Who is Accountable for Service & Tech. Support?

I would like to pose the question about who is accountable to support a product and the services that run on that product? My experience with Rogers and Nokia has been completely unsatisfactory in both dimensions. My greatest frustration is with Rogers: their support staff do not appear to have the necessary skills to troubleshoot anything other than the most simplest of mobile phone technical problems. What follows is my account of an experience related to unlocking my Rogers mobile phone.

In June, 2007, I purchased a new Nokia 6133 from Rogers. I paid full price for it; the phone's cost is not subsidized through a contract lock-in. I purchased the phone outright because I wanted the flexibility to replace the phone in about six months time without any hassles; my plan is a month-by-month plan. I bought a Rogers mobile phone because I wanted a GSM technology phone so that I could use it while travelling to the UK and Europe: GSM being the dominant technology standard there. Secondly, I did not want to have to pay roaming charges and long distance charges to make calls to places 3kms away. To this end, it was my intention at the outset to have my phone unlocked.

After reading a number of forums, it appeared that all one had to do was to call the service provider and explain that one was going to be using the phone overseas for an extended period, and request the unlock code for the phone. Full of optimism, I called Rogers customer support and told them about my upcoming trip and reasons for requesting the unlock code for my phone. There was a pregnant pause; finally the voice on the other end told me that Rogers policy is to not unlock phones. I tried calling a second and third time to see if the first service agent was correct. On the third call, I was transferred to Rogers Technical Support, who told me that he/she could not provide the unlock code because he/she did not have the ability to supply it and referred me to some websites that had information about unlocking phones. This struck me as a strange way to provide technical support to a (paying) customer.

I paid privately to have my phone unlocked by a Vancouver, BC, business. It cost me $35. I was told that because the phone was a fairly new model, the phone's operating software needed to be flashed. The phone was flashed to the current Nokia supported load for a Nokia 6131 model (same product family as the 6133). I was told that the reason for flashing with the 6131 load was because there was not a publically available unlock code for the 6133.

After flashing, all functions appeared to operate correctly. After two days of use/playing, I noticed three things did not work properly: (1) I could not send and receive MMS messages (so called "Picture" messages); (2) I could not receive service configuration messages (a special type of text message for configuring things like internet access etc.); (3) The timestamps on received SMS (text) messages - both local and international - were wildly off and those that I sent also had strange timestamps when received by the recipient. I contacted Rogers to get the configuration settings for SMS, MMS and Web settings, and manually configured my phone myself. Note: The settings were originally configured by the company that unlocked the phone, but I wanted to confirm that the settings were indeed correct. I tested the three problems again, and all of them were still there.

On an almost daily basis, for 6 weeks prior to my overseas trip, I contacted Rogers technical support and got nowhere. I was open with them about having had my phone unlocked and flashed. I got the usual you have messed with the phone response so you are out of luck for help. At one point, a Rogers technical support person told me the reason it was not working was because it had a "4000" series SIM card in it (which came with the phone only two months earlier!), and that the 4000 series SIMs had been recalled. He advised me to go to a Rogers store and purchase a new SIM card (other than a 4000 series card), which I did. It cost me $25, including the "reprogramming " fee (read, registering the new SIM to phone number relationship in the Rogers database). It did not fix the problem, and the guy in the store had never heard of this 4000 series problem, let alone a recall on them - showing me a fistful of stock of 4000 series SIM cards.

By this time, I decided to try Nokia. I went to their web site and got the site to send the configuration settings to my phone for the Rogers SMS, MMS and Internet services. The special configuration settings text message never arrived at my phone. I tried more than 10 times over the course of two days. I then called Nokia. Nokia's response was that their web site was sending the settings and if they were not arriving at my phone I should contact Rogers, because it was up to Rogers to deliver the configuration messages to my phone. So back to Rogers, again.

I then talked to Rogers Technical Support many times about these three problems. I finally settled on trying to solve just one problem at a time. I decided that if I solved the configuration settings text message receipt issue that perhaps the other problems would disappear. To cut a long story short, I eventually got to speak to a Rogers 2nd level technical support person, and I asked that individual to send the configuration message from the Nokia site and to trace its path to my phone, therein trying to determine where it was going (or getting blocked). The Rogers technical support person told me he/she could not do that. I said to the person, being a telecommunications company, surely you have tools to trace (errant) SMS text messages processing within your systems; I was not asking the person to trace them across the Internet, only within their own SMS message servers. The answer was No, we do not have that capability to trace messages. Personally, I do not believe this, but how can one argue this point one way or the other; regardless of whether it is true, lack of skills/training or lack of tools? At this point, after 6 weeks of gruelling, tiresome personal troubleshooting and wasted effort with Rogers, I decided to give up and wait and see what happened when I got to the UK.

On arrival in the UK, I went into a Tesco's Supermarket store (which is the largest supermarket chain in the U.K and the third largest retailer in the world.) Tesco's, among its many products, also sells mobile phones and pay-as-you-go services. I paid £2.48 (about C$5) and bought a pay-as-you-go SIM card, and paid for £10 (C$20) of calling credits. I removed my Rogers SIM card and installed the Tesco SIM. Note: Tesco's runs on the UK's O2 carrier's network. I turned my phone on, and immediately connected to the Tesco network. Minutes later I received a Tesco's settings configuration SMS text message, saved it into my phone settings, and I was in business: Internet/Web, MMS and SMS settings all installed Naturally, I tested all three problems I had with my Rogers SIM. All three problems had gone away! Clearly, I could receive configuration settings messages; I could send and receive MMS (Picture) messages, and the timestamps on both sent and received text messages were correct. Moreover, when I looked at the Terms and Conditions, it stated that if I had purchased a Tesco's brand, pay-as-you-go mobile phone,for as little as £29.97 (C$60), I could call and ask for an unlock code after I had spent £30 (C$60) in calling credits. Now this is what I call customer focused.

The above experience tells me, that there was nothing wrong with unlocking my phone or a problem with the phone itself. Clearly the problem is with the Rogers SIM card. I am back in Canada, and you've guessed it, now the Rogers SIM is back in my phone, so are the three problems.

To conclude, my question/comment about who is accountable to ensure a product and service works, it not something that Rogers appears to have the technical capability to resolve, and worse still, they do not appear to even care; they seem to lack any customer focus or motivation to make their customers happy.

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