Rogers, Pay As You Go and MyRogers - What a mess

Rogers is at it again. All that is left of their services are 2 pay as you go phones and even these are trying my patience. The two plans were on a grandfathered plan called "Unlimited Local Eve & Weekend calling plan". Grandfathered. This actually means we are gouging you because you haven't taken the time to research new plans. There is a new plan that is EXACTLY the same but you get an additional 100 minutes and you pay $100 a year for it.

I must mention that this is how I've been paying for many years now. I do a $100 payment once a year. Both accounts used to be on some type of monthly charge, $20 if I remember. Since these phones are used very sparingly a huge buffer of money was left in these accounts. To stop the continual wasting of topups that were required to keep this buffer, the $100 yearly offer was used. Now I'm doing exactly the same thing as I always do but now this new plan comes out and I'm not even notified that this is a better deal. Typical. As said previously you must be very aware of all the different plans that are offered at any time. As of November 23, 2015 there are 13 plans.

One of the accounts has a quite large buffer of cash while the other is almost empty. I wanted to switch both plans to the new plan and receive the 100 minutes.   I wanted to pay for both plans using the buffer of cash from one account. Nope, they refuse to do it. There is no good reason for this.

Trying to get money into the second account is interesting. I go to change my plan type through the MyRogers web portal. The only problem is that it is trying to pay with a credit card that expired 3 years ago. I go into settings to delete the credit and it refuses to do so. I go to add a new credit card only to receive a blank page. So at this point I cannot add, edit or remove a credit card. Their error message requires me to phone the pay as you go number except they are closed. The portal is always like this. Each time I go to do something, which is very rarely it never works. Can't view invoices, change payments or make payments. This happens way too often.

I finally call the pay as you go people on the cellphone the next day to remove the credit card. The card is removed. The portal after some time shows that the card is removed yet I cannot add a new credit card because the page does not load the form for data input. I explain this to the pay as you go people over the phone yet they can do nothing. The online chat people can't fix the issue either as they can't support pay as you go customers even thought the problem is with the web portal. Absolutely ridiculous.

Eventually the credit card is changed over the phone with the pay as you go people. I love how you cannot pay with a credit card without having your credit card registered with Rogers. I'm doing a yearly onetime payment and you still are required to store my credit card information? Not to mention that they must wait 3 days for credit card validation so that I'm not trying to defraud them. WOW!

The funny part now is how you give your credit card information of the phone. The operator punches in a bunch of numbers and then you punch in your card numbers on your phone. I initially called on a cellphone and every time I punched in my digits they said they did not receive them. This exercise in futility was done 3 times before the agent simply hung up on me! I had to call back on a landline because their system is so broken. This new agent says they couldn't find my account and required me to give them my mobile number 3 times before it was found. Not only this but I was required to enter my card twice again because they forgot to get the expiration date! The funny part is that this operator asks for the expiration date outright, I figured I had to punch it in like the credit card number but no. So why in the hell do I need to input my credit card digits again if you're simply asking verbally for the expiration date? This makes no sense.

The account was also near its expiration date so of course the 3 day fraud check would more than likely expire the account. At least they added 15 days to the expiry date.

A simple process like this using a working payment portal should take no longer than 5 minutes at the max. The entire process took hours. Simply allow the transfer of funds from one account to another. This is not rocket science!

I once again really have to get off these plans as simple transactions such as editing payment information is a huge ordeal for no good reason.

2015-11-20 UPDATE

The stupidity never ceases.  I decided to check to see if the second phone had passed their fraud prevention and was charged the $100 fee.  Not surprisingly the card was not charged.  Who registers a credit card to pay their bill and the provider does not charge it?  I was explicitly told that the card would be charged after their validation procedure last week.  The current phone would have been disconnected had I not checked it myself.  Unbelievable!

2018-10-9 UPDATE

Close to three years later and nothing has changed.

We are currently experiencing problems accessing your account and therefore cannot complete your request at this time. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please try again later.

I cannot delete an expired credit card from the MyRogers web portal. I make a call to *611 and they open a ticket that is supposed to be expedited to fix the issue. They once again are able to remove the credit card from my account and yet again I cannot register a new credit via their portal. Differing portions of the site whereby I should be able to change throw up errors too.

You still cannot update your own marketing preferences either as this errors out too.

Interesting fact, they have no access to email so they cannot simply send me an email easily tracking the ticket. They say they will send a text message to the phone in question within 24 hours.

2018-10-10 UPDATE

No response of course.

Call back enquiring about my ticket status and it is still pending. They tell me once again it has been expedited and should be fixed in hours.

I find it very interesting the customer support representative completely ignores certain questions posed to them. You ask a question they don't like and they simply don't respond. You then say "HELLO?" and they still don't respond. The only time a response is generated is when you ask a question that they wish to answer. I have never seen this before until the last couple of days.

Furthermore they dropped the call on me. Unacceptable!

Called back later this day to confirm ticket status and still no movement on the ticket. Ticket escalated again supposedly. Representative offered to escalate to the Office of the President (5-7 business days). Rep also states that tickets can be as long as 7 days now. A different story from each representative is commonplace as usual.

@RogersHelps on Twitter can't help as they have no access to Pay as you Go information as usual. They really do treat PAYG clients as second class citizens.

2018-10-16 UPDATE

I never did receive a response from my open ticket as usual, it's a black hole over there.

I did in fact receive a voicemail from a representative from the Office of the President but they offered no solution. For some reason they now have an incorrect email of mine and now that same incorrect email shows up as a contact on the web portal. I have no idea where they got that incorrect address and I have no idea how this is magically showing up under my account via the web portal.

I called and left a voicemail of my own but have received no response.

Nothing changes at Rogers.

I found my original activation receipt dated October 28, 2006.

12 years with this company.

Preparations are being made.