Letter from a Rogers dodger

I received this story from a reader and then heard about the same problem on the CBC morning show earlier today. The problem seems to be not just that customers have been left without television service, but that the customer service reps at Rogers seem to have been totally unprepared to field customer questions about a so-called "known issue". Hopefully now that the story has hit the media, Rogers will be quicker to resolve, but really, should paying customers have to wait for Jeff Gilhooly to call them out before publicly addressing such a widespread issue?

"Roger's cable service in Corner Brook and area has been horrible since at least the end of August. I don't have Rogers myself, but my parents do. I've noticed over the Christmas break that no matter where I was, cable from Rogers had poor sound - it would drop off for a few seconds at a time making it difficult to enjoy a program. This was constant for hours on end. Also, the picture has been breaking up. I've seen this at friends' houses and relatives' houses when I visited.

In fact, there was an article in the Western Star regarding this a couple weeks ago. http://www.thewesternstar.com/index.cfm?sid=313866&sc=23

I called Rogers and the first person I spoke to told me that they were not experiencing any problems in the Corner Brook area and it must be with the service at my parents house. I explained that every one is complaining about it and that I saw the same problems at a number of friends and relatives. Still, she insisted that she can't do anything about other people's service, they have to call in as well. She wanted me to wait at home all day for a tech to come and check out my service. I explained to her that there was an article in the local newspaper that named a representative of Rogers who said they WERE aware of the problem. I asked to speak to a supervisor who said she's look into it and get back to me. She did in fact get back to me and confirmed that they are aware of the problem "for some time" and are working to resolve it. She had no idea how long it will take.

I can understand that things can break, and problems arise, but this problem has been going on for FOUR months! Come on! This is Rogers. It's their business. I can understand if Rogers was a brand new company offering cable tv for the first time. But this is four months and counting now with no estimation for resolution!

I've also discovered today, that Rogers cable tv in St John's has been very poor - a lot of missing channels, guide feature not working, poor audio and picture coming and going since around Christmas day. This seems to be a huge problem with Rogers in multiple areas of the province and they keep saying they are aware of a problem with no known time for solution.

I had a beef with Rogers when they started enforcing their cap on internet and at that time, I disconnected all of my services with them. I'm definitely glad I did seeing the trouble with them now."

You can find the podcast of the CBC morning show spot here: http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/nlstjohnmorn_20100106_25341.mp3