You might recall that on the day that the Apple Watch Series 3 was announced, Rogers was missing from the list of carriers that would support it. That set off a bit of a firestorm online as you’d expect it to. Well, there’s a bit of a plot twist to that. About 15 minutes ago, the app that I use to scan Twitter for anything interesting spotted this:
I have also taken a screenshot of it in case Rogers decides to delete the Tweet:
What precisely does that mean? It’s a very odd response from Rogers as unless I am missing something, you don’t need Rogers or any other cell phone carrier to pair a non-LTE Apple Watch Series 3. But the fact that according to this Tweet you can bring in an Apple Watch Series 3 to pair with your iPhone on the Rogers network (presumably) is a bit of plot twist. Though there’s no details on how that would work in the Tweet. After all, you only have 140 characters to work from. A more robust statement from Rogers would be helpful. I am in the process of reaching out to them to find out what the deal is. If I get a response from them, I will post it here.
UPDATE: The plot twists continue. This Tweet from Rogers got my attention:
https://twitter.com/dawnetiller/status/908377389624844288
So now the story has changed. Twice. Let’s recap. Just shortly after the Apple announcement, Rogers said this:
In other words, it was an answer that didn’t answer the question as to if they are going to carry the Apple Watch Series 3. Then over the last few hours, the party line changed to this:
That sounds like they weren’t going to carry the Apple Watch Series 3, but if you bought one elsewhere, they’d activate it for you. Then in the last few minutes the answer from Rogers became what I posted above.
It really looks like Rogers for whatever bizarre reason don’t seem to have their act together from a public relations standpoint and as a result they completely flubbed the message that they wanted to get out to the public. Then when the predictable blowback from die hard Apple users who were also Rogers customers happened, they muddied the waters further and made things worse. To me, this seems like the Rogers from a few years ago who would be famous for finding new and creative ways to invent PR disasters that didn’t need to be invented. Perhaps if they said from moment one that they would carry the Series 3 Apple Watch next year as soon as they built the infrastructure to support it, we would not be here talking about this PR mess now. If I were their PR humans, I’d get out a statement to every media outlet that made it clear what their intentions are in terms of the Apple Watch Series 3 and I’d do it right now as this constant shifting of what the message happens to be is making them look like it’s amateur hour in their PR department.
UPDATE #2: I got a response from Rogers….. That really isn’t a response in my opinion. Your opinion may differ. Their response was to send me an image of the entire Twitter interaction:
To be fair, it does clarify one point. If you bring in an Apple Watch Series 3 to a Rogers store, they will pair it with a iPhone on their network. But based on the above, your brand new Series 3 Apple Watch will only work over WiFi and Bluetooth. The net result is that people will feel like this person who reached out to me on Twitter:
The PR disaster continues.
UPDATE #3: A reader of this blog brought this Tweet to my attention that has slightly more clarity to it:
And then there’s this:
The thing is, not having support for eSIM would be weird. The tech has been around since 2015 so you’d think that Rogers would support this tech. But that seems to be the case as the same reader that brought these latest Tweets to my attention provided me with this:
This has a person who wanted to activate a eSIM device on Fido in May 2017, and Fido didn’t support the technology. Fido is owned by Rogers which means that if Fido doesn’t support eSIM, Rogers doesn’t either. Which is to be frank, is quite shocking.
UPDATE #4: There’s been another plot twist in this story. Details here.
A Plot Twist On The Rogers/Apple Watch Series 3 Story [UPDATED]
Posted in Commentary with tags Rogers on September 14, 2017 by itnerdYou might recall that on the day that the Apple Watch Series 3 was announced, Rogers was missing from the list of carriers that would support it. That set off a bit of a firestorm online as you’d expect it to. Well, there’s a bit of a plot twist to that. About 15 minutes ago, the app that I use to scan Twitter for anything interesting spotted this:
I have also taken a screenshot of it in case Rogers decides to delete the Tweet:
What precisely does that mean? It’s a very odd response from Rogers as unless I am missing something, you don’t need Rogers or any other cell phone carrier to pair a non-LTE Apple Watch Series 3. But the fact that according to this Tweet you can bring in an Apple Watch Series 3 to pair with your iPhone on the Rogers network (presumably) is a bit of plot twist. Though there’s no details on how that would work in the Tweet. After all, you only have 140 characters to work from. A more robust statement from Rogers would be helpful. I am in the process of reaching out to them to find out what the deal is. If I get a response from them, I will post it here.
UPDATE: The plot twists continue. This Tweet from Rogers got my attention:
https://twitter.com/dawnetiller/status/908377389624844288
So now the story has changed. Twice. Let’s recap. Just shortly after the Apple announcement, Rogers said this:
In other words, it was an answer that didn’t answer the question as to if they are going to carry the Apple Watch Series 3. Then over the last few hours, the party line changed to this:
That sounds like they weren’t going to carry the Apple Watch Series 3, but if you bought one elsewhere, they’d activate it for you. Then in the last few minutes the answer from Rogers became what I posted above.
It really looks like Rogers for whatever bizarre reason don’t seem to have their act together from a public relations standpoint and as a result they completely flubbed the message that they wanted to get out to the public. Then when the predictable blowback from die hard Apple users who were also Rogers customers happened, they muddied the waters further and made things worse. To me, this seems like the Rogers from a few years ago who would be famous for finding new and creative ways to invent PR disasters that didn’t need to be invented. Perhaps if they said from moment one that they would carry the Series 3 Apple Watch next year as soon as they built the infrastructure to support it, we would not be here talking about this PR mess now. If I were their PR humans, I’d get out a statement to every media outlet that made it clear what their intentions are in terms of the Apple Watch Series 3 and I’d do it right now as this constant shifting of what the message happens to be is making them look like it’s amateur hour in their PR department.
UPDATE #2: I got a response from Rogers….. That really isn’t a response in my opinion. Your opinion may differ. Their response was to send me an image of the entire Twitter interaction:
To be fair, it does clarify one point. If you bring in an Apple Watch Series 3 to a Rogers store, they will pair it with a iPhone on their network. But based on the above, your brand new Series 3 Apple Watch will only work over WiFi and Bluetooth. The net result is that people will feel like this person who reached out to me on Twitter:
The PR disaster continues.
UPDATE #3: A reader of this blog brought this Tweet to my attention that has slightly more clarity to it:
And then there’s this:
The thing is, not having support for eSIM would be weird. The tech has been around since 2015 so you’d think that Rogers would support this tech. But that seems to be the case as the same reader that brought these latest Tweets to my attention provided me with this:
This has a person who wanted to activate a eSIM device on Fido in May 2017, and Fido didn’t support the technology. Fido is owned by Rogers which means that if Fido doesn’t support eSIM, Rogers doesn’t either. Which is to be frank, is quite shocking.
UPDATE #4: There’s been another plot twist in this story. Details here.
10 Comments »