Rogers and Fido: Liars, Liars, Pants on Fire

#imsev115-031 / gettyimages.com

Morning update: I can't text anyone because the loaner phone from Fido is too small to see and the keyboard is made for rodents.

It's nearly 11 p.m. and I am in a technology conundrum.
I can't sleep having spent the better part of the day and night in consultation with Fido and Rogers about my a) crap Android phone and b) my move-over to Rogers from Bell Fibe.
Let's recap.
About a year ago, I bought a Galaxy phone and it never did work. I took it back to Fido, my carrier, and got it fixed once. But it still was crapping out on me, so I took it back again. Then I got frustrated, figuring I had a lemon phone and bought a new one, at a cost of nearly two hundred bucks, less the crappy discount.
Scott told me that the Nexus Five was the bomb, but mine was more like a fizzled firecracker. On Sunday, the damned thing stopped taking and receiving calls. Today, Scott took it back and it's in for repairs for 15 days. That leaves me with a rental, that should be in the Museum of Science and Technology. It looks like something Maxwell Smart might have tossed in a fish tank back in the Sixties.
Needless to say, I was not impressed and put Scott on the phone to see if the phone I'd just bought a month ago could be exchanged. It could not.
We were offered the waiving of a $25 fee and a discount on a new phone which just meant I would have to fork out another $300 for yet another crap phone.
Thank you, Rose, thank you very much for being a loyal subscriber to Fido.
In another galaxy, far, far, away, I engaged with Rogers Cable this evening to rectify problems associated with my switch from Bell Fibe back to Rogers. I left Rogers a year ago because the damned company lies like a Persian rug.
The switch back to Rogers was truly heart felt.  Bell Fibe kept cutting out ten to twelve times a day, usually in the middle of a compelling Roger Federer match or the end of Dexter.
The offer I was given by Rogers was that I could switch back for $110 bucks a month for a year and then my bill would rise to $150 the year after. Not bad, not bad, I thought. We signed up, and on my birthday, I received my brand spanking new Rogers cable boxes and Internet.
Unfortunately, the VIP service I had ordered had changed since I was last a subscriber.
The old service included TMN and HBO.
Not anymore.
Apparently, there are three or four versions of VIP, depending on who you talk to at Rogers.
Ours didn't include anything good, so we spent my birthday and weekend watching Big Bang Theory reruns.
We called at least a dozen times and my calls were dropped. Nobody could explain why we didn't get the services we ordered.
Tonight, I'm told we owe Rogers not $110 but $280, that our service does not include TMN and HBO, and that there was no evidence that Rogers added a credit to compensate us for switching from Bell, which tells us we have to cancel 30 days in advance.
Fortunately for us, we have our offer in writing.
We'll see what tomorrow will bring.
All I can say is bring on the competition.
Anything is better than the crap we're getting in Canada today.
Or is it?
 

And now this.