttling of torrents. If you can't provide what you've sold, decrease your offering or improve your network.
The bandwidth cap is very old news though, but it looks as though they've actually raised the caps. Extreme Plus was actually capped at the same amount as Express when it was introduced if I remember correctly.
As I said, I consider myself a high usage customer, but these caps don't bother me. Just a fact of life really, and it's never been "unlimited". I use a program called DU Meter to keep track of my usage which works exceptionally well. Allows you to generate daily/weekly/monthly reports, setup alarms to notify you when you're getting close to a certain amount (so you can avoid overages), etc.
Not to mention that Rogers used to be so awful in so many other respects (and for all I know still could be) that it would take some major ravings by Rogers users for me to ever consider using them as a provider.
And you're entitled to. I really hate it when they first grant you "unlimited" usage, and then try to enforce some ideas of what's "reasonable" from their point of view. With an unlimited package, you should be able to use all of your bandwidth 24/7. Otherwise don't bloody call it unlimited.
The only way I see this as being bad is if you spend a lot of time on the road and perhaps have a .mac account. With .mac, you can access your home computer form on the road very easily and transfer files. Obviously, .mac isn't the only way of doing this, it's just the one I know. But my point is, that can pump up your transfer rates.
http://www.rogersmustdie.blogspot.com/
All too true. When I was working at Rogers -- and Tory was campaigning for one of his failed political bids (as mayor of TO in 2003) -- all employees were harassed by phone messages that went directly to our in-box. These messages stated, "Come meet John Tory in Roger's cafeteria!" Wooo! Other than being wildly inappropriate, I contacted higher-ups to NOT have these messages sent to my phone. They said there was nothing they could do. I wish I'd saved some of these messages: they made it sound like meeting Tory was akin to having a private audience with Pope JohnPaul II.
I know I'm off-point here with regard to Rogers, bandwidth and fees, but they are just soooooo irritating on so many levels, including customer service, billing, and hidden fees (what the hell is "system access," anyway?)
http://thedailynar.blogspot.com/2006/02/happy-geek-time-corner-rogers-and.html
Glad to see nothing has changed. I now pay almost $70/month for basic cable. I hate Rogers with a passion. "We're changin our rates to serve ourselves better".
As for paying extra for going over? Always been the case as well. And here's the kicker, I've gone over my limit twice, once by 10 (TEN!) gigs, and Rogers NEVER charged me a cent. They charge on a per violation basis meaning if you go over frequently (or obscenely) then they'll ding you. Having gone ten gigs over and not paid an extra cent, I gotta say I'm pretty happy with their LAX enforcement.
I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here dude.
Your argument already ate its own tail, dude. The change is official. When you go over your cap next time, you WILL pay additional charges. You no longer have to be going over frequently for them to justify charging you or anyone else. See?
Is your wireless network protected with a fresh WEP/WPA password? If your usage is 2x your expectations perhaps others are tapping in?
Also, this isn't going to speed things up. The heavy users are still going to use and consume bandwidth and slow down traffic flow; they are just going to pay Rogers more money for the right to do so.
Why is net usage any different than say cable usage? When I pay for cable I do so knowing that I don't have any limitations placed upon me as far as worrying about having to pay a surcharge if I decide to use too much cable bandwidth that month. So why should I have to worry about using extra net bandwidth?
Kids Up Front Toronto would love those tickets. Ironically, they are currently organizing a group outing to the Blue Jays as a fundraiser.
"Across Canada, Kids Up Front creates fun and new experiences for kids, by forwarding your unused tickets. If you Can't Use Your Tickets, donate them to us and we'll make sure they reach the thousands of kids who could really benefit from them. Together, we're helping to heal, bond and unite."
http://www.kidsupfront.com/TO-about.htm
I use a good chunk of my allotted 60gigs a month...BUT and here is is, why should I get charged gigs that I have not used? Why can't these gigs go in a bank...I mean I have paid for the gigs. I am sure many cell phone users feel the same frustration with monthly minutes they don't use one month, but the next month when they go over, there are the extra charges.
This is simply ridiculous they we the consumer are paying for things we may not be receiving.
I really have no solution to this problem...I just needed to vent.
This cap is NOT to improve service, speed, customer service (which blows on a good day) or anything else...This cap is to put money in the pockets of Rogers company.
BTW - The ticket idea is great!
You may not pay for the amount of tv you watch, but if you buy a cable plan and only really watch 2 of the 5 extra channels you pay for, you never got any money back.
Buy two sandwiches but only eat one? You ain't getting your money back. Same for all you can eat, pay 20$ and only eat a small salad? Your own loss.
Got a 2gb monthly webhosting plan, but only use 5 megs?
I think you might see my point. This is nothing new and if you go over 60gb, well, pay for extra. If you don't hit 60gb then get a smaller plan. It's not like there aren't any options out there people.
100 % is right
I was Rogers?s customer 5 or 6 years, only due to I could not find alternative. I heat this company so much. I am ready to pay 100 CAD now for person who tell me when this monopolist monster will die. And I will be happy to watch this.
As of late, new game patches are weighing over 1GB and subsequents can be equal or greater. In order to legally own several copies of Half-life 2 (example) each computer must download (or buy) additional licensed copies. Then add the gigabytes of updates on top of that. Some digital download games (i.e. Direct2Drive) are getting close to 10GB mark. Has this become illegal? Is that called complaining because I'm paying for services, to which I have a right to download the content for? Is is not unusual to own 10 or more PC games?
You know you can legally purchase and download Windows Vista from Microsoft, right? That's ~ 2GB. Let's not forget all the additional patches needed to keep your computer safe. Because if you don't. Rogers will tag you, saying your network has a virus. How about virus, spyware, ad-ware scanners? They take bandwidth too.
Port throttling is not only on torrent connections. It is on all encrypted ports. That would include banking, pay pal, and anything requiring a secure connection. This is basically a violation of your rights as a consumer. As the law in Ontario clearly states that the terms of service must not be grossly in favour of the seller. In which, Rogers are clearly in violation of.
I'm already paying a grossly disproportionate fee of $60/month for a 10Mb connection with a 95GB cap. In the U.K. a typical 24Mb connection costs roughly $36/month (CAD) with a 500GB cap. You want to accuse Canadians along with Hollywood for downloading movies? Let's see. 300 million U.S. citizens compared to 30 million Canadian citizens. What are the odds? Do you know where the bulk of these movies come from? Hollywood executives, that's right, the lions den itself.
Music downloading? Oh really? Funny that the CRIA quietly released their own findings, showing that the majority of the 'downloaders' are in fact their customers. I'm so sick of hearing this b.s. from people about Canadians downloading. Our government was lobbied by Hollywood to pass a U.S. style law in Canada within six months. All of which were based on pure lies.
Sorry, but I have every right to complain!
http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/tor/schedule/home_schedule.jsp
everyone is angry however no one gave a solution...
any ideas ?
To those suggesting that large "legit" files can be downloaded and bit torrent is also for legitimate reasons, I say, "that's true". Rolling papers can be used for tobacco too.
http://www.get3web.com/highspeed/highspeedMenu.jsp?page=hsindex
if you sign up you can find that they prepared a field for rogers users :)
Afterall, when I first switched from Rogers to Bell back in 1998, torrents (and even Napster) were not issues, and yet my service would drop out for days at at time. I ended up switching back to Rogers from Bell in 2000 when Bell's service would drop out for random hours. Somtimes, its just a penny-pinching greedy company trying to get the most revenue with the least expenses, even if that involves meeting current-day requirements of it's customers.
Also downgrade all those little features that pad your Roger's bill. For Roger's Home Phone, the default is 2 features. Downgrade to 1 or zero features and save $4-7/month. If you have a Roger's wireless, cancel voicemail and call display. Use calling cards or skype for long distance. Start texting.
Also, when i called to cancel home phone, they offered to drop the system access fee *forever* (it was recently raised). So, if you're thinking about cancelling, they might offer you a sweet deal.
first they were throttling, now they want people to download as much as possible since you'll be paying per gig over their 60gb limit.
Now, rather than privileging time-sensitive traffic, it seems that ISPs like to stomp on torrents. Easier to do, I guess, and it certainly favours the light users who happily pay for capacity that they don't consume. But even heavy torrent users would probably prioritize a DNS lookup over a peer-to-peer packet, because when you click a link in your Web browser you do like it to actually respond.
As for the outrage that some people are expressing over having any limits ever, by analogy with television: the Internet works differently. If you and I are downloading the same file, whether that's a movie or a Web page, we each get a copy. The server serves two copies, and the network flings two complete sets of packets (with the rare exception of IP multicast, a special case that wouldn't apply to you without your knowledge). That's why popular Web pages are slow to load. This is also why ISPs were rolling out Web proxies back in the late 90s (much to the annoyance of users when they turned out not to work as "transparently" as advertised). And just like then, surprise: the ISPs would be out of business if they actually had the capacity for everyone to be going full speed all the time. Infrastructure costs money just sitting around, and even the phone company doesn't have the equipment to support everyone talking on the phone at once, though there are no caps on local calls mentioned in their literature or on your bill. Dialup ISPs certainly never had the same number of modems and phone lines as they had users, or you'd have been paying, adjusted for inflation, $100/month for 14.4 kb/s.
This is like a few years ago when I added extra available channels without my television customers knowing. And when they clicked to the channel, I charged their asses for Pay Per View!!!
Sure, I got my ass handed in court, but I still earned a good buck!
I don't care about Voice IP. That's not technology progressing! It's my business getting eaten by competition.
I will keep technology from advancing, and will be the richest man in the world!!!
This is just pure greed and you don't have to take it. I'm using a small company called ACANAC that has no cap and is much cheeper than ROGERS. There are many like it.
I suggest a rather more effective way of dealing with this problem of capping (if it is a problem for you).
Call up Rogers Customer Relations (not the customer service, as they can't do jack all for you) - 1-888-936-7283, and tell them you're considering switching over to 3Web (and I'd seriously consider switching to www.get3web.com as they're Rogers resellers anyway but without all the b.s. limits and at half the cost of Rogers service!), and ask the agent on the phone to try and give you a price match. They can give you 20% savings right off the bat, but if you're nice you might get some more discounts. How I got a Lite service at a price of Ultra-Lite, just so I don't feel like I'm back on dial-up? That's how.
You don't like your cell phone bill being so high? Again, call the customer relations and ask them to lower it for you. They will, depending on who you talk, what time of the day, etc. Regular customer service reps still keep wondering how in the world do I have a phone plan that I do at a price I do when I call in for some trivial changes and stuff...
One week later: Got first invoice, said I owe $5.95 for the free month, third page contact said I will be paying $27.95 each month.
Next surprise: I'm a programmer, at work we use terago tower to dish (kind of like the old 'LOOK' network). Ultra fast and reliable. At home I only need Roger's Ulta-Lite, However the new 2008 Visual Studio Help files I need at home can only be downloaded and weigh in at 2 GB.
That's my ultra-lite limit !!! Rogers must die, period!
Slaves to Rogers:
1. Bell in my subburb can only get 256K for highspeed (distance to hub).
2. Tarego only served businesses.
I May have to go to 'dry loop' throgh acanac at 256k but unlimit bandwidth.
Finally, I remember when going to school was up hill both ways. Actually I remember Compuserve at $200 a month on dial-up. Then dial-up prices fell big time. $30-$20-$8.
Is there a conspiracy on high-speed. They first said high-speed was expensive because of optic lines and other crap. (Northern Tel killed that theory).
If high-speed ran on the same model as dial-up's cost history. Utra-high speed should only be about $8 today. What gives?
Well guess what, I don't share squat!!
On my Mac I have 2 programs that use online storage & servers to accomplish data backup or recovery or in iDefrag's instance, defragment my drives.
This cap stuff is bullshit !