Contracts With Rogers

So I’ve been thinking about canceling my cell phone. The bottom line isn’t very pretty: $25 for the voice plan, $30 for the data, the outrageous $7 service fee and then there are taxes. That’s a lot of money to spend for a guy that hardly talks on the phone and has the internet at home. It’s embarrassing that my wife and I pay more for our cell phones that all of our other utilities combined.

I called Rogers today to try and cancel, and boy was it difficult and I haven’t been able to do it. Rogers says we’re under contract until Jan. 2012 and they will charge us $500 to cancel. Apparently a change that I made in January triggered a three year contract renewal. The change was switching to a family plan which saved us $5 or $10. Prior to this, our phones were considered separate deals and my phone line was not under a 3 year contract. By switching to the family plan, this supposedly triggered a contract renewal for both phones. As much as I may not like it, a deal is a deal… However, there are some problems with this. First, Rogers is holding us to some very specific and non-obvious clauses to the contract and it’s their right to do that. However, it is my right to do the same. The problem is that after speaking with customer service, accounts receivable and the tracking department, no one in Rogers has a copy of our contract. They just say we have one. That’s a pretty big problem as far as I can tell. Not only do I think they cannot enforce a contract that no one has, but it also means that it is impossible for me to review the contract to ensure that what they say is correct.

Another contract problem is that I want to cancel my data plan. I signed up for the 6gb promo plan last summer. I also signed up for Mercy. In both cases, and in multilple phone calls I was assured that I was committed to these plans for 1 year and there was a $100 early cancellation fee. Now Rogers is saying this is not possible, and that it had to be a 3 year contract. I know with certainty that I made 4 phone inquiries on these data promotions and each time I was told the same thing.

I’m not sure what I’ll do next. I may call customer service again, reiterate my plans and ask to speak with managers. Originally I was going to switch to a pay as you go plan, but I’m willing to accept their cheapest voice plan if they waive the $7 service fee.