Rogers Data rates still outrageous

I know the recently Rogers made some changes to their data rates, I don’t have the specifics here and I’m feeling a bit lazy right now so I wont take the time to look them up. Anyways, suffice it to say they’ve made some changes. I’m not sure when those changes take effect but I can tell you that as of my last bill – their data rates are still outrageous! Take a look at the following which was on my latest bill:

Details of data usage
Date         Rate prd   Volume (KB)    Total Charges ($)
1 Tue JAN 08   OD          320.00           16.00
2 Wed JAN 09   OD           23.00            1.15
3 Thu JAN 10   OD          829.00            0.00
4 Fri JAN 11   OD        1,437.00            0.00
5 Mon JAN 14   OD          488.00            0.00
6 Tue JAN 15   OD          333.00            0.00
7 Wed JAN 16   OD          186.00            0.00
8 Thu JAN 17   OD           58.00            0.00
9 Fri JAN 18   OD           50.00            0.00
Total                    3,724.00           17.15

You’ll notice that I was only charged for data on the 8th and 9th of January. That was a screw up on their part which I’ve since been able to get rectified (with a bit of hassle) – more on that later. Take a look at the prices for those two days though – $16.00 for 320 KB of data?! WTF?! I was shocked!

So – how did I get into this position of seeing how crazy their data rates were? Well a friend of mine from work, Gregg, recently offered up his old blackberry for me to use while I wait for the iPhone to arrive in Canada. My RAZR has become less than reliable – frequently powering off for no reason and just generally having a less than stellar battery life. I figured if I was going to have a blackberry then I should get myself a data plan, so I signed up for a corporate data plan that gave me 25 MB a month and 200 minutes (I think) for something like $72.50 (after discounts). When I called to have it set up, I asked that it start immediately (which was on the 8th) and just to pro-rate it so I’d pay a portion of the total for the time remaining on the current month’s bill. The girl I talked to said “no problem”.

Well she screwed up. I had to call the next day to get things sorted out, but in the meantime, I had used my phone to download some applications (gmail, etc) and racked up a bit of data usage – as you can see above, it was 320 KB on the night of the 8th and another 23 KB the morning of the 9th. When I called on the 9th to get things sorted out the guy told me that I would more than likely be charged for that data usage since the girl the day before had screwed up. I asked that he put a note on my account stating that my new plan *should* have been effective from the 8th. He did do that.

When my bill showed up and I saw the charges (above) I knew that I’d need to call them to get things sorted out. I expected a bit of a hassle, but figured that the note I asked to be put on my account would help me out – I was right about the hassle, but wrong about the note. The guy I talked to, Roger, told me that everything was set up correctly on the 8th and that the reason I was charged for the 320 KB of data was because I was over my limit. I asked him to explain. He said that since my plan was pro-rated, I wasn’t entitled to the full 25 MB of data.

ME: Ok – so since I was charged $37 for the pro-ration then I should be entitled to $37/92 = about 40% of the data limit – so about 10 MB.

ROGER: No – that’s not how it’s calculated – it’s a certain amount per day.

ME: Ok – so 12 days out of 30 = 40% of the data limit – so about 10 MB.

Pause…

ME: Hello?

ROGER: I’m crediting that back to you sir.