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Rogers $15 retention offer thwarting my referral to PM 🤔

Nezgar
Mayor / Maire

So I have a friend with Rogers that I've been "courting" for a while to switch to Public Mobile once his contract is up sometime in Nov or Oct. So he called Rogers today to check what the actual contract end date is in preparation for switching.

 

Well, they offered him a plan that he can switch to at contract end - effectively $15/mo for unlimited Canada wide calling, and 2GB/mo of data.

 

Well... Pretty hard to compete with that. sure rogers charges $15 + $1 911 fee + tax, and PM would be $13+tax out the door with the $15 plan - but only 250MB data... I guess he might as well just stay with Rogers at that point!

19 REPLIES 19

Karnbot13
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@LurganIeUk wrote:

Call it a hack or nifty. It’s a waste of time and is of poor  ethics. 

 

And check your profile.....no address?

 

Yes I know,  taxes are based on the phone numbers province. 


Poor ethics? If it wasn't allowed, it wouldn't be accessible. No more time wasted than would be when a temporary number is activated to ensure the service works, as recommended by most experienced members here.

Call it a hack or nifty. It’s a waste of time and is of poor  ethics. 

 

And check your profile.....no address?

 

Yes I know,  taxes are based on the phone numbers province. 

@LurganIeUk 

you're overthinking it. PM doesn't store your address on the account, it only bases Tax on the province of your phone number. The address on an associated credit card is not used to calculate your tax by PM.

 

The temporary number is just that - temporary. No need to tell any of your friends you number because you will throw it away once you port in your actual number.

 

From that point forward you will pay appropriate tax for the province your number is from...

 

This "hack" of course only practically applies to a brand new account signup.


@Nezgar wrote:

 

Nifty trick: Sign up selecting a temporary Alberta number, and you can add top-ups PST free prior to porting in your existing number from a different province.


Nifty trick. Not such a good idea. Let’s say you sign up for the $15 plan and buy $85 in add ons. So I now have just saved a whopping $7 if you live in BC. But if I wait for 2 weeks and the Liberals get in, I may, in the future have no PST for a year. FAT CHANCE THAT WILL HAPPEN. 

 

But now that I have to change my “temporary” number  I now have to do:

Possibly change my address in My Account. 

Possibly advise friends, family and business contacts of my new number because I want them to be able to call me as a local call. 

And  have to have total disregard to my $10 sign up bonus and any other freebies.

And I may have a cost to keep my old number/account active at a cost to me, so I can port my old number. 

 

There is nothing NIFTY here.  

 

@Korth 

I do have all the documentation .....well everything but the actual contract because they never sent it to me. Being old school I request everything by mail and once I looked in my fido file I had the CIS from the store and the one page agreement that I co-signed and my store reciept and my credit card reciept. I also found every bill for 13 months until they stopped paper billing which really blew things up because I no longer had "access" to view the billing. I also had every new agreement and CIS sent to me when data was topped up and cancelled  each month. But no contract, no device subsidy agreement. No final bill either until their overdue bill department called. By that time I realized I hadn't been sent the original contract so I requested one but they refused to send me one.

 

But I've got nothing to do this winter but wait out a list and/or hope for a last minute cancellation to get surgery so I might as well gear myself up for a fight. Nothing will change and bad behavior  will become entrenched and systemic if you dont stand up to be heard and demand change.... and its not chump change either. Its a pretty penny!

@darlicious 

 

It's never too late to challenge them for your money (along with other "damages" if you're punitively vindictive) if you still possess all the documentation you need to prove your case.

 

Although you did enter a contract where you "agreed" that they can change the terms of the contract any time they like. Indeed, you even "agreed" that you will also "agree" with whatever changes they impose, lol. So they can kinda just make up whatever rules they like and fabricate whatever evidence they need if things get dirty.

@Nezgar 

Yes i found that out when researching and discovering that fido was breaching even more of the WCC regulations than I suspected. There were many months of overbilling that I complained about but hadn't actually looked up the nitty gritty of the legislation and they would only fix the billing that I specifically pointed out even though they knew they were continuing to break the law by not reducing or removing all of the fraudulent billing each month. And it was every single month a minimum of 3 to 4 hours on the phone trying to get the bill sorted out......


@darlicious wrote:

This sounds like a crafty way for rogers to ensure they get every last penny of their device subsidy back from their customers. They may have found they were having a high percentage of customers porting out their phone number early into month 24.


Well, according to the CRTC subsidy requirements wording, a device balance should actually be 0 after only 23 months. So, at the beginning of month 24 - unbeknownst to most people (including me a year ago) is when you can cancel, port-out, or be eligible for new hardware without penalty.

 

I still find it gross how many people have no idea when their two year contracts expire, and how many people go months or years before getting new hardware - because your monthy price with the big carriers does NOT decrease once your hardware subsidy is paid off, and carriers are never keen to remind customers of that either..

@Nezgar 

This sounds like a crafty way for rogers to ensure they get every last penny of their device subsidy back from their customers. They may have found they were having a high percentage of customers porting out their phone number early into month 24. If the average plan+device subsidy is $100 per month and their customer ports out on day two they are losing about $93 per customer × 1000 customers = $93,000. 10,000 customers = $930,000 A million dollars a month starts to cut into the bottom line. What's a little subterfuge to get a full return on their "investment"?

Nezgar
Mayor / Maire

So a followup to original post regarding my friend in question that was offered this "superb" deal from Rogers... Rogers had no idea what he was talking about when he called back a month later to switch to their offer. No record on file, etc. This is hilariously stereotypical of a big carrier.


So, needless to say he signed up with PM last week with the Walmart free sim card & free 2nd month deal. He's already got the $10 from my referral, and $50 "2nd month free" credit from the max plan. Why not just pick the most expensive one to mess around for the first month? Anyhow, we've already scheduled him to renew with the $15 plan next month, so with $60 credit sitting in the account he's good to go without any further payments for the next 4.6 months.


Nifty trick: Sign up selecting a temporary Alberta number, and you can add top-ups PST free prior to porting in your existing number from a different province.


@Nezgar wrote:

@dude65 

No contract, so no new phone for that offer. I believe he also said it would only be good for a year, but he could call back near the end to get them to extend it. Which also implies it's done as a credit on a higher priced plan...


@Nezgar no contract? then your friend hit the jackpot.  But sorry you did not get your referral.  Cheers!

@dude65 

No contract, so no new phone for that offer. I believe he also said it would only be good for a year, but he could call back near the end to get them to extend it. Which also implies it's done as a credit on a higher priced plan...

dude65
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Hard not to turn down that offer @Nezgar. Was that a 2year contract?  

Anonymous
Not applicable

I wanted to give Telus every opportunity to "retain" me a couple years ago. They didn't move enough to stay with the mothership. Then I was liking Koodo for the base cost plus add-ons. Then I discovered this place. No turning back. But I'm still in the Telus fold. 🙂

I'm a westerner. It's Telus.

Retention offers are bribes intended to keep customers from leaving. Some people might get awesome offers, others might get nothing better than what's already being advertised.

 

But Rogers is a business, not a charity. They will pay out small costs and losses to retain large revenue stream. Or even to deny that revenue to competitors. They won't take an ongoing loss (or lack of profit) for no reason. Rogers collections and retention departments have had a notorious reputation for many years.

 

I'm guessing they can offer your friend cheap phone because they already make money off him in other ways. Or what they're offering has costs he's not yet aware exist. Or he might misunderstand what they've offered, or he might be misleading you (because not interested in Public Mobile or because hoping for a better offer).

 

But if he can get a $15 2GB plan with no strings attached then he'd be dumb not to take it.

@Korth 

Indeed his offer is a "retention" offer not advertized on the site, only meant to keep customers from leaving to keep their subscriber counts up, and nothing to do with publicly published plans. One wouldn't be able to sign up with Rogers and get that plan.

 

I don't think the end cost would be much over $16+tax as previously stated because of this. Currently he's on a single line with Rogers.

Korth
Mayor / Maire

The lowest-cost plan I could see on the Rogers website is $25 for 50 Canada-Wide minutes, 100 Texts, 100MB Data. Or $25 for 150 Canada-Wide minutes, 50 Texts, no Data.

 

Although they do have variations of "Add Another Line" (for $10 to $20) onto existing plans, allowing you to "split" things across different phone numbers. Their offerings seem to be very convoluted, especially since they sell so many things which aren't listed on their main site.

 

I suspect that if Rogers is offering your friend this $15 2GB plan then there must be "hidden" costs or they must be making money off him somewhere else. What they're offering him would place it somewhere around the $35 per month mark in relation to their other plans.

dabr
Mayor / Maire

@Nezgar    Well you can hardly blame him for not wanting to move over here if Rogers have have given him that kind of a deal, definitely worth it even with the extra 911 fees (which should be illegal IMO).

gwhitema
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Nezgar Carriers are stepping up their game. Public is way behind.

 

The 15$ plan they are offering destroys PM's. Even with my rewards. 

 

Hes better off with Rogers. He can come to PM if there's a better deal. 

 

 

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