Some Rogers Communications insanity for you today. Sally is away with her mother in Germany, visiting relatives and doing a little touring. Before she left, we purchased a travel talk and messaging plan from Rogers, as well as a data plan. This was to avoid scary roaming charges. We decided, despite the price, that this would be prudent. Better to spend a little more than to collapse from shock when we see the bill. Well, it seems that Rogers chooses to scare the hell out of customers no matter how much money they spend with them. Sally pointed out that she received a message about roaming charges, which is why I went online to check it out. And so, consider exhibit 1, this screenshot of usage on the data plan (you can click it to get a larger version). It's from the MyRogers dashboard.

We purchased a 40MB data plan for casual Internet usage and BBM text messages (messaging of any kind has been extremely spotty on the network, but that's another problem). Remember that we are talking about Sally and not me here; she uses her phone sparingly and spends very little time on the Internet. In fact, Sally has used less than 4MB of data so far, which the Rogers rep on the phone confirms. However, as the screenshot shows, Rogers says we are over by 4 MB! Remember that shock I was telling you about? Well, I nearly collapsed when I saw this.  And so I called a befuddled Rogers who suggested I wait until the actual bill comes in. 

What stands out as particularly idiotic on this screenshot is the suggestion that my 40 MB travel pack includes 0 MB of data. You can see it just above the "Current Usage Summary".  The result is that just under 4 MB of usage registers as Overage. 

Now let's take a look at the talk and text package, which, for consistency, I'll call exhibit 2.

Similarly, her usage, according to the rep I spoke to, is less than 20 minutes. But according to the Rogers portal, the 40 minute talk pack comes with 0 minutes and we are therefore looking at 18 minutes of "Overage". Are you fracking kidding me?

I asked for a ticket of some kind to be opened in order to look into this issue, so we'll see how that goes. It may be that when the bill finally arrives, the only thing I'll see is the insane amount we paid for a handful of text messages and a few local calls by Sally during her trip (e.g. restaurants, tours, etc) but right now it's looking a tad weird.  It's likely that this is just a bug in the online billing system but damn!, Rogers is hardly a mom and pop shop. Surely, they do a little beta testing before trying to scare the shit out of customers. 

Maybe?