The IT Nerd

Here’s a plot twist that I wasn’t expecting in regards to the Rogers email fiasco. But to explain this plot twist, here’s some background in case you ned to get up to speed:

• I first reported on issues with Rogers email, and the inability to generate app specific passwords to allow users of Rogers email to use email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird on March 7th.  
• This issue dragged on for months. There is a workaround involving using webmail, but that workaround is sub optimal to say the least. And as this issue dragged on into April, I was left with no other option than to recommend to my many clients who are affected by this to dump Rogers as their email provider.
• Rogers has sort of admitted that there is an issue. But it took them a very long time to do that.
• It then seemed that Rogers or more accurately Yahoo was rolling out OAuth to replace the need to generate app specific passwords. But the catch was that not all email clients support OAuth. To date, only the Outlook 365 email client supports this (if you have that client, this will help you to set up your Rogers email account). Which means that Rogers users using many other email clients, or those who weren’t willing to pay Microsoft monthly for Office 365 were still stuck.

So, with all of that in mind, let me get to the plot twist. In the latter half of this past week, I was trying to help yet another person who reached out to me about these ongoing email issues. In this case it was an 87 year old woman who was having great difficulty since March trying to deal with using webmail rather than Microsoft Outlook. Which reinforces the fact that webmail despite what Rogers would tell you is a sub-optimal way to deal with your email. I did tell her up front that it was likely that I could do nothing for her and I did explain that her only real option was to move to Office 365 as that works. But her response was that she is on a fixed income and paying Microsoft monthly for software that she already paid for was a non starter. Which is a valid point. Ultimately she asked me to help her to call into Rogers Tech Support to see if they could do something. Which reluctantly I did. And that’s when I got a bit of a shock. I was told straight out by the support agent that I spoke to that Rogers email issues were Microsoft’s fault because they wouldn’t support OAuth in anything other than the Outlook 365 email client.

Mind blown.

I gently pushed things to understand the logic of that statement, and the support agent explained to me that there’s a fix in Outlook 365 that they refuse to bring that fix to other versions of Outlook, and if they did that, this wouldn’t be an issue.

I’ll dissect that response in a bit. But after having that interaction with Rogers Tech Support, I thought it was an isolated incident. That was until I came across this post on the Rogers community forums yesterday:

I am guessing that the Rogers Tech Support agent that this person got wasn’t as articulate as the one that I got. But seeing as two different people got a tech support agent from Rogers that blamed Microsoft for their email issues suggests to me that blaming Microsoft for Rogers email issues is now the party line at Rogers. That reflects really poorly on Rogers if that is true. And as usual, Rogers is free to reach out to me to put forward their side of the story which I will post as soon as I get it.

In any case, here’s why I think that this response is completely unacceptable. Let’s start with this assertion by Rogers that Microsoft needs to fix this. It is true that Microsoft’s Outlook 365 client supports OAuth which makes it one of the few, if the only third party email client that can be with Rogers email service. While it would be really nice if they brought that OAuth support to other Outlook clients, it isn’t going to happen. The fact is that Microsoft has two types of Office software that you can purchase from them:

• Perpetual licensing: This is where you buy the software once and you license it forever. The catch is that Microsoft will provide only bug fixes and security updates. They will not supply new features.
• Office 365: This is where you effectively lease the software by paying monthly. While the downside is that you are constantly paying for the software (which to be fair does have financial advantages if you’re a business), Microsoft will bring new features to you. OAuth support is an example of that.

So based on that, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft “fixing” this isn’t going to happen if you have the perpetual licensing version of Outlook. Though once again, it would be nice if they did. Having said that, Rogers throwing Microsoft under the bus is not a good response from Rogers. The reason being is that we are talking about an email service that has Rogers name on it along with Yahoo’s name. And more importantly, Rogers customers are paying Rogers and by extension Yahoo for the email. Microsoft has no involvement in their email service as they don’t provide it, nor are Rogers customers paying them for it. So blaming Microsoft really seems like an act of desperation from Rogers who clearly has no answer for why their email service isn’t working for a significant amount of their customer base. Sort of dovetailing into what I wrote a few days ago. On top of that, if or when Microsoft finds out that Rogers is throwing them under the bus, then I would not want to be Rogers as that conversation will likely be a one way conversation. As in Microsoft will absolutely light up Rogers like a Christmas tree in a bonfire. In my opinion, Rogers and Yahoo would be better served to focus on making their email service work so that this issue goes away rather than blaming Microsoft for their inability to fix this. But given the fact that this issue has been ongoing for months now, I’m not holding my breath on that front. Thus you may want to consider reading this article and take action to abandon Rogers email as clearly this isn’t going to get resolved anytime soon, if at all.

This entry was posted on October 15, 2023 at 10:22 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft, 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.