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***Early 2000's Review*** Initially, Rogers owned the high speed world. It was everything one could ever imagine. Insane speeds for downloading, uploading, anything....we're talking pretty much uncapped as much as your computer could handle bandwidth....+500k/sec down and the ability to host and play games with insane upload....but all that has gone down the crapper along with now more money each month....it costs more, it's often much slower being capped at 1000/180ish....whats the point now...? Their tech support is often ridiculous and their other customer support/repair often seems like 1 guy a dirty old van and a screwdriver, who may or may not come within the next 6-8 weeks to tell you the modem is broken...how do they break so much? I have never so much as looked at mine in the 3 years I had it and its been replaced because it "broke" 5 times? I don't think so...it's the de facto troubleshoot I guess, a la restart your computer. ****UPDATE March 9 2004***** attn rogers users, i have found the solution to all problems...ready? Complain to tech support like there is no freaking tomorrow. Embellish your crap speeds just a little, or a lot...whatever. I say this because: 3am at night: speeds 1000/100 (the capped value I've been at for a few months now)....begin tech support rage. Next morning: speeds 2000/400--they haven't dropped since. Seems to be the key, they have the bandwidth, they just know that they can shaft 9/10 people and hold back on the bandwidth. ****UPDATE OCT 27 2004***** So this magical Extreme package comes along, what more could we all ask for right? Apparently they don't know how to use these new modems and the network is over congested, etc. Rogers sells their services without having enough network capacity...but they still get their money right? I have $100 paperweight of a Motorola modem on my desk. It wont connect since it wont receive a response and it isn't assigned an IP. Smooth Rogers. When it first stopped working, I called Rogers that day. After 5+ tech visits, and 10+ phone calls they were 'gracious' enough to loan me a Terayon while the new Docsis rollout is fixed with the Motorola (extreme). How nice of them...except the network is over congested at the moment so i get 100/27kbps (that's NOT kB) on a test...whats that, less than 10KB/s or something terrible....$45 well spent!....essentially, no one knows whats going on, after talking to 10+ techies, none could refer me to anyone that knew about how, when, if at all the problem was being worked on, let alone understood. So I'm in week 3 of having my 100$ paperweight. Rogers continues to screw up a good thing. From the Wave, to Shaw, to Rogers, to the Yahoo junk....none of which are improvements..... And finally, the newsgroup change....why....why mess with such a wonderful thing. Now I have nothing good to say about them. I was happy having slow overall internet but still getting 500k/sec off newsgroups...no longer. Conclusion - They don't really care, they get their money, and will maybe fix stuff if enough people complain, as the techs have told me to wait to see if other people complain. - I personally don't recommend Rogers unless you know it's good in your area. ****UPDATE Mar 1 2005***** 60 GB Cap....what? It's ok though since I still can't use my $100 paperweight because my extreme modem won't connect since too many extremies are already online on my node (literally what the tech said). But the good folks at Rogers tell me if I keep unplugging and plugging my modem in hoping that someone else dropped, I might get their spot! Best service ever! Overall: Its good if its good in your area. I wish I was in a good area. And the caps...well, there are no words for that. Ridiculous comes to mind. I am not impressed, especially since I haven't actually received any notice of the cap. So how would I know if i was an average user that used the bandwidth but didn't frequent DSLR or the crappy rogers website FAQ? Magic powers? no, only Ted has magic powers, he makes all our money disappear instead of paying for network upgrades....*poof*. -----UPDATE APRIL 15, 2005----- Well, the other day I attempted to use my Geocities, to transfer a file to someone, but even with my user name and password it wouldn't open the file manager or let me ftp. I could login via IE, but it would just time out when I clicked 'get started now'. I emailed the tech gods, and they wanted me to send them my user name and password for my account, um no. So i said screw it, got me a G-mail account. Anyways, 5 days later, I get some auto response from civics@geocities, apparently my account is now active and ready to go! Right, nice turn around on a free service which i already be signed up for, apparently I had to activate it by attempting a login? People whine how Rogers users shouldn't complain about an 'extra service', well we used to have this extra service and it was much better! 10mb, no apparent limits?, and no GeoCrappies. But then Yahoo happened, so wheres my price drop? Only in my dreams. My connection is a sentient life form, it chooses to be on when it wants to be, and when it's happy, it goes fast, other times it is unhappy, and chooses to hit 300ms off the first node. That's still good right? It's ok, Rogers doesn't guarantee ping times so why would they care. Shaw upgrades! Well that'd be nice for Rogers. I wish i understood the corporate workings, how does Shaw upgrade and others not? Cogeco and Rogers, I guess we're all different. Maybe they have a good connection in Shaw areas still? I'd like to say that, and agree with some others, I don't need 7Mbps damn it, I'm capped already, I could damn well use the upload though, maybe a guaranteed .5mbit, and max 1mbit? I'd take a 5/1 any day, and not an 'up to' 5/1. Finally, the Rogers EULA, this has been the topic of discussion especially the caps. On one side, you have hard asses saying, if you didn't agree don't sign up for the EULA. No one reads that uber document. When I complain that my advertised 5mbit is only going 1.5 and they say well it is 'up to', well when I go and buy a Porsche and it should go up to what 300km/hr (i don't know), and if the engine is limited to 150, I'm going to be upset as I paid for the top speed. Don't advertise something you cant give. Give me a range or something. There's too much leeway for Rogers to jerk us around in. I invite any competition into Ontario, if you are better then we will switch to you! I want Wave back. **Update NOV. 2005** I canceled Rogers and switched to Sympatico in Waterloo. I get constant 3mbit/.8mbit connection and have never had any downtime. What can i say, if you're on a good node for Rogers you're on a good node. Otherwise, don't ever expect things to improve. For anyone who is new to Rogers, if you experience slowness or downtime consistently, you should probably get out, they aren't going to fix it, as my issue was brought up over a year ago when they acknowledged the node was overloaded, after a large run-around. Sympatico may be slower than extreme, but i don't see any slowdowns during peak hours, and although there were a couple early billing issues, they fixed it in 2 seconds, no questions asked. And don't get me started on the newsgroups, they already raped those back in April or whatever when they capped it to 60k/sec. I don't even use them since i bought a 3rd party service...for anyone looking around, try Newshosting. This is one customer they've lost. Nicely done, I only gave them a year to fix it. **Update June 2007** Prices are becoming out of reach for the average user. Personally, I don't understand the price hikes. Yes, we're slowly seeing more speeds, but we're owed it. Services are supposed to improve with the times. I recall standard $30 a month price ranges. Now we're over $50 a month for the more standard high speed. And that's not even mentioning these ridiculous 'portable' solutions at $100 plus. I no longer have Rogers wherever I live. I move somewhere new every 4 months the way my school / co-op is setup and I always install Sympatico. So how I am justified in rating Rogers you say? Well, my parents still have it at home. Anyways, I (they) happen to be on a congestion free node in their London home. It's around 8/1 now, which is nice. But has increased about $20/month over the past few years. Yet, the package is still considered the same package. The most frustrating thing ever, which is why I'll continue to denounce and poorly rate Rogers are their poor customer tactics. If anyone is familiar with the origins of the Extreme package, you would recall that you could purchase the extreme modem ($100), and receive the Extreme tier for the same price as Express. At the time, I believe Extreme was 5/800, and Express was 3/384. So it made sense to avoid the modem rental if you were going to go with Extreme for the long haul. Well that’s all gone, and now extreme costs more anyway, regardless if you purchased the modem. Essentially, I was ripped off for $100!!! I bet someone in marketing got a fat bonus out of that. Long story short, after dealing with both Rogers and Sympatico, I choose Sympatico first having been given the run around too many times from Rogers. If given a choice of a reliable 3rd party, give them a shot. It's up to the customers to show them that we're not happy. ***Update Mar. 2008*** My current living situation uses Rogers for internets. We're on the extreme profile, though you would hardly know it during normal usage hours. From about 3pm to 2am downloads grind to around 100kB, even normal browsing seems slow. Anyone who would suggest that I may simply be on an overloaded node, which may also be the case, at 2am or so, wham, I'm downloading at ADVERTISED SPEEDS - 1.1mB/sec. That would be Rogers handywork in their severe throttling of ALL traffic. I use newsgroups so, I barely touch the upload spectrum, yet nonetheless it gets throttled. My living situation in the summer will be at another residence with Rogers, which I have already lived and it is the same if not worse of a situation. It resides in a neighbourhood not far from a university campus. You guessed it, overloaded nodes, on top of the throttling. No need to explain that one. My repeated beef is with the severe price increases that seem to be relentless. We're up to around $55/month for extreme service. That which I purchased the modem myself I might add so that I could enjoy this tier of speed without paying more. Nice scam Rogers. What happened to $30/month? Should our services not be increasing with time since as years pass technology improves? Why should the cost increase as well? Inflation doesn't quite account for all the price increases! The ISPs of the day have too long lived on a network that people were underutilizing. They overloaded nodes knowing that most users barely touched their advertised speeds. But with todays changing times with internet video (Youtube, etc) and P2P (legit et. al) and other streaming services, all of a sudden the goldmine is costing a little more to operate than what it used to. It's a business, change with the times or get left behind. I'm sure the goldmine was good while it lasted, but if you don't get ahead of the internet it will bury you. All I can say is look to Verizon (Fios) or Videotron (Docsis 3.0). Get with the times or they'll leave you behind. The cashcow you've had should be used to build the next generation of networks. One that provides this country with a next gen network. The profits will come. Finally, net neutrality. Learn it, embrace it. ***May 2009 Update*** While my own personal Rogers account has nothing to be commented on at this point, I will comment on an account I setup for a friend and the billing issues related. Went into a Rogers Plus store (Rogers Video) because of a 3 month free promo + free modem (after rebate) deal. The promo was "Grab and Go" in that you bought the modem at the store, went home and fired it up and they set a few things up at the store before you left and voila, internets. Seemed good as the friend I was helping was moving into a new apartment. The first store we went to explained how it all worked. At this time, it was one week prior to the move in date. I thought it best to go early because I've had install times of roughly 1 week for Rogers/Bell and I didn't want her new place to be without internet for that long. The store clerk explained the grab and go thing, and that I didn't need to order it a week in advance. So, we left and I planned to return on the date of move in. Returning to a different store (the other one had a power outage and their system was down) to get the "Grab and Go", you know, to GRAB it and GO home and set it up within an hour or so - I was stone walled suddenly when upon attempting to do all of this was told I needed to have a tech come out and work his magic, and the next closest appointment would be later next week. Pretty unimpressed by the lack of harmony amongst employee knowledge. Store clerk said nothing could be done, despite the fact that I know they have rolling trucks for customer service emergencies, like mine if you ask me. Being misled by 1 clerk and all....via their lack of knowledge. Anyways.... Tech made it out, did his "magic" by opening a box and making a connection. The bill arrived a few days later with NO MODEM REBATE and some wonky $50 installation fee, and $15 activation fee. I couldn't find anything about the $50 install fee anywhere on the little flyer or the website, nor did either of the TWO store clerks when I specifically asked them about other charges mention them. I called in to the Rogers billing department and and was connected to a nice lady. She listened to my story, but wasn't aware of my promotion. I asked about that out of curiosity and she helpfully explained that there are so many promotions through the Rogers Plus stores, Futureshop, etc that while they can look them up they don't really know about them - so that wasn't a big deal. What was excellent about her was that instead of connecting me directly to the department to resolve it, she spoke with them on my behalf so that I didn't have to re-explain my entire situation. She came back on after about 5 minutes and said the modem rebate [b]with taxes[/b] would be credited and that because of the lack of transparency and information regarding the connection fee that would be waived ($50). Turns out that the $15 charge is for a new service (internet, tv, phone, etc) and that the $50 charge is for a new Rogers account. Since my friend didn't already have say TV, and was adding internet. My point to her on that was I shouldn't be double charged for a new connection sign up of both $15 and $50, and it should realistically be one or the other. Furthermore, had I simply been told ahead of time about the $50 charge, that would be up to me. I noted that Bell doesn't charge a install fee/connection fee and that that was part of my selection process between the two carriers. A fee that size is good for a month and a half of Bell 7Mb/1Mb service. The lady was very helpful and we had a little discussion on how I would have liked to have been presented things as a customer (all details up front) and that clerks/employees should be more versed in making sure they explain that NEW rogers customers may incur additional fees for setting up a line. Granted, my personal opinion is that is still BS, since the cable lines are already installed in the apartment, so that all is needed is to hook up the connection at the box, which I think the $15 should account for. If a tech has to setup the modem, fine, charge $50 the same way Bell offers home installs. It is how they make money. [b]Summary[/b] - Rogers failed to credit modem rebate (had to call in) - Poor education of Rogers Plus! store employees (twice) - Sketchy installation/connection fees not properly explained/represented + Excellent customer service phone rep (may just be a crap shoot ) +++ Interdepartment communication transfer done by initial rep so I don't re-explain + Install credit, while technically valid, was given as customer service offering based on poor handling/explanation by in store clerks ***June 2013 Update*** I recently went to renew my 1 year discounted contract on internet and cable tv. All I desired was the -same- level of discount I had previously. I was told the discounts are impossible and no longer available and as such my bill was to increase substantially so I proceeded to cancel to switch to another provider (ATPIA provider + IPTV). About 2 weeks later Rogers called me through their winback department and offered me my original discounts as I had asked for which I accepted. It's a bit disappointing to have to go through the cancellation process and smoke and mirrors only to get what I'd originally requested. At this point I was satisfied. I did however make one alteration to my services. I had been on the grandfathered 75/2 Mbit Ultimate tier. At this time, the area I live in had been upgraded to 150/10 Mbit so I requested to be bumped to the new advertised tier (the grandfathered 75/2 is no longer advertised). I waited for 2-3 days for the service to kick in, but it never did. Apparently I had to get the even newer Hitron modem to attain the 150/10 tier, despite my having a Docsis 3 already. I went to two Rogers' stores before they had one in stock. I went home and still no 150/10 plan. I had to call in twice and have the tech switch the account from the 75/2 to 150/10 plan. The first individual I spoke to was a bit confused as to who in the process was capable of doing this but it was eventually sorted out. A few minutes later my speed tests were at 150/10. All was finally well. A few days went by and I noticed the speed was never reaching 150/10. Speedtests showed that my upload was exactly 2 mbit, download was hard to test due to Speedboost. But the tests suggested I was back on the 75/2 profile all of a sudden after having been stable on the 150/10 for about a week. I decided to check my account and noticed that my bill had changed and I was now credited a bunch on my upcoming bill. The PDF bill showed that I had been downgraded to the 75/2 Mbit plan ($102/mo) AGAIN. The bill that had been there before had shown the 150/10 ($122/mo), hence the credits. I called into tech support who acknowledged I was incorrectly on the 75/2 modem provisioning plan and was transferred to the winback department as they dealt with my billing/account stuff. On speaking to the winback/retentions person, they immediately said that my discounts were not possible on the 150/10 Ultimate tier. This was a bit of a shock as during my initial winback call weeks ago and speaking with a few levels of confirmation, Rogers confirmed my discounts (50% internet, 20% cable + free hardware for both) multiple times and never had an issue putting the discounts through. In fact the discounts were irrespective of what services I had as long as I had cable and internet. The Rogers tech would not negotiate and said the discounts were impossible and that was that, there was nothing to be done. This seems odd considering the account worked just fine and the other sales people said it was no problem during the sign up process. This combined with the fact that Rogers without my knowledge changed my account without notification and switched the internet tier was disappointing. I'm not really sure how that can be an acceptable policy to arbitrarily downgrade someones services without telling them. I spent a few hours troubleshooting on my own time thinking it must be something on my end since it had been working fine. It's frustrating to know that Rogers can change my services without notification and then refuse to honour a deal negotiated with other sales individuals. Considering Rogers records all phone interactions it'd be nice if that could be used to the customer's advantage. Multiple sales people negotiated and confirmed my account plan and weeks went by only to have it be secretly over turned and now for me to incapable of my original account plan. ***Oct. 2015*** Re: Speed and Reliability - my neighbourhood does well, not many students (though I admit I'm uncertain of Rogers' current throttling practices or if they're oversold in student areas these days). I max out my Rogers Ingnite 250. With speed boost the tests will pop about 320/20mbit essentially 24/7. The new ignite plans also have unlimited bandwidth. This is a move to cripple the TPIAs. Additionally, I appreciate the inclusion of NHL Gamecenter on most of the Internet plans. We'll see how long that stays. Regarding price, I had to jump through all the hoops. Had to actually cancel my services when my annual deal was up. If you threaten to cancel, you only get retentions and they're neutered. You need to actually cancel, a few days later "Winback" will call you back and they have the real power. I negotiated 50% off my internet price, so I'm about $50/month for the 250/20mbit unlimited plan. Solid deal there. That's the most annoying part. That and the fact that all the phone reps will just pretend they can't match your deal until you actually cancel. Worth it in the end for me. Also their webpage/accounts fail pretty hard a lot of the time. They pay some company to redesign the entire thing twice a year it seems. Overall I can't complain in my local situation. My older commentary was heavily influenced by high density student neighbourhood experiences and painful growth of the explosions of p2p. They seem to be doing okay. Bell is a joke in my neighbourhood anyway (25mbit max), so there's no competition. member for 22.4 years, 7266 visits, last login: a few minutes ago updated 8.4 years ago
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