I used to be a Rogers cable subscriber. Yes, even though–kind of like now–I don’t actually watch a whole lot of content strictly on TV. And every so often, something happens to remind me why it is I pretty much won’t be returning to them for anything but the absolutely necessary any time in the near future. This week, it’s their response to the coming availability of netflix streaming in Canada this fall.

They have apparently decided, because God forbid anyone actually want to use their internet connection for more than just the basics, no one actually needs 95 GB/month of bandwidth (it used to be unlimited). So they’re lowering it to about 80 GB/month instead. For the same price. This isn’t an out of character response from Rogers by any means–when they launched their own online video on demand service at the end of last year, they did the same thing with a twist. Rather than lower the bandwidth cap when they launched that service, Rogers decided that, even though it was a service administrated and maintained by them, it would not be exempt from the bandwidth limitations the company imposed on its internet customers–thus making fairly sure people like me kept doing what they were originally doing to get a hold of TV content online, since there wasn’t a whole lot of benefit to doing it any other way.

Hey, Rogers? I kind of suspected I’d be doing the right thing when I told your telemarketting rep earlier to take your internet service and shove it right up your ass. Thanks for proving me right. Now, if you’re done completely screwing your customers, I’m still waiting to have that conversation with you. Not holding my breath, just waiting.

Every second or third day, now that I’m watching more on TV lately–hey, the olympics are on–I’ve been seeing ads from both Bell and Rogers, both saying their internet’s the fastest for doing blah blah blah because of blah blah blah. I’ve used Bell’s Sympatico high-speed service. Have not, admittedly, used Rogers’s offering–but if it’s as broken as their other network, that might be a good thing. Still, at least one of those advertisements is lying. Most likely both.

I have a solution. Let me test, at their best, both network technologies–Bell’s, and Rogers’s. Provide me 30 days of each to switch back and forth between, and we’ll figure out which is actually faster, if any. If neither is, then you can both shut up about it. That has the added benefit of getting Rogers service into Pembroke, where it currently has no cable coverage–in spite of the fact we see plenty of advertising from them. If that offer doesn’t work, then neither company has the right to defend their claims in any kind of battle, court or otherwise. I dunno, I think that’s pretty damn fair.

And hey, if DreamHost will let me, maybe I can see about taking care of their issues while I’m at it. Couldn’t hurt to suggest it, anyway.

For a little over a week, I’ve been at my parents’ place keeping an eye on things while they go do the skipping the country thing. A couple days ago, I temporarily expanded my house sitting operation to include my aunt’s place, while they took care of something about 1.5 hours away–someone still had to be there when repair people showed up. I knew I’d be bored to tears sitting there, since they don’t have a computer I can use, or a wireless network I can attach a computer I can use to, assuming I brought one. Fortunately or otherwise, the place still had cell coverage. So, packing as little as possible, plus the phone I finally got my hands on back in November after its logistical issues, I went and spent the morning doing not a whole lot.

I did manage to get a bit of job searching done, not that I found anything worthy of applying for. And thanks to the fact they charge me way too much for a data plan I absolutely have to have with this phone, I was still able to go through a lot of the things I had to go through. When getting around to posting a couple of the things that got posted on here yesterday, though, I discovered the brokenness.

I don’t use any third party applications for maintaining the blog. Mostly because, especially the past month or so, I never know from where I’m going to be writing. It could be from my place, from this machine, over at Jessica’s place in the event I end up there, or wherever. And I very rarely, meaning all of twice, actually wrote and posted something from my phone so installing an application on there didn’t cross my mind. It probably should have.

Trying to log into the site via the Rogers Wireless cellular network proved to be next to impossible. Of course, it being me and my phone being something of a questionable internet usage tool, I suspected it might have been a thing to be tweaked a little in order to get it to work. So I spent the better part of 45 minutes doing that. And googling for things to try that I hadn’t already thought of. After banging my head against that for a bit, I eventually just said screw it and went back to my email. I’d beat the hell out of it when I got back home and didn’t need it in top working condition.

When I did get back to my parents’ place and their sort of half stuck together, but working, wireless network–hey, I can only do so much with a wireless modem from Bell–I figured I’d try to log in via the wifi connection. And, wouldn’t you know, first try it let me in. I tried from the cell network again, and of course it laughed at me.

What’s interesting about it, though, is it doesn’t throw any kind of error at me. Or rather, it doesn’t throw anything at me–it just returns me to the login screen as though I hadn’t given it any information. The logs don’t show my attempts either, which makes me wonder exactly what funky and messed up thing Rogers is doing to me between phone and blog. Of course, googling further for other people having that issue with websites that aren’t this one didn’t answer my question either. Although, I did find several more examples of severe Rogers and Rogers Wireless related brokenness–their website, which I think has only gotten worse, for one. Not a good thing to be reading about when trying to fix an existing problem, Rogers. You might want to look in to that.

I did manage to learn two very valuable pieces of information, though, when doing this. Pieces of information that may have been helpful 2 days ago.

• The phone isn’t quite as questionable an internet usage tool as I originally thought. The network, however, makes up for that improvement in questionability status.
• And, the most important lesson to take away from this bit of unexpected geekery. From now on, posts while mobile will be emailed. Starting whenever I get around to configuring such things.

It’s great that you’re coming out with a new, in-house and online equivalent to your on demand option available through your cable services. It’s even greater that you’re extending the option of using it to customers of any Rogers service. But you might want to, maybe, give not screwing over your customers a try if you’re actually planning to do that.

We’re already Rogers customers. We’re already paying, a lot of times way too freaking much, for Rogers services–up until October or so, for me, that included cable. If you’re going to grant us free access to your on demand service online, don’t then go back and decide that it still counts against our bandwidth caps (*). It’s *your* service, on *your* network. For which you’re still getting a *lot* of our money. More so if they’re also paying for TV from you. That’s enough. You’ve just guaranteed I won’t be playing with the new Rogers on Demand online anytime soon. And if I were a Rogers customer still for anything beyond my cell phone–you guys *are* the only ones right now that offer accessible phones that won’t absolutely kill my bank account–you’d be guaranteeing, since it would count against my bandwidth cap anyway, that I would continue my current means of obtaining my television viewing. No love, your local former customer tech geek.

PS: Thank you for not automatically assuming your wireless customers want to pay a monthly charge for *this* service, as well.

(*) Rogers is apparently not going to lift the bandwidth limitations on your internet service if you’re with them and accessing their on demand feature. I don’t get it either, but that’s Rogers. That’s also why I’m with TekSavvy.

One of the things I’ve been working at trying to accomplish before the move (more on that later), and haven’t actually managed to accomplish yet, is the replacement of my old Nokia phone–specificly, the 6682. I tried once before, but the folks over at Rogers’s sales department seem to have a bit of a hearing problem. Or perhaps just a comprehension problem.

I ordered the Nokia E71, but about 5 days after the order was placed the phone I actually received wasn’t it. No big deal, I’ll just return it. Except not quite. I fired it back at UPS the same day I received it, and 2 days later, they knocked on my door with the exact same phone–and no return sticker thinggy. Brilliant. I spent pretty much the next week trying to twist their arm into getting me another one before I packed everything up and scrammed back to the Pembroke area. Suffice it to say, and not really all that surprising to me, it ended up actually rather not happening. Go figure.

Then, the move happened. I packed up my old apartment in Ottawa, came 1.5 hours southwest-ish to Petawawa, and unpacked most of it in the span of a day or two. Actually, a lot of stuff’s still in boxes–but, hey, the majority’s actually useable again. I can live with that. Once I had things up and running here, it was back on the phone to Rogers to try and sort this mess out. I still had the phone, in its original UPS packaging, sitting on the end of my desk–well, once said desk finally got put back together–for the first weekend of my living in the new place. Rogers still wanted to email me a shipping sticker thing to print off and use. Which would have been perfect, except I still had absolutely no way to get access to said email. They tend not to remember you told them that 5 times already.

I eventually gave up on that, as my return window was very quickly closing and I was flirting with a headache. I also finally ended up getting net access that Sunday night, but by then I wasn’t about to reenter that same dance. So instead, I called UPS up myself. And, as luck or something like it should have it, this time I got someone with more than half a clue. I scheduled them to come and pick up the thing. I got the address to one of their receiving yards from Rogers that morning, and when shipping dood showed up, it got handed to him. Along with a request to forget about billing me, and stick Rogers with the price tag–something he seemed a little too eager to do, but I wasn’t about to argue. Meant I could cheap out and well, cheap is good, no?

The phone never did come back to me, and the fact they’re not charging me for it on this month’s bill would seem to indicate they did receive it, and didn’t screw up the processing of it. Either that or someone just committed a rather significant oopsy. Either way, as long as the price for that phone doesn’t end up on a future bill, I’m not about to call them up and say otherwise. So now, with that phone being on its way or already back to Rogers and out of my hair, I can focus on getting the one I was actually after.

Which, last week, is exactly what I ended up doing. Only this time, rather than them simply sticking the wrong phone on my bill, the one I was after for whatever reason wasn’t showing up as one I was eligible to actually purchase. Perfect. So far you’re 3 for 3, Rogers. So I give them what for over the phone, and the rep basicly decides at that point to take responsibility for the whole damn thing. Which, when dealing with me, has been known to be a mistake. She tells me she’s going to keep checking, and call me if and when it actually gets sorted out. And, since everything should have been reset when I returned the phone and I knew I was eligible for it before I tried to buy it the first time, clearly it was a problem internal to them.

I wasn’t holding my breath–remember, I used to sit on the other end of similar conversations. I know most folks who say that do it with the complete intent of blowing you off knowing the chances of them getting you again are pretty well slim to none. Particularly when you’re running an operation with multiple call centers in multiple locations dealing with multiple thousand customers nationally. This morning, though, I did get that call. Whatever went and broke on their end wound up getting fixed. Finally. So, after much nashing of teeth and a whole lot of wanting to curse out the next rep to pick up the phone, I managed, somehow, to at least get the order processed. Now, hopefully they send me the correct phone on this attempt. And, hopefully they do it before Google Voice goes global. Otherwise I see a bitchfest in their, and my, near future.