Comparing Rogers/Bell/DIRECTV to the Mafia

[Dobber]

The big giants in Canada when it comes to television distribution are Rogers and Bell. Both suck. Granted, money is king with all companies and most people, but these guys have a conniption fit if their quarterly profit slips to $6 billion dollars. I imagine the same holds true for DIRECTV in the United States, except instead of $6 billion it would closer to $97 trillion (all numbers just roughly ballparked).

After my fun move I can now call myself an expert on all the good and bad when it comes to both Rogers and Bell. They are the legalized mafia. Let's compare:



1. Rogers/Bell/DirecTV (I'll call them RBD going forward) loads up the back of every bill with fine print. When you go to pay your bill, you should spend several hours reading the fine print each month, because they may have made a small change. They will accompany any changes with a separate letter, and even though you get those every second month you are expected to read the letters in their entirety, including small print. The changes usually won't impact you at the time, but 6-18 months later the impact will cost you several hundred dollars and hours of phone calls.

The Mafia will tell you to your face that you are expected to pay more money this month. If you don't understand that these changes to the contract will hurt you eventually, you can have your wife read you the fine print, it will be those ring-sized bruises on your face.



2. Have a problem with your RBD bill? You can refuse to pay. This will result in service being cut off, lots of fees, a credit bureau run and over the course of a year or two they will get their way anyway.

Have a problem with the mafia's bill? You can refuse to pay. This will result in them kicking the crap out of you. They get their way anyway, but your credit rating will be fine.



3. Want to leave Rogers (or Bell or DirecTV) for another company? Be prepared for lots of fees and this is where a lot of the fine print kicks in: 1. For cell phones, the cost will be around $20/month remaining on the contract. 2. For the other services, if you were taking advantage of their "better bundle" big 10% discount, this will result in the equivalent of that discount over the remainder of your two-year contract that you never signed. 3. You can't just "cancel". You need to give 30 days notice. So be prepared to pay for another 30 days even though you moved and no longer have the service from them. Add it all up: $19, 437.25 in fees. If you have home phone to be canceled as well, this number increases to $46,284.19

Want to leave the mafia? They will hunt you down and when they find you they will send several large men wielding baseball bats. If you survive, when you get out of the hospital the mafia will welcome you back. If they don't find you, you get away without any punishment or fines. You just live your life looking over your shoulder. Either way, there are no fees.



4. Interested in changing your cell phone plan with Rogers/Bell to save a few bucks? You can easily improve that portion of your bill with a conversation with one of their representatives. They may or may not tell you that you just automatically renewed your contract for another two years, or that another part of your cell plan will be removed because it's part of an "old" plan. You'll find that out next month when the tab is even higher. Don't try to switch back to your former plan, because that one is "old". You keep your place of residence, your car, your friends, your job for years at a time, but cell phone plans can only be offered for five months before it becomes "old" and "unavailable". They don't have the technology to re-implement your "old" plan that they stopped offering last year. If you want, you can change your plan (that you just changed last month) again to a newer one, but then you can't change back to that one from a month ago because it, too, is "old" now.

Interested in changing your payment plan with the mafia? Talk to one of their captains. He'll laugh at you, have one of his henchman punch you in the face, and then throw you out onto the street. You get to keep your current plan, even though it's an "old" one.



5. Interested in adding a great channel to your TV package with RBD? Just call customer service and have them add it. Of course, they will also add the other channels of that "channel group". You know, relevant ones like the Ballet Channel, the PDC (Paint-Drying Channel), the Sewing Network and LDN24 (Lawn-Dart News 24). Well worth the extra 15 bucks. If you change your mind later, simply give them 30 days notice and pay a small $485 fee and have them remove the "channel group".

Interested in adding a new lock to your front door? Make sure you give a key to your mafia representative. This will save you hundreds in door costs if they have to get in.



6. Lose the Internet for a few hours? That's not the fault of Rogers or Bell - lightning hit one of their box-thingys - so don't expect the equivalent dollars discounted from your next bill. You have to just forgive them. Did lightning hit YOU on the day your bill was due so you couldn't pay it for a week or so? Well, you have to pay a late charge. Forgiveness only works one way.

Lose some of your merchandise when two-bit punks robbed you? The mafia's protection, which you pay them for, failed you. Let them know immediately. They will kick the crap out of the two-bit punks and return to you some of your merchandise, while keeping some for themselves. But hey, at least they made good on their part of the agreement. Forgiveness works both ways.



So who is better? It's clear that things are pretty straightforward with the mafia, so if you can handle a bit of pain they might be the way to go.


(My Internet and phone is now with TekSavvy, my TV is with Shaw and I still have one cell phone with Rogers, but I will be changing that shortly. They've reached into my pocket enough)

[doulos]

Hah hah, yeah so true.

[mister_mcgoo]

Dobber, my hats off to you, you summed up my frustration with these crooks perfectly. You're absolutely right that the mafia is far more straightforward and 'honest' when it comes to how they conduct business.

It is just as bad here in the U.S., for my cable/internet I'm forced to choose from a monopoly, I can ewither have Time Warner Cable or DirecTV, since our apt building doesn't permit sat dishes guess which I'm stuck with? The service is so terrible we almost never watch live TV anymore...in fact I would cancel my service completely and we'd happily live of Hulu/Netflix if it weren't for the live sports...I could even get the online NHL package but I need to be able to watch football too, its infuriating!

[reeveta]

Oh man, it makes my blood boil to think about these guys.

Personally I am always trying to minimize my contact with them in every way possible. Here is a phone plan that helps keep the stress levels down:

[ericdaoust]

Pay as you go is the way for me. They don't even care who I am or where I live. I had a Telus phone that I lost, and instead of buying a new phone a friend offered to give me her old Rogers phone. I switched from Telus to Rogers without hearing a peep. I'm now with Rogers pay as you go, and if I ever want to switch I can just pitch this phone in a lake and move on to the next company.

I guess contracts make sense for some people. But with all these extra fees being shown in this thread I wonder if everyone should just switch to pay as you go and bite the bullet paying per minute.

[shook81]

Good rant...I feel it's been fairly well established that most corporations engage in "organized crime"... Corporate entities only serve their shareholders, and as long as there is more money coming in than out then they could really care less how their customers or employees feel about them.

[Veritas0Aequitas]

I feel it. Like McGoo said, in the U.S. it's bad. I switched over to comcast to discover I was lied to about $$$ and service. Now I have to switch back to DirectTV and it's costing me a pretty penny.

[repenttokyo]

Pay as you go is the way for me. They don't even care who I am or where I live. I had a Telus phone that I lost, and instead of buying a new phone a friend offered to give me her old Rogers phone. I switched from Telus to Rogers without hearing a peep. I'm now with Rogers pay as you go, and if I ever want to switch I can just pitch this phone in a lake and move on to the next company.

I guess contracts make sense for some people. But with all these extra fees being shown in this thread I wonder if everyone should just switch to pay as you go and bite the bullet paying per minute.

the problem with pay as you go is that most of those plans don't work in the US, so if you travel, you have no phone service.

I don't have a cell phone at all, which works well for me.

[baumer]

Guys, I work for Bell and if I could all of you one piece of advice, it would be this:

If you don't want to go on a cell phone contract, then simply buy your phone at full price. I think i can speak from both sides of the coin, the Mafia side and the customer side. A lot of the bitching and complaining about contracts is because customers want the best of both worlds. You want a free phone and you want no contract. From a business stand point that doesn't make any sense. If you want to pay market value for a Blackberry, be prepared to fork over $700.00. That is why there are contracts. You can get your precious BB for about $100.00 but you are committed to The Mafia for 3 years.

How your cancellation works is that you pay a maximum of $400.00 to a minimum of $100.00 or 20.00 per month after you have completed 20 months of your contract.

As for replacing your phone, always buy the $7.00 BB replacement package, this covers you for lost or stolen, water damage etc.

Again, I appreciate the reputation that the Mafia has but there are always two sides to the story.

[baumer]

If anyone has any qustions about their cell phone package, ask me and I'll do my best to get you the answer.

Also, there is a website called howardforums.com. This is an excellent site that is filled with all kinds of experts in cell phones and plans and so on.

[Jer Bu]

I hope you don't expect SHAW to be any different than Rogers = )

Bu
"Dealing with Shaw as we speak"

[JHM]

Yeah, Bell dinged me last month for $220 on a cell phone. We had to use it, some emergencies came up. We were on the new and improved plan. The wife got worked up and had to have the NEW new and improved plan. Guaranteed to cost you an extra $120 a year.

Piss them off. Cancel your long distance portion on the bill COMPLETELY. Then use phone cards. They charge you like $7 a month for the privilege of making a long distance call by having any plan. I keep a call card by the phone and at least I have the satisfaction of giving someone else that $10 a year. Bell misses out on my 12 months X $7. Support the little guys. Even if they don't win the war every time, you can rest assured knowing that they try. Their efforts actually lead the industry.

[baumer]

Yeah, Bell dinged me last month for $220 on a cell phone. We had to use it, some emergencies came up. We were on the new and improved plan. The wife got worked up and had to have the NEW new and improved plan. Guaranteed to cost you an extra $120 a year.

Piss them off. Cancel your long distance portion on the bill COMPLETELY. Then use phone cards. They charge you like $7 a month for the privilege of making a long distance call by having any plan. I keep a call card by the phone and at least I have the satisfaction of giving someone else that $10 a year. Bell misses out on my 12 months X $7. Support the little guys. Even if they don't win the war every time, you can rest assured knowing that they try. Their efforts actually lead the industry.

So I don't get this one. You say you know you made long distance calls on your cell phone, but your pissed off because you had to pay it?

[JHM]

Another area Bell charges you is for inhome line maintenance. I cancelled that too. I have to wreck the phone lines in the house.... some nonsense like that, then they might come and fix it for free. Let's see. The phone line I use is 40 years old. They never maintenanced it yet. So, most everyone is giving them a couple dollars a month to "insure" the phone line in the house... 38 houses on my street... multiple phone lines... I'll take the chance on tricking the guy across the street into coming over and fixing my phone if I have trouble. He works for Bell. I can give him $100 or $200 and be WAY ahead. I'm sure if I ever needed Bell to fix something, they would think they needed to send me a bill.

I believe they're responsible for the stuff outside the house.

We all need LESS insurance.

[JHM]

As soon as you use the cell phone, you're paying 35 to 50 cents a minute (that idea), if you don't comply by all the usage rules. Long distance savings bundles with companies like DISTRIBUTEL sell long distance for 3 cents a minute. Perhaps there is an alternative cell phone arrangement that we would all like to participate in. I haven't found it yet.