Rogers Internet Won't Let Go...

So, my saga with Rogers continues. On Saturday they were to have ceased all Internet activity on my cable line, and yet they continue to mount a de-facto Denial Of Service attack on my house, preventing me from getting the TekSavvy service I've been paying for for the last 5 days. While DOS attack sounds harsh, it describes what's happening. Their system is continuing to try to attach itself to my router, thus preventing me from connecting with my new Internet provider.

I filed a ticket with Rogers via TekSavvy explaining the problem. Rogers responded 45 hours later—just within their 48 hour deadline—explaining that there was no problem and service should be working normally. I conducted a full shutdown of my cable modem and computer, waited 5 minutes, then restarted my system to discover that I was still being assigned a Rogers IP address.

TekSavvy looked into the issue and discovered that somehow Rogers had interrupted service at the wrong address. No, not over confusion over non-existent apartments within my house, which Rogers had earlier used to explain why I couldn't receive service from TekSavvy. No... This time they managed to disconnect the Internet service of a total stranger, whose address is completely different from mine.

The remedy? Another carefully worded ticket, fully but simply explaining what they'd done wrong in fixing their problem. ETA to solution? Another 24-48 hours. Meanwhile, some other Rogers customer is without service because their line was inexplicably cut.

At this point I fully expect to wake up tomorrow morning (after the 48 hour deadline), reset all my equipment, and continue to find that the Rogers Denial Of Service attack (a.k.a. Online Modem Activation) is continuing to latch onto my new cable mode, blocking my TekSavvy Service.

It's hard to blame TekSavvy for all of this. Their Customer Service Reps have varied from good to excellent, but because their company is a wholesale re-seller of Internet service over Rogers own lines they are limited by what Rogers does (or fails to do). The ridiculously poor service and incompetent, careless mistakes that have left me without home Internet for nearly a week now are as a result of Rogers not treating TekSavvy like a valued customer. Sad, but it's not hard to understand why that might be the case.

Rogers would obviously prefer not to have to allow for competition by leasing out its lines to small competitors. But as the local monopoly, there isn't a lot of room to move in and create competition without this reselling provision. How motivated is Rogers to provide their own competitor with top-drawer service?

Let's face it, the average consumer would be livid with TekSavvy after this experience, assuming that the problem lies with them.

Rogers, as I see it, is either guilty of incompetence or indifference that borders on anti-competitive behaviour. They are either poorly staffed or poorly trained in their customer service and tech support department, or they are providing the poorest support possible to re-sellers like TekSavvy.

Which is it? Both, perhaps? Is one masquerading as the other? Five days in, after having explained the same situation to a dozen tech support personnel and enduring multiple "mandatory waiting periods", it's hard not to assume the worst about my ex-provider. Incompetence is, after all, not a crime. Nor is poor customer service... but how does it affect the customer when the customer also happens to be a competitor of the dominant company?

Let's see if they've released my line to TekSavvy by tomorrow morning.