In 2023, the Rogers Shaw merger was completed with promises of better customer experience. In 2024, that was not the headlines.
There are, indeed, times where I feel like debates about technology have gotten even dumber. Whether that is having to explain why reading is not copyright infringement, or having to point out that Meta does not depend on news links to survive as a business, I’ve frequently found myself having to ask myself how things got to this point where I not only needed to explain these things, but having to deal with people on multiple sites that insist that I am wrong on these things on top of it all.
To be fair, though, those points do require at least some level of technical knowledge in the world of technology and copyright law. when it comes to the Rogers Shaw merger debate, however, your level of knowledge on things really only requires early elementary school arithmetic. That arithmetic is this:
4 – 1 = 3
All throughout last year, I sometimes found myself asking how the hell this is even controversial. Is this really the level of intelligence I have to deal with sometimes? Yet, for some of my detractors, saying this basic mathematical formula is just further proof I don’t know what I’m even talking about because subtracting one from four clearly yields a number greater than four. For anyone sane reading this, you can only imagine just how stunned I find myself when in these arguments in the first place.
So, how did such elementary mathematics become so controversial? Simply put, before 2023, there were four major internet and TV carriers. Those being Telus, Rogers, Shaw, and Bell. Well, Rogers decided to buy Shaw and initiated that process back in 2021 for an estimated $26 billion. Even back then, I was pointing out how this reduces competition in the space by turning the ISP market from a market with 4 major carriers to 3 major carriers. Rogers, predictably, claimed that the buyout would lead to better costs for consumers and increase competition in the sector.
Canadian’s, generally speaking, weren’t stupid, however. In response, they flooded the Competition Bureau with complaints of what this buyout would mean. Simply put, it would lead to layoffs, less competition, poorer quality of service, and higher prices. In 2022, the point was punctuated very nicely when a Rogers outage shut down a third of the Canadian economy. If anything, that outage alone should have been all the proof the Canadian government needed to reject the deal. The punchline to all of this is that Rogers argued that if the government let the deal go through, the next outage won’t shut down the economy.
Canada’s Industry Minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne, did his best to pretend to give a damn about Canadians by initially admitting that there is competition concerns with regard to turning Canada’s ISP sector into a triopoly, but over the course of the debate, basically did little to hide the fact that he was going to rubberstamp the deal and did exactly that. That quickly paved the way for the speedy approval of the mega merger.
The only real resistance to this insanity came from the Competition Bureau who, powered by the complaints of ordinary Canadians, challenged this decision. That challenge was ultimately rejected with the Competition Tribunal even going so far as to violate people’s privacy rights for daring to get all uppity about all of this.
Undeterred, the Competition Bureau filed a legal complaint, pointing out the obvious anti-trust implications in all of this. That court challenge ultimately failed on the grounds that pointing out the legal problems would give Rogers the sads – and if there is one thing you can’t do in this country, it’s giving our corporate overlords the sads.
Following the merger, Rogers basically gave up all pretense of what they really intended on doing following the merger. The company quickly got to work cutting funding to things like news reporting operations, slashing jobs, shutting down radio operations, jacking up the rates for customers, and slash even more jobs. Even more hilariously, Rogers even had the audacity to claim poverty and demanded bailout money on top of it all. Literally every major promise that was made was broken within months of the deal being finalized. If the CEO called Canadians suckers and losers for falling for the initial promises that were very obviously lies, I wouldn’t honestly be surprised.
So, fast forward to today, we are seeing yet even more news about how Rogers is abusing its gargantuan market dominance to further rip off consumers. Yesterday, Rogers was before Parliamentary Committee to answer to lawmakers as to why the company keeps ripping off consumers:
The CEO of Rogers Communications was in the hot seat Monday, facing pointed questions on Parliament Hill.
MPs on the Commons committee on industry and technology summoned Tony Staffieri to testify, after he skipped a scheduled appearance last week and sent a subordinate via videoconference instead.
The committee wanted to question Staffieri after revelations in a Go Public investigation — hundreds of Rogers customers say they’re outraged after their bills for internet, TV and home phone jumped, even though they’d signed a contract, believing they had a guaranteed monthly price.
Rogers can charge customers more for things such as rented TV boxes, thanks to a clause in the contract.
“I’d like to know why you think that’s OK,” Nova Scotia Conservative MP Rick Perkins asked. “And how many other buried costs do you have that you can jack up, and rip Canadians off on?”
“Shouldn’t Canadians be able to count on a fixed-rate contract being stable, with no surprises?” asked Liberal MP Ryan Turnbull.
To be fair here, this is a very common scam for the monopolistic ISPs across the country. The ISP in question shows up and tells you what an amazing deal you are going to get if you sign on to a 2 or 3 year “contract”. They will do things like tell you that you are going to be getting features you already have, give you home security, and throw in a whole bunch of things if you sign the dotted line. The sleazy sales people don’t even say that this is a contract at all, just that they are suddenly giving you all these great things if you “switch over”.
Once they sucker the victim into “switching over”, the victim unknowingly signs a multi-year contract that they can’t easily get out of. From there, the abuse can begin at any time. In the past, the ISP usually waits a year or so before jacking up the rates, but these days, apparently, the ISP’s aren’t even bothering to wait. In some cases, the first bill doesn’t even have a chance to arrive before the rates get jacked up. When the customer complains about how this is not the rate they signed up for, the response is usually that there is no real way of getting out the contract. Instead, there’s enormous cancellation fees that make getting out of the contract not worth it. As a result, the customer gets stuck with a massive bill they never even really agreed with in the first damned place.
I know this from personal experience because when my carrier tried to pull the same stunt on my own father, I had to quickly warn him about what they were really doing moments after the salesperson left. It was a good thing I did that right away because I barely had enough time explaining what really happens in these cases before the phone call came in to finalize the deal. He actually had to ask if this was a contract because that was never made clear to him by the door to door salesman. When they admitted that it was a contract, that was when the warning flags went off immediately for him as he vehemently refused to finalize anything.
Later on, I spoke to former staffers for the ISP in question and they listened to the details very intently partly out of intellectual curiosity. They concluded that I probably just saved my father huge sums of money because they know how bad the sales department was when they worked there. There was no doubt in their minds I just prevented my own father from getting scammed.
I wish I could say the same thing about my mother, however. Years earlier, the same carrier tried pulling the same stunt on her. I had warned her repeatedly that once they get you in a contract, they jack up the rates. She didn’t believe me because she was “signing a contract”. I tried explaining that there is such a thing as a bad contract and clauses are in there saying they can raise the rates. After repeatedly warning her not to do that, my mother decided that I didn’t know what I was talking about and believed that a contract meant no rate raises. She ultimately signed a two year contract to my enormous disappointment – and she assured me that they would never raise the rates on her because she “signed a contract”.
Months later, the rates got jacked up. My mother was horrified that they would actually do that and immediately called to complain. The representative responded by basically explaining that they have the right to jack her rates up because that was the contract she signed. She demanded to cancel the contract, but then the cancellation fees came up. Ultimately, she was powerless and forced to admit to me after that I was right all along. What followed was a very tense relationship with the carrier where she, very understandably, was furious at every bill that came through throughout the duration of the “contract”. When the contract was finally up, she vowed to “never again” sign a contract with them.
These kinds of stories are by no means uncommon. It’s just every day things you have to know about ISPs operating in Canada. Unless you really know the contract and know that you aren’t getting ripped off like most people, then don’t sign a contract and pay on a per month basis.
Ultimately, this is a product of the monopolistic nature of the major carriers in the country. There’s no such thing as “voting with your wallet” when it comes to ISPs. All three rip you off just the same. If the country had real competition in this sector, these sorts of abusive market practices would be a thing of the past. Instead, when the Canadian government idiotically approving the Rogers Shaw merger, it made matters substantially worse – cementing this practice of outright scamming customers rather than working to put an end to these abusive practices.
While I do appreciate the fact that CEO’s are getting grilled over these practices, it’s hard to see anything getting done about it other than putting on a large public display. This really is a situation of the governments own making and now they get to have the joys of seeing some of the consequences of their actions. I mean, come on, who in their right mind would be dumb enough to believe Rogers on anything? Falling for the lies by Rogers that the customer experience would improve following the merger is really something that the government only has themselves to blame. Every expert on the subject was screaming for government not to do this and… the government did it anyway in their infinite wealth of stupidity. That Rogers Shaw merger should never have been approved.
The sad part is that I can only see the situation getting worse and worse. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments were never able to conjure up any solutions that would finally bring real competition to the ISP/cellular sector. Today, that story has not changed with the current Liberal government having no real plan to make a difference in this area. All they did was make the situation worse, not better. So, it’s difficult to see anything substantive coming out of this hearing – even if it puts a smile on my face seeing MPs tell Rogers that they are ripping off consumers. A feel good moment, sure, but nothing substantive is coming from this.
