All I want is your money - Ted

When Susan Drummond returned from a month long trip to Israel, she was greeted by a Rogers phone bill for $12,237.60. The Rogers Wireless bill included a five-page list of calls charged to her phone, almost all of them to foreign countries that included Pakistan, Libya, Syria, India and Russia.

Susan figured out that someone had stolen her phone and when she called Rogers Wireless, they told her there was nothing it could do, and she would have to pay the entire amount. ( As I will explain later, this is the tactic they use often)

Since making that call to Rogers last August, Ms. Drummond and her partner, Harry Gefen, have been researching the cell phone company, yielding some unexpected discoveries, among them that the phones of senior Rogers executives, including Mr. Rogers himself, were repeatedly "cloned" by terrorist groups that used them to make thousands of overseas calls.

Now comes the good part. After what happened to Ted, Rogers installed an automated security system that alerts the company if anyone’s phone is being misused or rather if the number is being misused to make unauthorized long distance calls. After Susan found this out, she decided to sue the company stating that although Rogers knew her number was being misused, they let the meters run.

I have personally had a lot of problems with Rogers as far as their billing and their customer service goes but they are riding on their monopoly in this area and if any customer approaches them a problem, they get the same answer Susan Drummond got, “There’s nothing we can do, you will have to Suffer” or is it “There’s nothing WE WANT to do, all we want is your money”. The Rogers customer service could easily be rated as the worst anyone can experience and I just hope Aliant comes out with their TV service soon.

In July, when we called Rogers to set up a Cable and Internet connection, the company offered a promotion package and ever since, they have been charging us extra every month and when we approached them, they claim they never offered the promotion to us and asked us if we knew who we spoke to. Now, you are a customer calling up Rogers to get a connection, would you ask who you are speaking to and what their employment number was and write it down in case Rogers wants to rob you? No, but you might want to start taking down a lot of notes if you are a customer of Rogers. We have been calling and arguing every month since we got that connection and since no one else offers TV here and I can’t go in for the Bell Express package due to installation prohibitions in apartments, we are stuck with this company.

If you are a customer of Rogers, do yourself a favor and get out of it if you can. I mean, there must be a reason why the company is called Rogers because that’s what they do to you (if you know what I mean).

You are not alone Susan.