Ignite customer retention fiasco

[StarryNight9]

Like many others, I’m a longtime customer. Been trying for a week to switch from cable tv/internet to Ignite bundle at a decent price. I guess that Rogers has decided to ignore loyal customers for shiny new Shaw customers. It’s sad how this company works so hard to drive customers away.

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@StarryNight9 wrote:

Like many others, I’m a longtime customer. Been trying for a week to switch from cable tv/internet to Ignite bundle at a decent price. I guess that Rogers has decided to ignore loyal customers for shiny new Shaw customers. It’s sad how this company works so hard to drive customers away.

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What package are you looking for and what do you consider to be a decent price?  Discounts come and go... so if you are able to get a good deal, jump on it.

This isn't the best time of year to go looking for deals.  Rogers usually offers good promotions in late-August, at back-to-school time, Black Friday, and around Christmas time.  Outside of those times, Rogers may also offer some outstanding promotions if they are under threat from their competitors.

I don't know whether Rogers will offer any special Ignite TV pricing to customers when they finally do announce the discontinuation of Digital TV.  They discontinued Digital TV in Source Cable territory at the beginning of June and as far as I know, they were not offering any phenomenal discounts to the last remaining Digital TV holdouts.

[StarryNight9]

Not looking for phenomenal discount. I’m willing to pay $135+tax for Flex 20/Sports/Primetime theme pack/modem/TV box. I can do the installation myself. Not willing to pay $165+tax.

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@StarryNight9 wrote:
Not looking for phenomenal discount. I’m willing to pay $135+tax for Flex 20/Sports/Primetime theme pack/modem/TV box. I can do the installation myself. Not willing to pay $165+tax.

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That's not unreasonable, and I believe Rogers has offered even deeper discounts on their web page in the past, although they are also usually associated with higher Internet speeds, not with 150u.

As part of your research, I would still investigate your TV + Internet options with Bell, Start and TekSavvy, just to see how much it would cost to get the channels that mean the most to you.

With Rogers, agents don't have the flexibility and discretion that they used to have in the past, so they can only offer whatever discounts are available to them for your area.  Despite what it may seem, customers do matter to Rogers, and the customer facing teams really do their utmost to help.  However, often, their hands are tied.

If it were up to me, I would announce an end-date for Digital TV and have promotions available for any remaining customers that wish to migrate to Ignite TV.  Even if they are not quite ready to completely shut down Digital TV as of yet, I would still offer a final limited-time deal to entice the remaining holdouts to migrate... but that's just me.

@StarryNight9  If you have hit a dead-end with chat and telephone sales agents, I would send a private message to @CommunityHelps  and ask them one last time what promotions are available to you, for both the Flex 20 including Sports and Premier bundles, ideally with 150u Internet, but be open to getting other Internet speeds if the price is right.  Hopefully, they will be able to help you find a bundle and pricing that works well for you.

[RockinA]

Could you/someone kindly explain the difference between Digital TV and Ignite TV? Is there any difference other than one is newer and seemingly cheaper for some reason? Oh and equipment seems different?

Thank you.

[mebe]

Warning: This is a rambling mess, without any humour. I hate it, but it's not as if I get paid to write quality content, so don't say I didn't warn you in advance.

Rogers is phasing out its legacy TV, Internet and phone service, so instead of trying to offer you affordable pricing to stay with the older, dying services, they offer you better deals to switch to Ignite.

There are several threads explaining many of the differences between digital legacy and Ignite TV ... Some good, some bad. There are also many FAQs and other info that can be found on the Rogers main website. I'll leave that to the professionals.

Ignite TV has extra channels that Digital TV doesn't have, and has Flex channels that can be substituted into your plan (one Flex exchange per month, other than the first month of unlimited flexes). Most of the SD-only channels on Digital TV are available in HD with Ignite TV.

Although Ignite TV is powered by the Internet, you can get it as a standalone product, but you won't be able to do any streaming using the various Apps for Netflix, Disney+, etc.

Ignite TV makes use of cloud recording (instead of storing recorded content on your digital PVR box, if you have one). The advantage of cloud-based recording is that if there's a power failure, your planned recordings will still be saved, so once the power comes back, you can access your content with the Ignite TV Entertainment box ($10 month or less if you get a deal), or via the Ignite TV App. However, one of the disadvantages is that the recordings can only be stored for up to a year, and just like my digital PVR, it's limited to about 200 hours of HD content).

Whether you want the standalone Ignite TV service, or the version with full Internet access, you'll also need the Gateway modem, that you'll need to rent for $10 month, or less). There are several different versions of the Gateway modem, some preferred more than others, but you get what you get, and then get a replacement if necessary.

I still have digital TV (with PVR to record up to 8 shows at one time, just like the Cloud recording of Ignite TV).

Ignite TV doesn't have the picture window of the channel you're watching when you are using the Guide. You know that with Digital TV, you see and hear the channel you were watching when you bring up the Guide.

Ignite TV has no Lobby cam channel like digital tv, but that's not a problem for those not living in an apartment building, etc.

Digital TV let's you delete any channels you don't want to appear when you channel surf with the Channel Up or Down buttons. So if you have a senior in your household, or elsewhere that can't be bothered to choose Favourite channels from the Guide , they can just channel surf without seeing any channel that was already deleted (and you can always put any channel back).

Ignite TV will also automatically turn itself off within up to 5 hours of inactivity, so if you like to fall asleep to the TV, or keep it on all day to entertain your pets, etc., that might be annoying to some. It would sometimes bother me, especially since my PVR gives me the ability to RW live TV for up to 2 hours (the Ignite TV buffer is much less based on what others have posted), if I have to leave my home, or fall asleep and want to RW or FF to find something I missed.

There's no TV Call Display function with IgniteTV.

The cloud-recording options are often too limited because you can't always get the Record at this time only option to work, among other oddities that my PVR doesn't encounter.

IgniteTV has voice command ability that uses up the batteries faster, but is very convenient. For example, if you are having trouble jumping forward or backwards to a specific spot in your cloud recording, you can use the voice command to FF exactly 42 seconds, or even set buttons on the remote to FF or RW by a specifically programmed amount each time you press (similar to the 2 buttons on my PVR remote that lets me jump ahead or back by 3 minutes, which is great for skipping commercials ... And I have a 10 second RW button, and better full FF and RW scanning through recorded content that's easy to view).

Ignite TV has better ON Demand options than digital TV has for most (but not all) channels because Digital TV On Demand won't let me FF through CTV or Citytv programmes, but I can with IgniteTV. However Global TV still has commercial breaks that can't be FF through using IgniteTV, unless you are jumping ahead to a farther-along commercial break section that's closer to the end of the show; so you don't have to wait 45 minutes or so to get closer to the end of an hour-long show.

With Digital TV On Demand, I can FF or RW through all the commercials for Global (IgniteTV can't, last time I checked at the Rogers store, anyway) and CBC (just like you can with IgniteTV). With Digital TV I can skip past each commercial a few seconds after it appears due to a bug in the system. And of course both Digital and Ignite TV let you FF or RW through any of the major subscriber channels like Hollywood Suite, Crave, etc.

Finally, because all bad posts have to eventually end, some people don't like the fact that the radio stations (such as CFRB, Q107, CKFM Toronto, etc.) are not part of IgniteTV, so they use other methods to listen with Roku, or just the regular websites for tunein or whatever. And the Stingray music channels on Digital TV, are only available via the Stingray App if your using IgniteTV, but more channels are available, and you can jump ahead to the next song, etc , so although it would be nice to have them in both places, it is what it is or isn't.

Digital TV is going to be killed off soon enough, so the biggest difference between legacy Digital TV and the newer IgniteTV is that Legacy Digital TV has terminal cancer, and the younger Ignite TV has an Intermittent stuttering problem like Joe Biden, along with some random error messages and other interrupions (ping pong anyone?), that often can't be explained by anything else but bad nodes in the neighbourhood.

Hopefully, the REs will post a much better response with thread links etc.

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@RockinA wrote:

Could you/someone kindly explain the difference between Digital TV and Ignite TV? Is there any difference other than one is newer and seemingly cheaper for some reason? Oh and equipment seems different?

Thank you.

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Ignite TV is still a familiar TV service; it's just that the channels are delivered to your home using current technology.  It's like asking what the difference is between a telephone land line and a cell phone.

With the old digital cable technology, your TV set-top box is wired to a wall outlet, and this standalone box tunes to a QAM channel, decodes the signal and displays a picture on your TV.  Ignite TV is an IPTV service, where the set-top box uses the same network technology that your computers use to access the Internet, and the TV channels are received using the same underlying technology that Netflix uses to stream movies.  The Ignite set-top box also runs applications that connect to popular streaming services, such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+, and it has technology that will pull all of these services together, and can help you find the movies and TV programs that you with to watch across any of the supported services that you subscribe to.

Like all new products and technologies, there will be things about Ignite TV that you like, things about it what work a bit differently that you will need to get used to, things about the old system that you liked a lot better, and new features that you will need to learn how to use.

For the last five years, Rogers sold Ignite TV bundled with Ignite Internet.

A few months ago, Rogers also started offering a standalone Ignite TV service, without Ignite Internet.  With this option, you can only use the set-top box to receive TV channels; nothing else.  You will not have access to any of the third-party streaming services.  Customers were not expecting this.  This also highlights the richer experience that you will get with Ignite TV + Ignite Internet compared to standalone Ignite TV or the old Digital TV service.

[mebe]

By the way, when I mentioned that Ignite TV has more channels, I don't believe they carry any of the Adult channels (like perhaps the Playboy Channel, etc.). I guess Ignite TV is going for a more family-oriented vibe.

We didn't talk about picture and sound quality comparisons, but many people prefer Ignite TV over their previous digital TV picture, but for some, they find the audio quality of Ignite to be problematic until they choose the proper audio setting. Other audio improvements have also been mentioned by @57 and others.

And as far as equipment goes, if you're having Ignite problems, you might need to add some pods and then make sure that they are positioned correctly, for the best results.:So if it gets too complicated, some people might go back to streaming Netflix, etc. with their computer.

Coordinating all the media content into two boxes (if we count the modem), with the added searching ability of the voice recognition technology, makes Ignite TV a desirable product, even perhaps if you already subscribe to Netflix and other streaming services with the Internet alone. You would have to subscribe to these streaming services through Rogers, to access the Apps via the tv set-top box.

I think it's rather obvious that this newer technology can often be as much a chore, as it is a pleasure, depending on how many issues arise that need immediate attention in order to keep the magic going.

[jrog62]

Roger's tells you that promotions are available only at certain times which is untrue. If you are persistent, and get through to the right person you can get a fair price.
Just got 2 contacts renewed for 2 years where I get telephone with long distance plus internet at 500 speed unlimited, plus cable with premium package and timeshifting services for Canada and USA all inclusive for $114.00 plus tax. A savings of over $130.00 per month.