Is Rogers Communications Gouging iPhone Users? I guess more to the point are they gouging me? I was feeling a little smug today when my iPhone chimed indicating that I had an SMS message.
I was excited to say the least. You never know who it could be. Maybe my wife had some good news or my sister was looking for some advise on a bluetooth headset. It was a message from Rogers Communications stating that I qualified for a very special deal. So special this deal was that they had immediately activated it on my account.
Rogers svc msg: Pack ur
phone 4 the holidays! ALL
calls made from the US only
$0.99/min. Exclusive offer
already applied on ur account
&urs NOW until May31
I felt quite special and was a little too smug to my friend Dan whose iPhone chimed in about 10 seconds later. “Why is you’re iPhone always so slow with the SMS?” I quipped at him. For some reason his is always behind by a few seconds when we’re on the same SMS list.
Well to my chagrin and Dan’s delight, not only did he receive a similar message, his deal was half of what mine was. Way to kick a guy in his special place!
Not wanting to feel slighted I figured I would call Rogers to see what the explanation was. Not only have I been a Rogers customer for 10 years, it was my boasting about how the iPhone was the next best thing to being Greek that prompted Dan and another guy at work to switch from MTS to Rogers. That iPhone is like an extention of my hand.
My longtime loyalty and good account standing would sway the special US calling rate in my favor, of that I was certain. On top of being a great customer I didn’t go for one of the cheap iPhone plans. I opted instead to simply add the $30 a month 6GB plan onto my existing plan. I actually pay more than Dan monthly.
I placed a call into Rogers’ customer care line and spoke to a very polite person took my call who unfortunately did not know anything about this new promotion. After putting me on hold for a while it sounded like I was getting the worse rate because my account is based on an a-la cart package with a base rate of $10. Forget that I spend gobs of money each month and have almost every feature. I pointed out that I didn’t feel that special considering I spend more than Dan and postulated that Rogers simply feels that they can charge me more.
I’m sad to say there was no silver lining. “Please call again next week when we know about the program. We may be able to do something for you then.” was the only help I received
.
I had already figured I was being screwed on the 6GB 3G plan. Yes I have the plan for $30/Month instead of the usual $100/month at the time I signed up for it but I hardly use it at all. Well I use my iPhone all the time but there’s so much free WIFI around that I don’t get to tap into the 3G that much. Even on occasion that I need access to the 3G network the amount of data that is sent with Email and Google maps in minimal.
Since October 2008 I’ve managed to send a whopping 26.9MB and receive a staggering 342 MB of data. I wonder how that cost translates into talk time. The network is digital after all, how much bandwidth is used on voice calls?