Rogers And Other Canadian Telcos Have Given You A Great Reason To Ditch Using Their Hardware For Their TV Services

Rogers isn’t exactly well loved by Canadians. In fact, no Canadian telco really is. But Rogers specifically is in the crosshairs of many Canadians because of price increases that many Rogers customers weren’t specifically told of. A few Rogers customers went public with CBC a few days ago to express their displeasure:

Here’s the core issue. Rogers customers are seeing unexpected increases in TV box rental fees by $7 a month. Something that Rogers is able to do because it’s buried in the fine print of their contract. That in my opinion is fine if it is properly disclosed to customers before they sign on the dotted line. But in many of the cases that have come to light, that hasn’t happened. Thus customers are mad. To be fair, Rogers aren’t the only Canadian telco that does this. I’ve heard of TELUS and Bell doing something similar with their equipment rentals.

My advice is that if you must get TV from a big three telco, don’t rent their TV hardware. Bell has the Fibe TV app on a variety of platforms. TELUS has the TV+ app on the App Store and Play Store. Ditto for Rogers with their Ignite TV app on the App Store and Play Store. None of these options require you to rent hardware from any Canadian telco, and you get the same experience as if you did. Which means that you save money at the end of the day. Though I suspect that if there’s a critical mass of people switching to these options, the big three telcos will find some way to bill you extra for it.

It will be interesting to see what if anything the big three in general, and Rogers specifically does to respond to this backlash from consumers. Because this kind of has the smell of the negative option billing fiasco that Rogers found itself in the middle of many years ago. Government outlawed the practice as a result of that fiasco, and one has to wonder if the same thing will happen here.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The IT Nerd

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading