Having an issue with my Rogers cell phone. They'll fix it...For a fee!!!

What a great day I had today, let me tell you about it.

My cell phone basically shut down this morning, sometime before it was to sound the alarm I have set for 6 AM.  The reason? Hundreds of text messages were inundating my inbox from a number somewhere in southwestern Ontario.  When I woke and got the phone working I had over 100 messages that were unread and my memory was maxed out.  

The 100 plus messages were all blank and all from the same phone number.  Naturally I deleted them, which freed up my memory....to receive even more blank messages from this same number.  

Bah da ding ding ding.  That's the tone I have set for incoming messages on my phone. 

Bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding.

Hustling to get out the door I switched the phone to vibrate and shoved it into my pocket.  The tingling sensation in my pants was the only joy I would have today.

Having shut off the phone I called Rogers' customer service from work, and they actually fixed the problem...for a few hours.  The messages don't seem to be coming from a company or business, rather from someone in the area of London Ontario with a Bell Mobility account.  

The representative called the number sending the messages and that seemed to resolve the problem.  And so I thought that was the end of this little adventure.  But the messages restarted  later in the day around 3PM, so I called customer service again.  They told me they couldn't block the number for some reason, and as the work day was over I called the London number myself using my calling card, and I came home.

I hadn't even parked my car when the messages started coming yet again, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding, bah da ding ding ding...I had taken the phone off vibrate.

Thankfully one of my neighbours was on her back porch and I was able to use her phone to call the London number and stop them once more.  Seven rings or so then the standard voice mail greeting with a male identifying himself. Then I called Rogers once more to get this problem solved.

And that's when the fun started.

The gentleman with whom I spoke had exceedingly good customer service skills, unfortunately he is employed by a company that seems to only believe in servicing its customers if they're willing to pony up some more cash.

All I wanted Rogers to do was block this one particular phone number from sending me messages, that's it.  If it meant that calls from that number wouldn't be received either, hey...that would be fine.

It was politely explained to me that in order to block messages from that one number, I would have to subscribe to a call management service at a cost of $5.00 per month.  If I wanted the CSR said he could block ALL my messages for free, which would mean the package I have which includes unlimited messaging would be basically a waste.  

I have two phones with Rogers, my own and one for my son and my bills are around $100 per month, often more.  Apparently that's not enough.

Rogers has the ability to fix the problem, but only if I pay them extra to do it, which is a joke in my opinion.  And as a result, they'll be losing out on about $1500 a year in revenue all because of an idiotic $5 monthly fee.

The contract on my phone is up come October of next year, I wish it was sooner of course.  As soon as I'm able I'll be disconnecting from Rogers and switching to a company that has no contracts and one that knows how to provide customer service without charging extra fees to fix simple technical issues like this one.

The thought occoured to me that I hear complaints similar to this one all the time from many people, but strangely I never see or hear anything about it from mainstream media outlets.  But then of course Rogers is a huge advertiser and itself a media company, and journalists don't bite the hands that feed them.  Even if an intrepid reporter wanted to do a story like this I have no doubt it would be spiked.

Hopefully some people will be reading this via an internet connection provided by Rogers, I love irony.