Adventures in 3G: My Romp with Rogers’ Upgrade Policies

by Eric March on August 2, 2008 at 1:00 am

And so it was, through the magic of debt shuffling, we managed to make room in the budget to move the 3G upgrade ahead two weeks, which meant tonight was the night. My first-gen iPhone would be retired, and the wife and I would both have shiny new iPhone 3Gs to fawn over — an 8GB for me (’cos I have a Touch for all of my music and video needs) and a 16GB for her. The anticipation was palpable.

So we sauntered over to Rogers Wireless, a wad of cash in my pocket, prepared to bite the bullet and sign our souls away for another three years. But at least we’d come out of it two iPhone 3Gs richer. We wait patiently for a sales dude to finish with a customer and then engage him in some friendly banter as we explain that we’d like two iPhone my good man, and upgrade our account if you would be so kind. He’s more than happy to oblige — only, see, there’s this little problem.

The plan we currently have is a Friends & Family plan; unlimited calling between our phones, 200 daytime minutes, 175 text messages, unlimited evenings and weekends after 6, yadda yadda yadda. That’s relatively unimportant. The point at issue here was that this Friends & Family plan was considered one account with two lines. This is important, and will come into play shortly.

The problem, the sales dude helpfully explained, was that when it comes to upgrading the phones, there’s this policy. See, the more of your contract term you’ve plowed through, the more credits you get to put towards your next phone upgrade. They divvy it up into 5 tiers, with 5 being the highest, granting the most discount. If you’re at Tier 5, then as an existing Rogers subscriber, you get the advertized subsidized price on the iPhone: $199 for the 8GB, $299 for the 16GB. Lower tiers get progressively less discount, until you arrive at Tier 1– those who have burned only through the minimum 13 months of their contract before upgrade eligibility — at which point an 8GB iPhone 3G would cost you $450 because you haven’t earned enough credits to qualify for the fullly subsidized price.

Now, it shouldn’t matter for me, right? I’m three months away from completing my 3 year term. I’m a full-on Tier 5. Maximum discount. I should be shining a blinding beam of burnished gold out of my bunghole. But … there’s this little problem.

I qualified for the maximum discount, of course — the key pronoun being I. Or rather, my account. My account qualified for a discounted iPhone — the key indefinite article being a. As in, singular. One. It doesn’t matter that I got two phones on that one account. Only one of them was eligible for the maximum subsidized price. The other one … not so much. Once I used my upgrade credits on the first phone, that was it; the second phone got knocked down to Tier 1, which means I pay $450 for it.

“That’s retarded,” I told the sales dude.
“Yes!” he agreed. “Yes, it is. It’s very retarded.”

I’m glad he agreed, and I appreciated the shared sentiment, but it wasn’t very helpful. This was also simply not going to happen. Charge me $450 for the iPhone 3G? I don’t think so.

“Right then. What’s the number to the retentions department?” Oh yeah. This required the big guns: The Cancellation Threat.

He writes the number down on a piece of paper — pretty much encouraging me to rip them a new one. I like this guy. So I call.

The first CSR I got was just your average drone, but I wanted to confirm the policy with her, so I go over what the sales dude told me and make sure that what he told me was accurate. Sure enough, it was — and she was very patient in explaining it to me, I’ll give her that, and I was very clear in what I wanted to know, and she was equally clear in answering my questions. But that didn’t change the fact that I was having none of it. Armed with what I needed to know, I asked to be transferred to account cancellation, which I knew would take a detour through retentions.

So off I was sent. I spent a good 10 minutes on hold due to “higher than normal call volume.” Clearly I wasn’t the only one unappy with my service. I finally got a woman on the line and explained things for the third time, telling her everything that was told to me. When I got to the bit about the $450 second phone, she was surprised.

“What?! No, no, no. Impossible.” Well, it certainly was possible — though I think the remark was aimed at the two people before her and her incredulity that they would perpetuate this apparent myth — because evidently it’s a pile of bunk. Or maybe she was trying to placate me so I wouldn’t cancel my service. In the end it doesn’t really matter, because I got the two phones for the maximum subsidized price ($199 and $299), she waived the $35 administration fee, and I get to keep my current family plan instead of having to choose an entirely new plan that in some ways isn’t as good as what I have now. And of course I got the data plan and the visual voicemail package.  Unfortunately, they have to ship it to me; they have their own stock, presumably for RMAs and cases like mine, so I couldn’t walk out of the Rogers Wireless store with phones in hand.  But the good note is that I still have the wad of cash in my pocket; they’re billing the cost of the phones to my account, so I didn’t have to pay up front.  Bonus!

So I got what I wanted, even if I had to jump through hoops to get it, but at least it confirmed something: The only way to get around ridiculous cell carrier policies is to smack them upside the head with a cancellation threat.

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Posted in iPhone 3G