New Pay As You Go Maximum Balance

[OLDYELLR]

It shouldn't matter to Rogers and customers with a high balance are just wasting their money by not drawing from it to renew. Here is what I think. People upset over getting their balance capped at $150 call Rogers for help. Rogers lets them use their balance to migrate to a more expensive postpaid plan. Rogers wins in the long run.

[strawberry1]

Rogers needs to provide better options like refunds and good will gestures.  Last year, I gave Rogers $100 and got network time and a new updated expiry date.  It is not okay to give them $100 of a balance without network time; and only a new expiry date.  Post paid is very expensive.  'Theft' by any name is not a choice.   Contact Global TV or Toronto Star, consumer protection person.  We need more options.

[barndoor]

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@strawberry1 wrote:

 It is not okay to give them $100 of a balance without network time; and only a new expiry date. 

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Why ?  Doing it that way effectively reduces the cost of your plan from an average of $8.33 per month to  about $5.75 per month depending on how little you use your phone . How is that not a good will gesture to those with larger balances ? 

[strawberry1]

Now, you give them $100.  You get an new expiry date.  Before now, you give them $100.  You get a new expiry date and more time.  Which is better?

[OLDYELLR]

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@strawberry1 wrote:

Now, you give them $100.  You get an new expiry date.  Before now, you give them $100.  You get a new expiry date and more time.  Which is better?

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Those are different plans. The $100/year one which gave you $100 balance to use and let you roll the remainder over when you renew the next year is no longer offered. It was posted here earlier that people with that plan would be migrated over to a $10/month Talk/Text plan unless they called to get grandfathered before March 2018. If you originally had that plan and switched, maybe you can't get it back because it's now gone.   Of course the old plan is better if you're an infrequent user.  When I called to get grandfathered, the agent agreed and said I was doing the smart thing.

[barndoor]

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@strawberry1 wrote:

Now, you give them $100.  You get an new expiry date.  Before now, you give them $100.  You get a new expiry date and more time.  Which is better?

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This is the way I see it.  Over the years you have paid $100 a year  for calltime and system access.  The balance they let you carry forward is calltime credit . I can't imagine them letting you  take that  out as cash ...it is for  calltime. 

 If you can take $100  of that calltime  credit and pay for another years   worth of system access  I'd say that is far better even though you get no extra calltime.  It lets you use your calltime credit (which you have already paid the tax on ) instead of  paying tax on another $100  to get basically the same thing.   

While it may indeed be theft  to   eliminate some of  your calltime credits the way Rogers is  threatening,  at least they are offering  to keep the plan going  if you ask and  letting you use your balance to renew .  

For the $120 / yr  plan ...Rogers supposedly gave notice and apparently everyone  got bumped to $180/yr to renew  take it or leave it  . 

[lmcjipo]

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@barndoor wrote:

This whole issue has me shaking my head in wonder .  From the Rogers standpoint  what is the point ? It is all positive to let people keep their balances.... and no negatives to Rogers really . 

From the other side of the coin  ,... what is everyone with a high balance going to do with it ?  It's  NOT cash in the bank ...it had to be paid  to access the system  ... you can't just have it back as cash .... it needs to be used for Rogers product of some kind .  If you have a balance of  over $400 even $300 ... before this happened , just what  Rogers product were you going to purchase ??  Colour me confused . 

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I agree with you that the high balance doesn't affect Rogers in the least and is actually beneficial to Rogers since it keeps people from porting their numbers to a different carrier. My high balance was the one thing keeping me from jumping to a different carrier when Rogers, Bell, and Telus started to charge for incoming SMS as they made it inconvenient for me as someone who doesn't use SMS at all (and Rogers Pay As You go not being able to stop SMS charges on a Pay As You Go account) to be charged when getting spam and having to call in every time I wanted to get credit for the spam that I received where depending on the CSR some of them would "argue" a bit more about it or would say "we will investigate it before giving you the credit".

Rogers gets to keep the customer... the customer will keep topping up with $100. They get this $100 interest free. They charge a somewhat high per minute rate per call ($0.50/minute is quite high). Eventually the customer will not top up in time and lose all his/her balance guaranteed.

For me, I had my high balance in order to use it when the need might come up. Most months, I used under $7 which would be ~14 minutes. If one month I talked for over 60 minutes (and it has happened), that would be ~$30. They don't let you use the balance for anything other than talk time and 911 fees. It was never stated anywhere that people could use/spend $100 of their existing to extend their expiration date by one year nor was any maximum balance stated until they sent the SMS late last year. They decided to go with a very low (in my opinion) airtime balance maximum. They should have gone with a maximum balance of $500 initially (even then I would still be over their maximum) and then brought it down slowly instead of going for a low $150 initially.

[OLDYELLR]

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@lmcjipo wrote:

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 Rogers, Bell, and Telus started to charge for incoming SMS as they made it inconvenient for me as someone who doesn't use SMS at all (and Rogers Pay As You go not being able to stop SMS charges on a Pay As You Go account) to be charged when getting spam and having to call in every time I wanted to get credit for the spam that I received where depending on the CSR some of them would "argue" a bit more about it or would say "we will investigate it before giving you the credit".

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Off topic in this thread, but when I receive spam SMS I forward it to 7726 and most of the time don't get charged for it. My time is too valuable to wait on the phone and argue with a CSR over $0.30.

[barndoor]

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lmcjipo wrote: For me, I had my high balance in order to use it when the need might come up. Most months, I used under $7 which would be ~14 minutes. If one month I talked for over 60 minutes (and it has happened), that would be ~$30. They don't let you use the balance for anything other than talk time and 911 fees. It was never stated anywhere that people could use/spend $100 of their existing to extend their expiration date by one year nor was any maximum balance stated until they sent the SMS late last year. They decided to go with a very low (in my opinion) airtime balance maximum. They should have gone with a maximum balance of $500 initially (even then I would still be over their maximum) and then brought it down slowly instead of going for a low $150 initially.

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 I see.  I guess my issue was I've never trusted Rogers after several issues during our time here,  so  I didn't want a high balance and looked for ways to keep it down . 

There ARE other things you can use the balance for . We have a text add on ( I understand that is no use to you if you don't use text).  I would expect that you could put balance toward the data add on's as well   if that was something you would use. 

No where can I find in any discussions  where Rogers notified users with a general notification  that they could roll balance over to pay for another year of system access .    For that reason I think  they  should back off on their balance confiscation  and give people a more reasonable time frame to use up their balance.  After all  it was Rogers that allowed it to be built up to such levels  over years ( balances  have taken several years to accrue to these levels, not just 14 months like they are using as a target in which to take it away, 75 %  in some cases) , with no communication  as to how to reduce it . 

[OLDYELLR]

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@barndoor wrote:

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No where can I find in any discussions  where Rogers notified users with a general notification  that they could roll balance over to pay for another year of system access .    For that reason I think  they  should back off on their balance confiscation  and give people a more reasonable time frame to use up their balance.  After all  it was Rogers that allowed it to be built up to such levels  over years ( balances  have taken several years to accrue to these levels, not just 14 months like they are using as a target in which to take it away, 75 %  in some cases) , with no communication  as to how to reduce it . 

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That's exactly right. I first learned I could use my excess balance to renew years ago when I received a letter from Rogers.  Nowhere on the website could I find that information. You certainly won't find it now when the original plan is no longer offered.  Instead of sending out text about the upcoming balance cap (did everyone get this?) there ought to be a FAQ on the website with details what to do about a mounting balance that would never be used.