I've finally done it -- bye-bye Rogers ...

tim1_2 wrote:What's EPG?  Program guide?  I was at a buddy's place this weekend, and his Rogers program guide was REALLY slow to respond.  It was kind of comical.

Yeah that's the new box. The guide is basically unusable.

The guide is not nearly as bad as the PVR functions.

Anyhow, Rogers called me up asking what it would take to get me back. Someone who spoke English with an understandable accent soul help. Had to keep asking the lady to repeat what she was saying over and over. In the end just told her to email me their best offer. Not holding my breath.

So confused now. Paid my last bill today and noticed that they charged me for two PPV movies on the same day, 4 minutes apart. I'd almost forgotten about that. I tired to rent "Planes" for the girls. Ordered it, tried to watch, screen stayed black. Called their support line, the re-authorized my box, told me to try again, asked me to reboot. Nothing worked until about 40 minutes later (second reboot, I think); they told me they'd credit my account. Well, instead of crediting it, they debited it twice. So I felt the need to call Rogers back. They credited me (for just one of the two charges) plus reverted those "Paper invoicing" fees for the last 3 months (since I tried to go paperless using their online link, and also asked it during my last call).

Anyhow, at the same time I asked what they could offer me if I un-canceled the service. Bottom line, same as I have now a new NextBox-3 on a rent-to-own plan, total monthly cost a little over $178 with taxes. By comparison, the Bell deal is $180 *plus* taxes.

Bell has a better wireless deal $70/month vs. $75, plus they take another $4 off your bundle. Rogers charges $75, but give you 50% off first 3 months, plus she offered another up-front rebate of $50, which she then upped to $85. So, in total, $112.50 + $85 = $197.50, which works out to $8.23/month (where Bell would be $9 -- the $5 lower price to start and $4 off the bundle).

Problem is I had to sign up right then and there and they would mail me the phone (if I'm getting it, I want it today -- wife's birthday and all).

Hell, I've gone this far, I might as well see if Bell will match ($180/month taxes in and better home-phone deal -- Rogers had 500 NA-LD plus some features).

If not, go back to Rogers. As for the phone, I can get it also at Costco on a Fido plan -- I think it's a little less.

I bet you put less work into finding a mortgage for your home than you have for deciding between Bell and Rogers. And the correct answer for the Bell/Rogers conundrum is: NEITHER.

tim1_2 wrote:I bet you put less work into finding a mortgage for your home than you have for deciding between Bell and Rogers.  And the correct answer for the Bell/Rogers conundrum is: NEITHER.

Yup. Rogers and Bell sits back while YOU do all the work.    

I feel a meme coming soon...

Well I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 today on a Bell plan, so it's more likely I will stay with my plan to drop Rogers. Just have to call up Bell and ask them to match what Rogers was offering.

Someone on here said they had the Galaxy Note and loved it. I've gotten quite used to my bare-bones Android on the Google tablet, but this one is a bit different. My wife's going to need a lot of help. Will have to do it slowly -- teach her how to use it as a phone, first.

Just got off the phone with Bell. Rogers was offering to upgrade me to the NextBox 3, rent-to-own after 3 years, same internet plan (Express, unlimited), same phone (500 NA LD plus some features) for around $180 taxes in. I called up Bell to see what they could do. Well, they dropped the overall cost by $20 (bringing it pretty much in line with Rogers' counter-offer), dropped the last $50 of the installation fee (originally it was $150 but they dropped it to $50), gave me *unlimited* NA minutes and 6 features. I won't be getting the 50% off Fibe TV for the first 3 months but I really was more interested in what it would be for the next 21 or 33 (plus I always figured the discount in the first 3 months would go to cover the $50 installation fee).

Ironic, that if it wasn't for Rogers calling me back I would not have been calling Bell. So, on the one hand, Rogers just screwed Bell out of $20/month revenues and the $50 installation fee (I don't believe for a second that offering me six features on my phone and unlimited NA minutes will cost them anything extra); on the other hand, they also enabled one more customer to expect more for less, to set the bar for others (e.g. anyone reading this).

Meanwhile there continues to be other options that teach Bell and Rogers even more of lesson.

tim1_2 wrote:Meanwhile there continues to be other options that teach Bell and Rogers even more of lesson.

Not in my situation.

One of the things that intrigued me about switching to Bell is the app they have that lets you control your PVR. You can, essentially, use it like a remote, plus search the guide, too. Someone at work told me Rogers had the same thing (I used their web-based tool before to remotely program a recording but that tool was very iffy and not really supported).

Anyhow, I installed the app to try it out. Interesting, for sure. Kinda annoying how easy it is to exit the app since everytime you start it up you have to login (it remembers userid/password) and it has to download the guide info, which takes a good 10 seconds before you can use it). In other words, would be nice if when you tapped the back button it would prompt if you really wanted to exit.

Good parts:
- you can use it as a remote to control any of your boxes
- power on, change channels, adjust volume (except I use digital audio so have to control volume on the soundbar)
- schedule recordings
- search the guide (so much easier than using the on-screen search)

You can also watch *some* shows directly on your tablet, but I haven't been able (yet) to do that. Something I haven't figured out. And I'm pretty sure you can't watch a recorded show on your tablet.

Some not so good points:
- I had three episodes of Community recorded but when I tried to play it didn't show me the three to choose from, and played the latest one
- workaround for the above, you can sort by date (default is sort by name) and then all three episodes showed up
- guide takes a while to load up, which slows down the browsing if you try scrolling
- probably because it gets the data from the internet and not from the PVR itself (since I could do this from work)

I'm really interested in comparing this to the Bell version. Will have to wait until the 11th.

Bell was installed yesterday. Took the guy 4-1/2 hours. When he first came by he asked where the brown box was. All it said on his order was "Front of #348" -- that's the neighbor's house. The neighbor has a snowblower so his front was about 4' deep. I suggested we check out Google street view and he managed to hit the box on his first attempt.

Rogers disconnected us nice and early this morning (before 9, anyway). Good thing I booked Bell for the day before.

Bit of panic this morning since my wife wanted to work from home and uses an ethernet cable to the router. But the new router is in the family room now, not upstairs (due to location of phone outlets). In the past she had issues connecting to work over the wifi (RCMP has stupid secure settings all over) but they must have enabled something for her back then. Only problem was the adapter was disabled (led yellow on the wireless launch button) but Windows thought it was on. After restarting Windows it was fine (problem is without admin privileges you can't even run the troubleshooter to fix this, so restart was necessary).

Anyhow, with the modem/router now behind the main tv, I've got the PS3 and TV connected using ethernet and not wifi -- NetFlix PQ is fantastic now.

Before Rogers cut me off I compared TSN on both. Very, very close. When I was watching highlights it appeared that Bell was slightly better, but when I paused (and rewound to pause at the same spot) the Rogers one looked like it may have been slightly better; not at all certain. I was looking at the ticker with scores that ran on the back wall (small moving letters). Could well be that the pause on the Rogers PVR does a slightly better job. Or they are identical and I'm just trying not to be biased.

The new remote, not crazy about it yet. It's very minimalistic. But some of those extra buttons on the Rogers remote were actually useful. Like when I'm checking the guide, I could hit the 'B' button and skip ahead a few days -- good for when you want to set up a recording a few days in advance. Bell has 14 days in the guide but I have to scroll in the guide instead of jumping ahead. Similarly, there is no PageUp/Down buttons to quickly scan through the guide. I was the only one who used that in the family, so I'll have to adjust.

My tablet and laptop, my wife's laptop and one of the boys' iPods are now on the new wifi. The printer as well, but I'll have to set it up later to have a fixed IP address (and then re-discover it on all the devices that need to print). The TV and PS3 are wired. That leaves the other iPod, the girls' tablets, the Wii, my BB, my wife's Galaxy Note 3 and my son's LG phone that need to be reprogrammed. Then the old PC upstairs that used to be wired will have to go back on the wifi (if I can find the dongle).

And then I have to figure out the new e-mail (set that up during the visit but can't access it) and then send out a change of e-mail address to all of my wife's contacts (she was using the @rogers.com e-mail and Rogers disabled that this morning as well, the b*stards).

All that to save a few pennies.

This is my favourite thread on the internet.

Fast forward button moves you ahead days at a time. Channel up and down while in the guide works as page up/page down.

Hayden wrote:Fast forward button moves you ahead days at a time.  Channel up and down while in the guide works as page up/page down.

Excellent, thanks.

tim1_2 wrote:All that to save a few pennies.

This is my favourite thread on the internet.

Seriously, if you don't have a helpful comment you're welcome to save yourself some typing. For the record, it's a savings of about $40/month and extreme aggravation whenever I use the PVR. Sure, in the end Rogers was willing to save me that same $40 *and* give me the new PVR, but by this time the mind's made up. There are also some other perks, like a better guide/pvr features, whole-home-pvr (would have been a service call for Rogers), ability to move the TV around more easily, $9 less on my wife's wireless plan (the plan is $5 less than Rogers and then you get the $4 bundling discount). A single bill and they will charge my MC on which I get 2% cash back.

wprager wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:All that to save a few pennies.

This is my favourite thread on the internet.

Seriously, if you don't have a helpful comment you're welcome to save yourself some typing. For the record, it's a savings of about $40/month and extreme aggravation whenever I use the PVR. Sure, in the end Rogers was willing to save me that same $40 *and* give me the new PVR, but by this time the mind's made up. There are also some other perks, like a better guide/pvr features, whole-home-pvr (would have been a service call for Rogers), ability to move the TV around more easily, $9 less on my wife's wireless plan (the plan is $5 less than Rogers and then you get the $4 bundling discount). A single bill and they will charge my MC on which I get 2% cash back.

I laughed out loud when I saw Hayden post a legitimately helpful comment...I thought to myself "That's not what the internet is for!"

wprager wrote:

tim1_2 wrote:All that to save a few pennies.

This is my favourite thread on the internet.

Seriously, if you don't have a helpful comment you're welcome to save yourself some typing.  For the record, it's a savings of about $40/month and extreme aggravation whenever I use the PVR.  Sure, in the end Rogers was willing to save me that same $40 *and* give me the new PVR, but by this time the mind's made up.  There are also some other perks, like a better guide/pvr features, whole-home-pvr (would have been a service call for Rogers), ability to move the TV around more easily, $9 less on my wife's wireless plan (the plan is $5 less than Rogers and then you get the $4 bundling discount).  A single bill and they will charge my MC on which I get 2% cash back.  

Until they jack up the price without warning. Enjoy.