Back to the abusive ex

I was hopeful that leaving Rogers would be good.

Nope. Distributel was horrible. After about a year, the piece-of-junk SMART/RG cable-modem they sent started randomly rebooting every a few times a month for a couple of months, then it started randomly rebooting a few times a week, then per day, then per hour. Eventually, it got to the point where it would reboot before it even finished re-connecting. I wasted many hours on the phone with them, trying to get them to accept that it’s defective and their useless “diagnostic” steps wouldn’t fix a hardware problem. After three weeks of suffering with it, they finally agree to send a replacement. They send the same model. After about a year, the exact same problem.

In the meantime, they kept raising the price every few months, completely ignoring the “contract”, just like Rogers would do. Every time I had to call and get them to make a new deal/bundle, but they would always keep randomly increasing it every now and then.

After the third year, I couldn’t convince them to give any discounts or bundles or deals or anything. I argued with them about their garbage prices and trash website that shows a fake price they don’t actually charge. They said it’s only for new customers. I said their site ONLY shows that price and no “regular price”. They didn’t acknowledge their fraud. I said maybe I should cancel my services and maybe consider coming back in a few years as new customer. 😒

Fortunately, I happened to see an ad in the newspaper about Rogers’ “Connected for Success” program for low-income people. I contacted them and was approved. I called Distributel to cancel EVERYTHING. They put up a fight but I told them to go to hell.

Rogers said they couldn’t transfer my old landline phone-number for a few days (I guess there’s a delay until it’s de-registered from Distributel). They said they could install the Internet on Monday. They also said I would HAVE to get the TV service to get the home-phone for some BS reason. All of Rogers’ services are Internet now, the Internet is obviously, their home-phone always was VoIP, and now, even their TV service isn’t cable, it’s Internet-TV. There was no reason I needed the TV to get home-phone, it’s just their typical fraud garbage. 😠

I had no Internet at all on the weekend (technically, the Distributel Internet and phone were still working for three weeks after they were supposed to disconnect them; just more examples of their incompetence—fortunately they didn’t charge me past the cancellation date).

They came and installed the Internet and TV on Monday. The TV service was worthless. It’s a small PVR box which only has HDMI, so I couldn’t connect it to the CRT TV, and I need the HDMI TV as my computer monitor. I tried connecting it to the laptop through an HDMI-USB adapter, but the cheap Chinese junk was awful, so it wasn’t useful. Worse, there were ZERO channels worth watching. Getting ANY channels worth watching would have incurred huge extra charges.

Wednesday came and went and I didn’t call to follow up to get the old phone-number. Eventually, it was too late. Someone else probably has it now. I have no idea how many people and places have the old number we had for the past 25 years. I don’t even know who to update. The pharmacy didn’t call when my prescription was ready because they had the old number.

After wasting money, paying double the bill I was expecting for two months, I called Rogers and cancelled the TV service. I returned the TV box on the day that Rogers had their second country-wide Internet outage in 1.5 years. 😒

I accidentally paid that double-sized bill twice. I keep doing that, I schedule bill payments, not noticing I already did it for that month; I usually catch it in time, but Rogers slipped through. I didn’t have to pay again for 3.5 months.

Now, I just need to get insurance that ISN’T 4.5× what I should be paying and maybe I can start saving money again. 😠

I feel like a battered woman who went back to her abuser, but that’s how it is in North America. 🤦