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[sick_muse]

NOTE: I will not be surprised if this does get deleted considering this is something Rogers will not like to hear. Just like any other supervisor from his employees. But the problem here is we as customers are paying this giant who overcharges us. Anyway...

Rogers along with Bell and Telus (let's call you three Robellus for short) have created an oligopoly in the wireless market and Robell in internet market. While doing so, the prices are jacked up to ridiculous points and restrictions are set upon the customers where if they go over an amount they're forced to being overcharged. 

Example 1. Internet

In the the case of the Extreme internet bundle. The cap was reduced from 95GB to 80GB and the speed was increased from 10Mbps to 15Mbps. What you say? What's wrong with faster internet? ummmm... Say I want to watch a movie or a video quickly want to view a part of it to see if it's the correct one, it'll load faster and my bandwidth will creep onto that bandwidth quicker than it had originally. Once you hit your bandwidth cap, you're being charged $2 per 1GB (or more depending on your plan). No other developed country has these kind of restrictions.

Example 2. Wireless

I don't really need to talk about this. 250 minutes + 1 GB + 75 texts for $65? The US doesn't even have these overpriced plans. Wait. That's a bad example. UKRAINE (a developing country) has better plans than this. And now that Chatr has come along to hide from the competition, Rogers calls itself a "premium brand". Premium... something far from premium. I'd consider unlimited talk and text and data premium at a reasonable price $75-$100. This is where Rogers lacks and therefore cannot be considered as a "premium brand".

In conclusion, once my wireless contract is up with this business (with horrible business practices) I will be going to a smaller business who has better rates... someone who's obviously on Rogers' hit list to kill off as a competitor (as much as Rogers wants to deny it, it's too obvious.) And I have a feeling once the competition is hypothetically killed off, the "good" plans at Chatr will be jacked up just like Rogers did with the unlimited calling at Fido. 

[RogersErin]

Hi sick_muse,

Thanks for becoming a community member.

Please remember this community is designed as a place where Rogers customers can help each other find answers for technical questions about products and services. As this thread isn't about technical issues, it is off-topic for the forums. We provide other venues where customers can discuss non-technical topics including our RedBoard blog and our @RogersHelps Twitter account. There are also lots of great third-party forums where non-technical conversations take place regularly.

In future, we will be removing off topic posts, but we just wanted to flag this one today while the community gets familiar with our Community Guidelines.

[steveh]

I agree with sick_muse wholeheartedly. The wireless market in Canada does constitute an oligopoly and the prices offered by the three carriers are incredibly high for the services in which we receive.

For instance, the lowest price I have seen in Canada for a smartphone data plan is $25 for 500 _megabytes_. In the United States, not a 20 minute drive from where I live I could get an unlimited data plan for $30. For $25 I could get 4 or 5 gigs on most carriers there. I realize that for $60 a month or so I could get a 6 gigabyte plan for my phone, but that's hugely expensive. Plus, my $62 monthly plan ends up costing me ~$90 a month, so who knows how much adding $35 will actually bump it up to.

Americans also seem to have a maximum of a two year contract with subsidized pricing, while here in Canada the standard is three. The justification for this is that with the carrier offering phones at a subsidized price they must require customers to sign on for a long term commitment in order to make up the cost of the phone via the rate plan. So why does it take American carriers one entire year less to make up that price difference? Why are there no cheaper rate plans for people without subsidized hardware? Why doesn't your rate plan automatically drop when your contract expires?

I know that this is "off-topic" and Rogers has other places like their blog and their twitter account to go to for stuff like this, but that doesn't really help me when their blog deleted my comment about this subject and they never answered my twitter message, not that it would have been much of a response at 140 characters. Perhaps Rogers could send a PR person or two to these forums to answer our concerns about the company in addition to our tech support questions. My two cents.

[Atomic]

I travel alot in the US and the unfortunate fact is that it is absolutely cheaper down there. But also you are getting what you pay for.  The network coverage in the US is regularly spotty the data speed offerings are crap and to be blunt there is a reason for both of these things that directly relates to something specific that they have that we dont.

Population. The US has a much higher number of customers all sharing the same overburdened networks. The costs are lower in the US because . Alot lower but that is because the services and network is being shared with a crapload more people.

This is actually a good on Rogers, Bell, and Telus because of better data speed, less dropped connections, better voice quality.

The bad on Rogers , Bell, and Telus is that with their services so much less stressed there is really no good excuse when systems fail. There is also no excuse for not getting the latest and greatest handsets. During a new product rollout the same number of handsets for a single US state such as California (granted California is the state with the highest population) would service most if not all of Canada.

[TenOfZero]

I can agree with a lot of what is said here, and that the landscape has to change, however I would say that overall Canada is a peculiar case. We have a mixture of a small population and a HUGE landmass to cover.

It was mentioned that the handsets that go to California could satisfy all of Canada's needs, and I;m sure it could, however look at their area vs. ours, same size markets but a lot less area to cover. That's why we pay more per month.

That being said I agree 100% that we should move to a tab type system, where you pay off your phone as part of your monthly bill and if you leave early you have to pay what is left. That way you pay for what you get!

And don't get me started on the regulatory fee's. My grocery doesn’t charge me extra for his property taxes, acquiring the spectrum and maintaining the network is a cost of doing business, build it into your plans and be done with it.

[steveh]

You truly believe that's why we pay more per month? We pay more per month because we have zero alternative. There's very little competition when it comes to wireless in Canada. Your main choices are Rogers, Bell and Telus. All three have similarly priced phones, similarly priced plans, identical contract lengths (longest I've seen in any country) and, well... they might as well be the same company.

The geographical distribution of the population may play a small part in the pricing, but the primary reason we pay more and receive significantly less than our American counterparts is because we lack choice. The geography thing is a cop out by the carriers they use to try to get us to excuse them for ripping us off. We get ripped off when it comes to wireless, when it comes to cable and when it comes to internet access, all operated by the exact same companies.

It wasn't long ago when Telus was offering an unlimited data plan as a standard option, not some limited time lock-in scheme. That's gone. There was a time when incoming text messages didn't cost us 15 cents for some incomprehensible reason. No more of that on any carrier. If you ask me, Canadian carriers and ISP's are getting worse, not better.

[steveh]

I'd also like to point out that the 15 cent incoming text fee introduced by all three carriers (Bell & Telus at the same time and Rogers shortly afterwards) was among the most brazen and obvious examples of price fixing I have seen in my entire life.