The IT Nerd

This is one of these stories that I have to sit there and scratch my head.

A frustrated homeowner posted a story along with pics in regards to a recent experience with a Rogers Contractor on Digital Home Canada:

There is a knock at my door today around 1 PM. My 76 year old mother answers the door and this Subcontractor from Rogers advises that they are here to ‘fix’ our Cable. She then tells him that we don’t have any services from Rogers. The guy insisted that we do. My Mother then told him not to do anything until I get home. I was there in 10 minutes and was shocked to see what was going on. They had cut the driveway and had run a cable line up to my house. When I asked them what are they doing the guy said “Fixing your cable Sir” I told him I don’t have any Rogers services and he said “Yes you must have something,,,, Phone? Internet? Cable?” I told him… “No you guys and mixed up here or this is a JOKE”. I said to the guy “did you look in the box on the side of my house? Look and you will see it’s not connected to anything” I call him over and rip the cover off… showing him the 2 unconnected wires… he then looks very puzzled. He then said … “well the work order said this address” I asked to see the work order… he showed it to me on the computer in his truck… sure enough it was my address,,,, but there was no name. The reason for the rewire the work order claimed was “Low signal, Leakage” Well how can a line that that even connected to anything be ‘leaking RF?’ Rogers is so mixed up then have no clue what’s going on anymore.. its gotten to a point that it’s scary! I’m wondering is this just a mistake or is someone at Rogers trying to harass me.

There are pictures of the whole mess available here. You’ll note that in this picture, the dude has a Bell ExpressVU dish. So that confirms that he at the very least doesn’t get TV from Rogers.

Now to be fair, the law (specifically the CRTC) requires Rogers and other cable providers in Canada to deal with signal leakage issues. I’ve had a visit from a Rogers contractor in that regard in the past. I have no problem with that at all. But to dig up a NON-CUSTOMER’S driveway when someone has told them not to do anything until the homeowner arrives seems off the wall to me. Methinks Rogers needs to keep a tighter reign on the contractors that they use and Rogers needs to do their homework on what needs to be done on a service call before sending a contractor out to fix an issue. In the meantime, I hope Rogers has a good explanation for this whole mess and how they’re going to make things right with the homeowner.

I suppose that it could have been worse though. If it were Comcast, the house would have blown up or something.

UPDATE: Rogers saw the post from the homeowner. Here’s what happened next:

Rogers has taken my thread on here very seriously. After starting this thread on Thursday night I was contacted by Rogers on Friday. After the long weekend I called back the person who had called me. As it turns out he’s the GTA Manager of Quality Assurance and he was deeply concerned when he saw my thread on here. He wanted to come out right away, which he did within an hour, and see for himself what had taken place. He wanted to get the full story from me too about all the other problems we have had dealing with the numerous subcontractors arriving over the past few months.

I would like to personally thank the GTA Manager for taking the time come out here and for taking care of everything.

Okay. I’m impressed, and that’s not an easy thing to do. It makes me want to believe that Rogers is changing, and I really think they’re trying to. But one has to wonder why this even happened in the first place. While we’ll likely never know why this happened, one can hope that this never happens again as it is really bad for Rogers and for the person on the receiving end of something like this.

This entry was posted on August 4, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.