How Rogers Completely Screwed Up My Account - And Doesn’t Care

So we moved.

To Toronto.

And I will write all about it, all about the tough decision to move and the stressful and gutwrenching process of selling the home I loved and packing and moving and long distance and adjustment soon, but in the meantime, do I have a story for you.

It’s a story of corporate bullshittery, laziness, and accountability or lack thereof.

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I’ve had a cell phone account with Rogers since 2007. Just a plain old cell phone account with some data. Over the years, we have had to resist numerous attempts by Rogers to consolidate my account with the account we had with them at the house for cable and internet. I wanted to keep the account records clean for bookkeeping purposes. I’m a consultant, and if I need to expense any part of my cell phone usage, it’s easier to do if the bill is separate. But Rogers has this thing, you see. They can’t stand having more than one account at the same address. (It made the news a few years ago when a woman’s affair was exposed because Rogers merged her cell phone account to her husband’s account without permission.) I mean, why should Rogers care if I want my own cell phone account? I could have 15 separate accounts and they shouldn’t give a shit. But they do. Even if there are perfectly valid reasons to maintain separate accounts, they want to merge them. It’s almost pathological with them. We consistently refused. Little did I know that it would bite me in the ass this way.

Three weeks ago we packed up and left for Toronto, and when we left we moved all our cable and internet services the same weekend. My cell phone, however, being independent, didn’t have to move anywhere. I had decided to keep my Ottawa number for a little while since that’s the number everyone has to reach me. And up til yesterday, I hadn’t called to change the address formally yet. It’s one of those things on the to-do list, which is many miles long after a move. I do all my bills online, so no big, right?

With a few minutes to take care of things yesterday, I sat down and logged on to my Rogers account to start dealing with loose ends. As I logged in, I noticed the bill was suspiciously high - twice as much as it should have been. As a consultant and traveller, this wouldn’t be the first time I had a shockingly big bill, so that didn’t set off any alarm bells yet. In a moment, though, I got concerned. I started scrolling through my account and things were… off. There’s my cell phone, sure. But then I noticed a service I didn’t previously have on my account. Hmm. That’s odd. This is a cell phone only account. Why is that there? Did they merge it with our other services after all? Then I noticed more services. Shit. Maybe they did merge it? Assholes. And then I noticed another one. Wait, what is going on here? We’ve never used that service! And then I looked up and discovered….

that my name was no longer on the account.

My cell phone number and all my previous bills were still associated with the account. But it was all now under someone else’s name. Specifically, the name of the person who had purchased and was now living in my old house.

I still had full login access. I could log in to the account and see all my old bills. But my current bill was lumped in with their new services, all of which I could see.

Everything. The new owner’s name. Their phone numbers. Their services. And not only could I see them, I could manipulate them. Cancel or upgrade. Schedule appointments. Reset PINs. Order new channels. Pay per view. Dirty movies. The power was all at my fingertips.

I immediately called Rogers and spent the better part of my afternoon on the phone with them as they attempted to sort this out. They were just as confused as I was, trying to sort out the mess. And they were apologetic that it had happened, certainly, but really, that doesn’t fix anything.

The upshot is, some phone jockey got lazy and instead of creating a new account at that address which is what s/he totally should have done, they instead just pulled up my existing account and did a name change on it because it was at the same address.

I suppose I can see the humour. I can now call Taiwan all I want and be completely not responsible for the bill, since it’s not in my name anymore! But really, there’s nobody I want to call in Taiwan, and now I have this mess on my hands to sort out.

You would think it would be easy to fix, wouldn’t you. Just split the accounts and Bob’s your uncle.

It’s not.

Because of the kind of services the new owners have (which I should not know about but I do), the account number with all of my account history is now irrevocably tied to that service. So unless I somehow want to take over that service, that account number is all theirs. And I mean, it’s not like giving up a child or something, it’s just a number, except I have six years of back bills and records and upgrade history that I will now lose and I will have to set up my account all over again, through no fault of my own, and that still leaves other people with my old account. Rogers claims that they will separate my cell phone service and delete all my history from the account so that the new owners can’t see it, but you’ll forgive me if I am skeptical.

But all this hassle, me losing my account history and having to set it all up again is a right pain in the ass, that’s for sure, but it pales in comparison to the enormous privacy violation they’ve created.

Rogers merged the accounts of two complete strangers. Our only interactions with the new owners have been through lawyers and real estate agents. I did meet them once and they are perfectly lovely people, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t really see that as a basis for shared ownership of a service account. I can see things that these people specifically do not want other people to see. I could order up piles upon piles of stuff and leave them with the bill. I could wreck their credit ratings from now til Sunday. And they could do the same to me.

And Rogers doesn’t seem to see this as any kind of big deal.

When I notified them, I assumed they would immediately cut off access to the accounts until they got it sorted out.

Nope. I still have full access. And so do they.

They do not care that both parties have full access to each other’s accounts, and will for the three days to three weeks Rogers have told me it will take to fix this.

So, PSA: If you want to mess with someone’s life? I suggest you simply call Rogers, say you’re moving in to someone’s address, and let them give you access to your hapless victim’s account. It’ll be super easy, and Rogers won’t give a damn.

In the meantime, I am researching PIPEDA complaints. Because this one’s a whopper.

Postscript: I have images I meant to put on this post, but I am having uploading problems with WordPress, so just imagine all kinds of nifty screenshots with blurred out account and phone numbers pointing out the shit I should not be able to see on someone else’s account but totally can oh my god.

Tagged as: Canada, cell phone, pipeda, privacy, privacy commissioner, Rogers, Rogers sucks