Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
We discovered how much Rogers long-distance charges on our mobile cost by making a simple error.
By sharing our situation, I hope others ensure they don’t get slammed with extra fees.
Understand Your Rogers Terms And Conditions
Most people assume they know everything they need to know about their wireless account until the bill arrives in the mail.
If you don’t know the details of your mobile plan, you must review the information so you don’t get a shocking bill like we received last week.
Yearly, we call Rogers customer relations when our deals are over to see what new promotions are available and to negotiate a new contract.
Even the best Rogers promotions can sting you where it hurts (wallet) if you don’t know the details.
When our bill arrived, we discovered we had gone over our mobile phone Rogers long-distance usage.
I was on the road training for work, so our initial thoughts were that calling the mobile phone from our home phone was a long-distance call when it wasn’t.
It was local since we called a local number on our Rogers mobile phone.
We don’t have the best long-distance plan for our Rogers mobile and home phone, but we didn’t think going over the limit was so expensive.
When I call home to the UK, I use a $5-$10 phone card, which lasts me hours of talking to my family.
We thought we were using the home phone for long-distance minutes when the mobile phone was using the long distance.
A big oops, that’s for sure, but we live and learn.
Cost For Rogers Long-Distance Mistake
Since we only had 100 long-distance minutes free for North America, we went over by 300 minutes.
The extra charges came to a whopping $73 on our monthly Rogers bill for incoming long-distance charges.
I was upset, so I called the customer relations department at Rogers to get some feedback on the bill.
The customer service representative explained what had happened, and there wasn’t much I could say except that we made a mistake.
Even though we made an error, I was disheartened by the simple North American long-distance charges.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks that Rogers needs to reduce their long-distance charges.
I know, suck it up, and you are right.
That’s the price we must pay for not knowing the details of our Rogers wireless plan.
We learned a big lesson with Rogers and won’t ever make that mistake again.
For parents with children with mobile phones or anyone else, it’s important to discuss how much it costs to use long-distance or over-data usage charges.
Rogers Long-Distance Dispute Outcome
The rep at Rogers did a one-time reversal and took half the charge away when I decided to cancel her mobile phone.
I was fed up with paying extra long-distance charges for two months.
Last month it happened with our home phone where we went over using long-distance, and the bill was much higher.
There was nowhere on the Rogers website that I could track my home phone’s long-distance usage.
That’s right; we got stung not once but twice in the past two months.
Track Rogers Long-Distance Minutes Manually
When I called Rogers, customer service told me they couldn’t tell me what I had used for long-distance minutes and that I should track my minutes manually.
Lots of good that does when a customer has 500 minutes but no idea what they’ve used.
I don’t know many people who set a timer when they talk long-distance, which is absurd.
With advanced technology, that should be an easy fix for Rogers to improve customer retention.
Providing customers with ease of service should be a priority, along with excellent service, prices, and promotions.
I hope Rogers revamps their long-distance plans on both home and mobile so it’s easier to track.
Just When You Think It’s Over
We decided to look elsewhere since we were month-to-month and had no contract.
It seems everyone we know has an excellent mobile plan, so the options were endless.
Then the Rogers cancellation department tells me that for an extra $4 a month, I can get unlimited North American long-distance minutes and text, including mobile photos.
Instead, they would pay the overage because that makes them more money.
However, if they have to risk a customer leaving, they pull out all the stops to keep you.
I’m glad they did because I’ve generally been happy with Rogers since I moved to Canada.
Cancel Rogers Wireless Plan For A Promotion
So, I had to tell Rogers I was cancelling to be offered a promo plan.
If you want to win, you have to play the Rogers game.
New Rogers Mobile Phone Plan
So, we are paying a few dollars more but won’t have to worry about our Rogers long-distance charges any longer.
It pays to ask questions because you never know what deals lurk behind the scenes.
Most importantly, don’t be afraid to wave goodbye if you don’t get the price you want because competition is fierce.
If wireless companies want to stay competitive, they must keep the customers happy, including long-time patrons.
Mobiles Phones In The UK
I don’t remember having this much trouble with mobile phones in the UK.
British Telecom (BT) was renowned for being utterly useless at one point.
The main difference with phones in the UK is that you pay for every call you make.
However, you do not get charged for receiving calls as you do here, which is beyond me.
I used to have a package called the Low User Scheme, where they paid you back if you didn’t use all of your allocated minutes.
My average quarterly phone bill was roughly £28 ($47) or £9 ($15) monthly.
Not what you’d call expensive, yet I still used the phone typically; I just watched how much I used it.
I had a landline and a pay-as-you-go mobile phone at my house in England.
Unfortunately, I have not found anything similar in price or structure in the Canadian market.
Once every few months, I would put £20 ($34) on it, and it would stay there until I used it.
The pay-as-you-go scheme here works differently and removes any credit you have at the end of the month if you don’t use it.
Surely that’s missing the entire “pay as you go” point?
Now we get on to the price difference; we, as residents of Canada, pay enormous costs for mobile phone charges.
Hopefully, the ever-ridiculous prices we pay for mobile phones will be brought under control because phone companies are just lining their pockets.
It gets to the point where you must be careful how much you use the phone these days.
We always ensure that the landline is used for local calls because they are free, which keeps the mobile from racking up unnecessarily used minutes.
November Rogers Long-Distance Billing
Remember that our monthly cell phone bill is typical $31.12 a month, including tax, and as you can see, Rogers long distance rates were off the charts, and we paid the price.
Although the plan below is excellent for anyone who doesn’t use a mobile phone too often but still wants all the perks.
| Regular charges | ||||
| November | Wireless usage | $72.90 | ||
| 200 Wkday & Unlimited Eve/Wknd | $17.50 | |||
| Savings: 12% Off Better Choice Bundles | $-2.10 | |||
| 100 Anytime Canadian LD Mins | $5.00 | |||
| Savings: 100 Canadian Anytime LD Mins | $-5.00 | |||
| Value Pack* | $10.00 | |||
| 6pm Early Evening Calling | $7.00 | |||
| Savings: Early Evening Option | $-7.00 | |||
| Gov’t Regulatory Recovery Fee | $2.13 | |||
| Call Forwarding/Call Transfer | $3.00 | |||
| Savings: Call Forwarding/ Call Transfer | $-3.00 | |||
| Total before taxes: | $101.43 | |||
| $13.19 | ||||
| Total for Wireless: | $114.62 | |||
New Rogers Cell Phone Plan
Below are the details of our new Rogers cell phone plan.
- Unlimited Canada-wide Talk & Text
- $35.00/month
- Unlimited Weekday Minutes
- Unlimited Eve & Wknd Minutes
- Unlimited Canadian LD
- Call Display
- Billed Usage-Invoice Details
- Call Forwarding/Call Transfer
- Unlimited Text/Pic/Video Messages
So, for a few more dollars a month, we no longer have any stress about extra charges, making owning a mobile phone a bit more tolerable.
Discussion: Have you had any charges on your Rogers cell phone bill due to an error?
I also was with Rogers for my all my services (cable, internet, land line and cell phone, or should I say 2 cell phones). I contacted Rogers back in September to see what deal I could get by switching to a new BlackBerry (not on contract) and ending up switching from Rogers to Telus for our cell phone and cancelled my land line. I went to take back my phone box and since then Rogers has been trying to double bill me and charge me an early cancellation fee. They have credited me the early cancellation fee but as of the other day, still no credits for the double billing. The store couldn’t go online to close the work order for returning the box and that caused a whole other pile of mess. When I called to complain about the entire bill and then again called back again for the outstanding issues, I told them that I will pay what I think is owed based on the prior month’s bill. I expect the rest to be credited and no late payment fees applied, let’s see if that will actually happen as there is still a balance of over $200.00 on the account.
That really bites Mr CBB… especially at this time of year when we are all working very hard to get our year-to-date figures on budget.
Hubby and I very seldom use our cell phones so $100 US per year each on each of our AT&T Go Phones handles all our talk and text needs including long distance for the next year. Our phones actually retain the unused balance as long as you do the $100 account top up one day before the account expiry date to a maximum of $500 balance on each account. It’s easy peasy and since AT&T uses the Rogers network here in Canada… we are completely satisfied with what we get. Seldom are hubby and I in a long distance coverage situation from each other… but when we are, we text as it’s a lot cheaper than a call. 🙂
We have our landline, internet and cable with Rogers so we do pay a fair size bill every month. The land line is cheaper with them than what we were paying with Bell which now has Bell’s knickers in a twist. My sister-in-law has her land line with Bell and has a nice long distance package, I’m not sure what she pays a month for it, but every time we call her the first thing she says is to hang up and she will call us right back. This is so we don’t pay for the call but it goes on her bill. She has had it for a while now as almost everyone she calls is long distance so this works for her.
We don’t have a cell phone ourselves but the younger boy has one that we use for going out of town. It’s with Bell and is a pay as you go cheapie. He keeps it topped up, usually buying the $50.00 card so he gets 3 months worth. Last time I asked him about the card for the cell he said there was about $80.00 on it. All of us regard this cell phone as an emergency use phone.
Our daughter is with Bell for her cable, internet and cell as well as her land line for as long as she keeps that. Usually the only thing it gets used for is to buzz some one into the building as she lives in a controlled access building. She gets what ever deal they have going for as long as the deal runs. She was advised by a rep at Bell that she should just call in when the deal expires and see what the current deal is and to just keep doing that. So that is what she does. Mind you she reads her bill in full so if there is a deal hidden in the small print on it she will find it!!!!
Do you still get a paper bill from Rogers?? I’m sure I’ve seen the long distance minutes we use for the land line on the bill so I would think they have it for the cell phones some where……We had to click to see the full bill and not just the summary online to find that information mind you…..Something for you to look for….
Hi Christine,
Ya, we can see the minutes for the cell phone online and no we don’t get a paper bill. It was the minutes used for the home phone so we can track the 500 free long-distance they give us that we can’t find. I hope they change that soon.
The minutes for the landline should be on there some where as we don’t have a cell with Rogers and I could find the minutes used on the paper bill as well as online if I caught hubby in time. You need to look at the full bill, I think on the page where your land line bill is detailed………
when we called they told me they weren’t available online and we had to track them on our own unless they changed it in the last month.