This is the story of how rogers killed my buzz. It's lengthy but my main inquery is at the bottom so scroll down for fast access to the point.
On a different story the (common-law) wifey and I recently raised out of poverty and became a well-to-do middle class family.(us and 3 cats). Many new doors for me opened when I started leasing my brand new car. We were at the rogers store because she wanted to get a better pay-as-you-go phone. The sales rep we got, acting out of compassion(or is that commission?) stood like a 5 foot tall monolith blocking the idea of a pay-as-you-go phone, citing that it is much cheaper in the long run to get a plan. After the wife ran her credit she was approved for a phone with 200 dollar deposit and 200 dollar account credit. Then like the fool I was I ran mine and was approved to walk away without paying for anything but the discounted phone prices with up to 3 phones on their 'mega promotional plan'.
So we figured merry early christmas to each other.
Both being cell phone newbs we obviously felt the need to tinker with the internet. Shortly after we started I said "wait a minute we should click the links to sign up for internet plans because at 5 cents a kilobyte thats hundreds of dollars per megabyte" which would have been a really good deal 30 years ago but is highway robbery this day and age. So we both signed up for the 5 bucks for 5 megs internet plan on our phones. (I later signed up for an instant messaging plan after I started goofing around with that.)
Then the first bill came in the mail.. 566 dollars, we figured our bad we got a little excited and I guess we didn't sign up for the plans early enough. The usage was 10megs and 2 megs respectively. I didn't feel a need to question it. Bill number 2 hasn't come yet but after checking the account balance on the rogers web site I am seeing well over $1100! For starters I'm hoping thats the balance as it would appear on my next bill (Outstanding balance included since the date in order to keep that off of my next bill was 2 days before the bill arrived in the mail.) Don't get me wrong I'm not a dead beat the first balance was payed off in full.
I initially interpeted the plan usage being 171 kilobytes meaning thats how much of the plan we used AFTER signing up for it. But I should have questioned it because I started to comb over the invoice for last month after seeing the new even more exorbitant balance. Both phones have 171 kilobytes listed under the plan usage and yet are charged for 5 dollars and 17 cents (I guess for a small portion of the previous months). Meaning that for 5 dollars and 17 cents (per phone) we recieved 5 of the worlds smallest megabytes. (32.4 kilobytes to be exact.) A normal megabyte is 1024 kilobytes.
After re crunching the numbers even after our initial over-excitement with the internet after payment in full rogers owes me 255 dollars. So I can only imagine that at 1100 dollars they screwed up the instant messaging plan I bought for the phone as well and are still selling me short on my internet plans with the next bill. On monday hopefully I will get the new bill in the mail so I can read and verify this. If its our bad I guess we'll be buying 1 ply toilet paper for the month of february with date nights at mcdonalds.
--- Now heres the point; I know dealing with the customer support from various companies is like slaying a different monster every single time. So if the charges are erroneous What is the quickest way of getting this reversed?(I.e. is there a number to call such as a financial department, one which is more likely to understand the mathematical principal that it would be worth 3 times as much money to put a smile on my face and have me finish the contracts than it would be for me to pay off the rest of the outstanding balance and pay the bail out on the contracts.)
Also what demeanor works best with their customer service scripts.(Because if need be I have an angry man in here somewhere)[p.s. the thought/threat of mucking my credit rating doesn't really bother me at the moment since I have 4 years of automobile lease to fix it with and my tax return will buy me my big screen tv]
I'm thinking I should have not gotten cell phones and leased the Corvette instead with the ammount I'm paying for the phones. Not to mention the sales rep utterly lied to us and sold us the product that was best for herself and not for us because even with the 10 dollar a month mega promotional plan without any extras after taxes and the usual hidden costs it would have been cheaper to keep topping up a pay as you go phone every month.
Also has anyone else had similar problems? How did you do?
Please tell me im not the only idiot out there.
Oh not to mention the wifes free 8 gig memory card still hasn't arrived and mysteriously the music store software on the pc wasnt working throughout her free month.