The IT Nerd

What started as a general outage with Rogers Internet offering that happened almost a month ago has evolved into a situation where users of Rogers email service (in other words they have a @Rogers.com address) can’t get their email on any device or application that they choose. And that has dragged on for weeks. This is in part due to the fact that Rogers requires users to create  App Specific Passwords via Rogers Member Center on each program or device that an email address is used on. The creation of new app specific passwords doesn’t work and existing app specific passwords appear to have been deleted in many cases. That pretty much breaks your applications that rely on them. There is a workaround, but that workaround is sub-optimal because viewing mail through a web browser is not the best experience. Especially on a smart phone. And they’re the fact that you might have to call Rogers to get someone to reset your email password if you don’t know what it is. The problem with that is that since this fiasco began, Rogers wait times to speak to someone have gone through the roof. Making that a sub-optimal experience as well for Rogers customers.

Now Rogers knows that this is an issue, but at this point it is crystal clear that if an issue that has affected their users for almost a month hasn’t been fixed, it likely means that Rogers can’t fix it, or isn’t going to fix it. I don’t know which it is but either is on the table. And honestly, which it is doesn’t really matter at this point because it hasn’t been fixed in any timely manner.

Based on the fact that I get daily emails or calls from existing clients of mine asking “is it fixed yet?”, along with referrals who got my name in hopes that I could fix their Rogers email because Rogers can’t, I have come to the conclusion that Rogers customers need to simply find another provider that isn’t Rogers for their email. I say that because there has been zero communication from Rogers on this issue, which means that there is zero insight about if or when this might be fixed.

The workflow that I have been using with clients of mine to get them off Rogers email is as follows:

1. Create a new email address either with a “free” provider or by hosting your own domain: I have a high level overview of these two options in this article that I wrote about not using your ISP’s email. I personally recommend the latter option, but I know that not everyone is going to go through the time and effort, not to mention money to take that option. Which is why I offer up the former option. Once you have that account set up on all your applications and devices, you can start using it. In case you’re wondering why I have the word “free” in quotes, “free” email services are known to troll your email to show you advertisements that are relevant to you, not to mention use that data for who knows what. Thus “free” in this case mean that you the product.
2. Broadcast the fact that you have a new email account: You should do a couple of things to make sure that as many people as quickly as possible know that you’re changing email accounts:
   • Send out an email blast saying that your changing email addresses and the old one will not be used past a certain date. That way it incentivizes people to use your new email address as quickly as possible.
   • Set up a vacation alert on Rogers email with the same information. That way every email that hits your Rogers inbox gets the same information. Rogers has info on how to do that here.
3. Change the emails related to any online service that you use to your new email address: You’ll have to change the email addresses that are used by anything like online shopping, newsletters, Facebook, Instagram, etc. to your new email address. And this is a good time to look at the various mailing lists that you belong to and ask yourself if you really need to be getting that one extra piece of email.

Now you’ll have to check your Rogers email with a web browser periodically to make sure that you don’t miss any emails that you didn’t account for when you went through the above steps. But if the stars align, you should see the emails coming to your Rogers account decrease over time, and increase in your new email inbox. Making this a win. And then whenever Rogers fixes their email issues, you can export all your email so that you have a record of it. I actually have documented how to export not only your email, but your contacts as well here. But that will only work when Rogers sorts out their issues as it requires an App Specific Password, which of course isn’t working at the moment. But once you do that, you then have the freedom to dump Rogers as your ISP if you so choose as you have no practical need to stay with them as your email is no longer locked in with them. And I can tell you that I have a number of customers just waiting to do that the second that Rogers addresses their email issues and they can get their mail exported.

UPDATE: For those who really want to go into the weeds on these ongoing email issues with Rogers, you can feel free to read this.

This entry was posted on March 30, 2023 at 12:33 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.