The IT Nerd

As you recall from my story on doing jury duty yesterday was that my wife and I tweaked what we were getting from Rogers to save a few bucks. Part of that included moving to Rogers Ignite Gigabit Internet which promises “up to” 1GB downstream and “up to” 50 Mbps downstream. To get these speeds, we had to swap out the Rogers modem that we have had for the last two years. That wasn’t a big deal as my wife was able to do so when she got home. However when I plugged it in and tested my speed from the modem directly using an Ethernet cable (which by the way is something you should always do to see if everything is working), this is the speed that I got using Rogers own speed test:

This isn’t even close to Gigabit speed. Now I get the fact that you will never get Gigabit speed and ISPs like Rogers will always use the words “up to” to cover themselves on that front. But to only be able to serve up 37% of the maximum speed is pretty sad. So I decided to contact Rogers Tech Support via the chat window that happened to pop up while I was looking at this. The first person that I spoke verified some information to make sure that he was speaking to the right person, and then he did some troubleshooting and found problems with my line. To try and fix it, he had to do some things on his end and reboot them modem. Since I was chatting to him on the line that was about to be disconnected, he gave me a case number and told me to give it to the next person that I spoke to. I watched the modem reboot and when it came back I re-ran the speed test and got a similar result. So it was back to chat window and I connected with a second person who I gave the case number to. The only problem was that the case number, which I had copied and pasted out of the chat window was “referring to some other case.”

#Fail

As a result, I had to start over again with verifying my information and explaining my issue. Then the person I was speaking to accused me of having a third party router connected to the Rogers modem despite the fact that I told him right up front that I was troubleshooting this directly from the modem. I was seriously unimpressed by that as it implies that this is a way for them to get people “off the line” so to speak as opposed to actually troubleshooting the issue. So after some very pointed but civil words to point out what my problem statement was and how I was troubleshooting the issue, he did some troubleshooting of his own and concluded that he had to send out a tech as there was a problem with the line. He gave me a case number(after I asked for it twice by the way), made an appointment for Sunday morning to have the tech show up at our condo and sent me on my way.

Total time invested: Two hours.

Ignoring that this interaction was less than stellar, and by that I mean the second half of this interaction with the second person that I spoke to, I found this to be very odd. So I used my friend Google to do some research. As a result I found a 40 page thread on Red Flag Deals that detailed exactly the sort of problems that I was having. Let me give you a few examples:

Signed up yesterday. I am still getting speeds close to my 250u (wired directly to the 3552 modem). I verified I am on gigabit ( CTS MAC, on my rogers, latest 0.21 firmware etc etc). Anything else I should be looking at before giving a call to tech support?

And:

I just called and checked if my area is already on Gigabit since I’m already on Casa since early July but not yet available in my specific address. They switched it to Gigabit but I’m getting only 400mbps max down and 32mbps up. latest firmware .22 also.

They will send someone to check my router and the area tomorrow

And:

I have no idea if Rogers is even activity doing anything about it. The troubleshot over the phone the last time I called it and they couldn’t explain why I was getting only 300Mbps down.

I asked if there was any compensation given I am “paying for” gigabit speeds but getting 250u speeds. CSR said there shouldn’t be an issue with that…but I would need to call it once the issue is resolved.

Those quotes were from the last month, but if you read through this Red Flag Deals thread, it’s pretty clear that Rogers has issues with the Ignite Gigabit Internet service as lots and lots of people are having issues getting anywhere near the speeds that they are promised by Rogers. Quite frankly, Rogers Ignite Gigabit Internet doesn’t appear to ready for prime time from the looks of it. This is shocking seeing as it is 2016 and Rogers has spent a lot of time and effort on their Internet service to try and be the top of the heap in Canada when it comes to Internet access. Now I will see how the tech visit goes and if I get anywhere close to Gigabit speeds as a result of the visit. But my sense is that we may have made a bit of mistake by agreeing to switch to Rogers Ignite Gigabit Internet. But we will see if that is the case or not.

To be continued.

UPDATE: I’ve had several readers contact me via e-mail with similar issues with Rogers Ignite Gigabit Internet. Here’s a few examples:

I complained to Rogers about getting slow speeds with Gigabit Internet. Rogers had a ticket open for two months and nothing happened. So I switched to Bell and got the speed I paid for. When I called Rogers to cancel, it was only then that they cared about my issue. I suggest that you look at Bell for Gigabit Internet if it’s available wherever you live. 

And:

I’ve never gotten anywhere near Gigabit speeds. Rogers really needs to take responsibility for this and fix this. 

And:

I had a really bad experience trying to get this service to work from Rogers. Then Bell Fibe came to my area and I couldn’t switch fast enough. 

It really sounds like my wife and I made a big mistake by upgrading our Internet service. We’ll be considering our options if the tech visit on Sunday doesn’t resolve this issue. Frankly, based on the feedback I am getting, I am not hopeful.

UPDATE #2: Surprise. Rogers reached out to me on Twitter minutes after I posted this update.

Thanks for reaching out, we'd like to have your Gigabit concern investigated further.

— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) September 22, 2016

Please send us a DM: https://t.co/odkQSRrwjo ^me

— RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) September 22, 2016

Direct message sent. Update to come.

UPDATE #3: After a conversation via Twitter, I am even less happy than I was before. The agent that I spoke to on the RogersHelps Twitter feed via direct message informed me that the tech appointment that we thought we had on Sunday doesn’t exist on their system. And the case number that the second tech gave me pulled up an interaction from 2012 and not related to my account. You can imagine that I was less than impressed. But the agent that I traded direct messages with understood my frustration and booked the appointment for me and gave me a reference number…. Though in the back of my mind I have to wonder it that means anything as I asked for case numbers from from the people that I spoke to last night. The agent also promised to forward my concerns to the Office Of The President as well as promising me that they will call me within 48 business hours.

Clearly the second agent that I spoke to was really someone who shouldn’t be working for a company like Rogers. The Rogers rep on Twitter ask me some very specific info about him and I am guessing that some sort of disciplinary action is coming towards the agent in question. One of the things that I do is set up call centers, do consulting on how call centers should operate, and train call center agents. This is the sort of thing that I advise my clients to take a very hard line on as it negatively affects the public image of the company that they work for. In fact, I advise a “one strike rule.” Meaning you give them one chance to never repeat this sort of behavior, and if they do, fire them. The logic is, your reputation matters and your employees have to be on board with that. If they’re not, then bad things can happen. This blog post is an example of a bad thing that can happen if you’re Rogers. Three to five thousand a people a day visit this blog. And they have seen me write negative things about Rogers. On top of that, readers shared with me their own negative stories about Rogers. This is not good if you’re Rogers. And it perhaps highlights that they have some serious issues that they need to address. 

Frankly, this whole interaction has left a really negative taste in the mouths of my wife and I, and we are reconsidering our relationship with Rogers seeing as Bell is aggressively trying to win our business and has put Fibe into our condo not too long ago. While I will post an update, I am dubious that this will change given what has gone on so far. But I am open to Rogers surprising me.

To be continued.

UPDATE #4: I just got off the phone with the Office Of The President. The person that I spoke to is going to take full ownership of this issue and it will be escalated to someone who will resolve it quickly. We’ll see what happens next.

UPDATE #5: I have a detailed update on this story that you can read here.

This entry was posted on September 22, 2016 at 9:48 am 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.