New Pay As You Go Maximum Balance

[lmcjipo]

Had my prepaid phone off during the holidays and just turned it on today to receive the following text from Rogers:

Rogers service msg: Starting at the end of 2018, our prepaid services will have a maximum allowed balance of $150. Any balance above $150 will no longer be available as of end of 2018. We will be in touch with more information on how you can use your balance soon, but in the meantime you can continue to use your balance as normal. Questions? http://rogers.com/contactus

What are the options? The option that I think that they will do is to force those high balance users to go to postpaid. Unless they give me the option to get a new phone, there is no way that I would be able to use my balance or reduce it to under $150 before the end of 2018. The only other thing which would reduce my balance is for me to take options/services that I don't need (like data/SMS/addon services) that I don't need for the sake of just reducing my balance.

This seems ridiculous.

***EDITED LABELS***

[barndoor]

I wonder if half the reason  Rogers is doing this  is because  so many people seem to have such high balances ... if they   all were to start phoning in  and paying for a years top up  with that balance .... Rogers would be out a lot of money . 

@We2Kings ....have you ever done that ?  Called in and used $100 of your balance to cover your next year ?  With the balance you have  you would basically have 4 years  of free phone. 

[lmcjipo]

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@Tranjo wrote:
I highly recommend you make a complaint to the crtc. With enough complaints I'm sure the crtc will implement rules to force rogers to reverse their decision.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/contact/#mobile

Spread the word. We need more complaints.

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Your link eventually winds up at http://www.ccts-cprst.ca/complaints/complaint-form so this is what I filled out.

[lmcjipo]

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@barndoor wrote:

I wonder if half the reason  Rogers is doing this  is because  so many people seem to have such high balances ... if they   all were to start phoning in  and paying for a years top up  with that balance .... Rogers would be out a lot of money . 

@We2Kings ....have you ever done that ?  Called in and used $100 of your balance to cover your next year ?  With the balance you have  you would basically have 4 years  of free phone. 

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I don't see how Rogers can have any issues with high balances. It isn't like where I worked where we used to be allowed to carry forward vacation and eventually after working in the same company for over 10 years and me using only 2 weeks of vacation every year when the company started people off at 3 weeks vacation and based on years of service it went up to 4 weeks and eventually 5 weeks, I (as well as quite a lot of other employees) accumulated a large amount of vacation in their "bank". When they left, the company had to pay the vacation.

Now with Rogers, it actually works out better for Rogers to have customers with high balances since it keeps them where they are instead of jumping ship to other prepaid carriers that have more generous plans. As mentioned, this is the only reason I've stuck with Rogers is because of my high balance and the fact that they let everyone know that if you leave or port your number, they will not refund your balance and you lose it. There are a few prepaid carriers that offer free incoming SMS so I don't get charged for spam like I do with Rogers prepaid and then I have to spend my time calling Rogers to try to be reimbursed for the spam messages.

Not only that but if the customer forgets to top up at the expiration date, they lose everything so Rogers wins with that as well.

I don't see any liability with Rogers letting people have high balances. They could cap it at a certain level but the level that they've chosen $150 is ridiculous since this means that in order for a customer to not get shortchanged, he/she must try to get a balance below $50 when he/she tops up $100 for the 365 days.

And Rogers worrying about people using their high balances to make a lot of calls and stress their network? That won't happen when on Pay As You Go, most Rogers prepaid customers are paying $0.50 per minute so speaking for 10 minutes will cost that person $5.00 and speaking for 60 minutes will cost that person $30. You have to remember that Rogers and its sister companies (Fido & Chatr) have people on their postpaid plans with UNLIMITED calling who pay ~$30 for their unlimited calling option... so a Pay As You Go customer calling for 120 minutes will use $60. There is far less chance of someone on Pay As You Go abusing the network than someone on one of the postpaid unlimited calling plans.

[We2Kings]

Unfortunately, it would not be ~4 years of free phone. It would only be 4 years of access to their network, and charges for air time would be charged above that. So, if they took, say,  $350.00 and extended my network access expiry date to 3.5 years in the future, I still would have to pay for all wireless time i those 3.5 years. Customers pay $100 per year for 1 year of network access and $100 worth of air time. Rogers wants to convert that to only 1 year of network access, without the $100 of air time. Essentially taking your money for nothing. An extended network access expiry date means nothing without the air time dollars. Rogers is taking the service we prepaid for (1 year network access plus $100 of air time) and have unilaterally converted it to only 1 year of network access, without the $100 of air time. Looks like Rogers is now in the business of selling network "access" only.

[lmcjipo]

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@We2Kings wrote:

Unfortunately, it would not be ~4 years of free phone. It would only be 4 years of access to their network, and charges for air time would be charged above that. So, if they took, say,  $350.00 and extended my network access expiry date to 3.5 years in the future, I still would have to pay for all wireless time i those 3.5 years. Customers pay $100 per year for 1 year of network access and $100 worth of air time. Rogers wants to convert that to only 1 year of network access, without the $100 of air time. Essentially taking your money for nothing. An extended network access expiry date means nothing without the air time dollars.

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It wouldn't even be ~4 years or 3.5 years since with your balance, after December 31, 2018, your balance will automatically drop down to $150 so if they allowed you to use the $100 of your airtime to extend your expiration, you would only probably extend it for 1 or 2 years using my simple/fast calculations.. Remember that in 1 year and 1 day (December 31, 2018), according to the SMS, any customer who has a balance over $150 will only have a balance of $150... and with that $150, if they allowed it, you would only be able to extend your expiration (minus the $100) by 1 year.

[We2Kings]

Rogers is taking the service we prepaid for (1 year network access plus $100 of air time) and have unilaterally converted it to only 1 year of network access, without the $100 of air time. Looks like Rogers is now in the business of selling monthly or yearly network "access" only for $10/mo or $100/yr. That is not the service I paid them for....

And yes, you are correct. They will likely take the first $100 for network access only, the second $250 for nothing at all, and leave me with a $150 balance.  Then, I will have to give them $10 each month just to roll-over that $150 and use their network for 30 days or $100 per year to roll over the $150 just to use the network... bloody ripoff...

[We2Kings]

CRTC Complaint Form - 20 minute expiry. Isn't the CRTC in the pocket of Rogers etc? This is like making a complaint to Employment Standards. All they have to say is "If you don't like it- leave".  Contacting the media about this may be better. Better coverage of the problem on the morning/nightl news..

[zolker]

Just call any telecom company with your cell and wait on hold. You can easily burn off $80-$90 worth of balance effortlessly.

[barndoor]

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@We2Kings wrote:

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@We2Kings wrote:

Rogers is taking the service we prepaid for (1 year network access plus $100 of air time) and have unilaterally converted it to only 1 year of network access, without the $100 of air time. Looks like Rogers is now in the business of selling monthly or yearly network "access" only for $10/mo or $100/yr. That is not the service I paid them for....

And yes, you are correct. They will likely take the first $100 for network access only, the second $250 for nothing at all, and leave me with a $150 balance.  Then, I will have to give them $10 each month just to roll-over that $150 and use their network for 30 days or $100 per year to roll over the $150 just to use the network... bloody ripoff...

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What was your goal for letting your balance  get so high  ?  Did you have plans to switch  to a different plan to use it or is this just a  game with Rogers ?

If you had started  a couple years ago you would have had  4 years of free phone likely. As of today ...even if you play the game by their new rules you can get 2.5 years of free  phone .  Well maybe not free but without adding a cent to your account and assuming similar usage as to what you have had in the past . 

Why would you give them $10 a month when you can call in and request to keep the same plan which seems to work well for your usage ? 

[barndoor]

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@We2Kings wrote:

Unfortunately, it would not be ~4 years of free phone. It would only be 4 years of access to their network, and charges for air time would be charged above that. 

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Apparently if you call in to paygo by the first of March or thereabouts  you can stay on the same plan you  are on  with air time and network time coming from the same $100 . 

Now whether the computer glitches start in 10  months or so to end these grandfathered plans will remain to be seen   

[OLDYELLR]

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@We2Kings wrote:

I just received the "New $150 Maximum Balance" message today. I have a balance of $480.82, and will need to top up again in June (5 months from now). As it says, "Refill to roll-over your balance". I (and my wife) have been with Rogers for over 15 years, and I rarely use my cell, and will likely lose $350.00 (plus) to this  ?scheme?.  I have pre-paid for this service annually for myself and my wife, and we (and many others) will each stand to lose a lot with this.  Likely billions of dollars involved worldwide. Unless these funds are refunded, this is misappropriation of funds. We paid for a specific service, and the service was significantly modified unilaterally (to the benefit of Rogers). The media needs to be contacted about this, and a class action suit filed. I would rather give the money to a lawyer who will fight for doing the "right thing". This is just like the prepaid gift card schemes- remeber the "diminishing balance" giftcard lawsuits? Anyway, hopefully Rogers does the right thing with this new "idea" of theirs. Save all of your documentation (we will).

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Wow, a balance of $480.82 is huge! I presume you never knew you could draw from your balance to renew each year.  I didn't either until a few years ago when I received a letter from Rogers that my balance was over $200 and I could draw from it to renew. Until then I was glad I had cellphone service for $100/year when others were paying $100/month.  If someone is on a $100/month plan and doesn't use their phone, that $100 is gone also.

So why would Rogers suddenly cap the balance at $150 at the end of 2018? My theory is that the bean counters were getting nervous over the possible billions of unused dollars accumulated. A class action to recoup the unused balances? But the real travesty is that Rogers did not publicize the ability to draw from your rolled over balance other than the one letter I received years ago. The bean counters must have been gloating over the windfall of payments for unused air time.   The ability to use your balance to make payments should have been clearly stated for all to see, but it was not.  The only clue is in the text message I got, "We will be in touch with more information on how you can use your balance soon."  We shall see.

[OLDYELLR]

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lmcjipo wrote:

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I don't see how Rogers can have any issues with high balances. It isn't like where I worked where we used to be allowed to carry forward vacation and eventually after working in the same company for over 10 years and me using only 2 weeks of vacation every year when the company started people off at 3 weeks vacation and based on years of service it went up to 4 weeks and eventually 5 weeks, I (as well as quite a lot of other employees) accumulated a large amount of vacation in their "bank". When they left, the company had to pay the vacation.

Now with Rogers, it actually works out better for Rogers to have customers with high balances since it keeps them where they are instead of jumping ship to other prepaid carriers that have more generous plans. As mentioned, this is the only reason I've stuck with Rogers is because of my high balance and the fact that they let everyone know that if you leave or port your number, they will not refund your balance and you lose it. There are a few prepaid carriers that offer free incoming SMS so I don't get charged for spam like I do with Rogers prepaid and then I have to spend my time calling Rogers to try to be reimbursed for the spam messages.

Not only that but if the customer forgets to top up at the expiration date, they lose everything so Rogers wins with that as well.

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Perpetually banking unused sick and vacation days is a good analogy. I think they can do that in some union jobs, but where I worked, you use it or lose it at the end of the year.

A couple of times I missed renewing my plan and suddenly had a zero balance and could not use my cellphone. But I found I got my balance back when I paid. I believe there's 2 weeks grace.

I also agree a high balance would keep customers from jumping ship to better and cheaper plans with other carriers now that unlocking is free. But perhaps losing $150 is enough incentive to stay.

[OLDYELLR]

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@lmcjipo wrote:

Even for those people who really want to transfer to a postpaid plan from a prepaid plan due to this change, they are getting ripped off somewhat since they will be taxed twice. You basically paid tax on the prepaid voucher or prepaid airtime (ex: $100 airtime voucher actually costs ~$115 depending on the province you reside in) and once the balance rolls over to postpaid, you are taxed on the postpaid plan and/or the postpaid phone purchase and this comes out of the $100 which actually cost you $115.

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I wondered about the tax when I renewed using $100 from my balance. I thought it would be $113, but it wasn't because the money had already been paid to Rogers and cannot be taxed twice.

[lmcjipo]

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@OLDYELLR wrote:

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@We2Kings wrote:

I just received the "New $150 Maximum Balance" message today. I have a balance of $480.82, and will need to top up again in June (5 months from now). As it says, "Refill to roll-over your balance". I (and my wife) have been with Rogers for over 15 years, and I rarely use my cell, and will likely lose $350.00 (plus) to this  ?scheme?.  I have pre-paid for this service annually for myself and my wife, and we (and many others) will each stand to lose a lot with this.  Likely billions of dollars involved worldwide. Unless these funds are refunded, this is misappropriation of funds. We paid for a specific service, and the service was significantly modified unilaterally (to the benefit of Rogers). The media needs to be contacted about this, and a class action suit filed. I would rather give the money to a lawyer who will fight for doing the "right thing". This is just like the prepaid gift card schemes- remeber the "diminishing balance" giftcard lawsuits? Anyway, hopefully Rogers does the right thing with this new "idea" of theirs. Save all of your documentation (we will).

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So why would Rogers suddenly cap the balance at $150 at the end of 2018? My theory is that the bean counters were getting nervous over the possible billions of unused dollars accumulated.

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Rogers has absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain with high balances. Three of the reasons (but there are probably other reason) I quickly thought of are:

1) person forgets to renew before the expiration date and after expiration, the balance goes down to $0.00

2) person dies (everyone dies) and phone doesn't get renewed so balance goes down to $0.00

3) balance won't be refunded in the event of porting to a different carrier unlike postpaid which after a long enough wait Rogers will refund the overpayment (so Rogers gets to keep the customer unless that customer doesn't care about their balance whatever the amount)

[lmcjipo]

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@OLDYELLR wrote:

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@lmcjipo wrote:

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Perpetually banking unused sick and vacation days is a good analogy. I think they can do that in some union jobs, but where I worked, you use it or lose it at the end of the year.

.... 

I also agree a high balance would keep customers from jumping ship to better and cheaper plans with other carriers now that unlocking is free. But perhaps losing $150 is enough incentive to stay.

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Not really the same thing as I mentioned/compared it to where I used to work since Rogers doesn't refund back the balances. After you give Rogers your money, you get to use their service and if you renew before the expiration date, you get to carry forward your balance. If you forget and don't renew in time, you lose your balance. As I mentioned in another post, Rogers has absolutely nothing to lose with high balances and everything to gain.

With where I used to work, after not having any maximum carry forward for vacation, they implemented a maximum carry forward amount and paid out the remainder (which Rogers would never do unless forced/required) since in the province I live, vacations can't be taken away by the company without compensation as they is a required amount of payment that must be paid every year even if the employee doesn't take time off.

"Oh it's on the books and we have to get the balances down to a lower amount to limit our liability" argument for prepaid balance doesn't work since they don't refund the balances and the balances expire if the customer doesn't top up before the expiration and eventually (might be via the death of the customer), the customer will not top up. This is guaranteed that the customer will not top up at some point before the expiration.

Also, they have nothing to fear like a company who has 100 employees with huge amounts of banked vacation time who all decided to take time off at the same time since with Rogers Pay As You Go service, even if 100 customers have a $1000 airtime balance decided to exhaust their balance all on the same day/week/month, at $0.50/minute for every single minute, how much strain would that actually put on a network when Rogers and its sister companies (Fido/Chatr) offer unlimited calling plans for ~$30/month. With $1000 airtime balance on Pay As You Go, at $0.50/minute which most people are paying, the person would be limited in talking ~33 hours. With ~$30/month on most Rogers/Fido/Chatr postpaid plans, that person with unlimited calling would talk for a lot more than that.

In terms of a balance of $150 keeping a customer, yes this would keep a new customer but for an existing customer who was forced to the maximum balance of $150 and had money/airtime stolen/taken from his/her account through a unilateral decision, it will leave a bad taste enough for quite a few to jump ship.

Personally, if brought down to $150, I would exhaust that $150 to a really low amount and then port to a Pay As You Go carrier that has no maximum and doesn't charge for spam/incoming SMS like Rogers. Yes, I know Rogers will refund for the spam SMS but it requires staying on the phone and waiting for a CSR for around ~10 to 20 minutes to try to convince the CSR that the incoming SMS was spam and try to claim ~$0.30 for each spam SMS.

[lmcjipo]

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@OLDYELLR wrote:

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@lmcjipo wrote:

Even for those people who really want to transfer to a postpaid plan from a prepaid plan due to this change, they are getting ripped off somewhat since they will be taxed twice. You basically paid tax on the prepaid voucher or prepaid airtime (ex: $100 airtime voucher actually costs ~$115 depending on the province you reside in) and once the balance rolls over to postpaid, you are taxed on the postpaid plan and/or the postpaid phone purchase and this comes out of the $100 which actually cost you $115.

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I wondered about the tax when I renewed using $100 from my balance. I thought it would be $113, but it wasn't because the money had already been paid to Rogers and cannot be taxed twice.

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All I know is that when I called Rogers Pay As You Go to discuss the options, they told me that I could "save" my substantial balance is to switch to a postpaid plan where the balance would be moved over. I don't know about the taxes but in my previous dealings with Rogers on a corporate postpaid plan which I used to have as well as other carrier companies like Fido and Bell, "credits" to balances were removed AFTER taxes are added but this might depend on the type of credit. It may be that after switching from prepaid to postpaid and the balance moves over that it is subtracted from the postpaid amount before calculating the taxes but I'm skeptical.

In any event, going to postpaid was the only option presented to me so far.

[lmcjipo]

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@We2Kings wrote:

CRTC Complaint Form - 20 minute expiry. Isn't the CRTC in the pocket of Rogers etc? This is like making a complaint to Employment Standards. All they have to say is "If you don't like it- leave".  Contacting the media about this may be better. Better coverage of the problem on the morning/nightl news..

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I submitted my complaint about Rogers unilaterially implementing this $150 maximum with a very short timeframe where no options presented except to switch to postpaid which for low mileage users doesn't really make sense. I suggest others do likewise. I don't believe that the CCTS/CRTC is in leagues with Rogers or any carrier since they have sometimes helped. For example, mandating that all phones come unlocked, etc. Also, one of my friends had complained a long time ago (back in the days of the SAF on postpaid accounts) regarding signing a 3 year contract to lock in his price and Bell decided to increase their SAF by ~25% mid-contract. My friend wanted out of the contract without the penalty imposed (he already owned the phone so it wasn't like Bell wanted to reclaim the subsidy he got for the phone) or he wanted the SAF to remain at the original amount since Bell was charging more. mid-contract. Bell's argument was that the price plan was the exact same cost and the SAF going up was equivalent to let's say the provincial government increasing the PST on the next budget or the federal government increasing the GST and the customer would not be allowed to get out of the contract if the GST or PST increased. Well, we all know that the SAF is not a government mandated fee and it was just a way for carriers to advertise lower price plans and was a "cost of doing business with us" charge like the monthly price plan charge for his plan. He complained to the CRTC/CCTS and after, he was able to leave his contract without the penalty stipulated in the contract. If I remember what he said, the contract which was similar to the other postpaid carriers was  ~50% of the amount remaining in the contract.

In terms of the "if you don't like it, leave", I'm not sure what province you work in since labour law is a provincial jurisdiction but the times I contacted my province's labour office, they never left me with the impression of "if you don't like it, leave" nor did they ever say this to me... the business might have.

[ddtstack]

Don't have to use it up, got lucky and my balance is $139. Might up my data plan to get down to less than $50 by May and buy another year, or more likely let it run out and switch, since this is obviously step 1 in phasing out the one year renewal option. I see a lot of good suggestions in this thread of how people can waste the money they've already paid for a service they prepaid for with zero knowledge of this change. I'm done arguing about legality, ethically this is awful and if there was any semblance of competition in the market they wouldn't even consider this.

They're confiscating money paid for a service. Think about it this way. Why do you think gift certificates don't expire anymore? On October 1, 2007, the Consumer Protection Act banned expiry dates and most fees on gift cards. So people would get their full value. Do you know why? Because it's the right ******** thing to do!

[lmcjipo]

I decided to go with postpaid and once my balance is exhausted, I will port to another carrier's prepaid plan.

Going to postpaid does mean being taxed twice by the way as I suspected and confirm by the CSR who transferred me to postpaid.

So now instead of using my phone under 15 minutes or so per month, I'll use my Rogers phone to do everything from calling automated services, to calling the public transit schedule, etc.

[OLDYELLR]

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@lmcjipo wrote:

Going to postpaid does mean being taxed twice by the way as I suspected and confirm by the CSR who transferred me to postpaid.

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That does not seem right.  If just using your funds that are already in your account and already taxed towards a different service than originally intended, how can that be taxed again? It looks quite illegal.

[barndoor]

I wonder if it has something to do with buying  airtime and system access  with the same money ...Rogers has delivered on the system access portion of the service  but the customer has not used the  airtime portion  .... how do you seperate the two  for tax purposes .... therefore you likely need to pay tax on the money  when it is transferred to be used for a completely different service.  It would likely  not be taxed if used to pay  to roll over the paygo plan service for another year in the same account that it was originally taxed for  .