Saturday, December 19, 2009

Loyalty – Rogers Communications Has None

My wife has been a customer of Rogers Communication for 13 years. If you’re reading this from the US, Rogers is our version of AT&T/Verizon – insert name of giant, faceless corporation here.

Today we called up Rogers and asked them if they could work with us and help us get an i-phone. “Sure,” was there response, “if you pay us $300 dollars each, we can give you an I-phone. Now doesn’t that sound like a deal?”

Well yes, it does – a bad one; especially when you consider that a person walking in off the street can get the same I-phone for $99. Apparently we don’t have the tenured revenue (doesn’t that sound fancy?) to qualify for that deal. Essentially, because we are already their customers, we don’t qualify to save.

So why then, Rogers, should we continue to be customers after our current contract?

Loyalty should work both ways and with big corporations it often doesn’t – especially when they have you by the balls in the middle of a three year contract. Think about it like a baseball player who signs a big deal and rests on his laurels for a couple of seasons and only ups the production in the final year of a contract so that when its time to renegotiate he looks good.

Now the major competitor, Telus Communications, has the same I-phone for the same deal.

Tell me Rogers Communication – why are you better than the competition? In this glorious age where dropped calls are no longer an issue, what separates you from the competition? It certainly isn’t your customer loyalty program.

You see Rogers, though I have an inkling that Telus would say the same thing if we were in the same position with them the point is, I don’t know that. There’s still the hope that if in the final year of the same phase with Telus they might say: “Ah sure, you’re been a loyal customer let’s see what we can do?”

I now know Rogers Communications puts no store in loyalty.

You have us for a year, but then we’ll take our loyalty elsewhere, where it might be appreciated.

PS oh, and we’ll make sure to let our friends and families know how much you value repeat customers (not at all).

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Also, Telus pays our mortgage so...yeah.

Rabdo said...

These days, cell companies reward disloyalty instead. I've heard of people getting crazy good customer retention deals. So when your contract is up, you should call them up and tell them that you're leaving for a better deal at Telus. Then when they offer you the deal, you go to Telus and ask them if they can beat the deal.

Unknown said...

When I cut off Rogers cable they started to send me letters, by courier!, saying how much they miss me. Ha. Bell has been good to me (shocking, I know), and I am not going back to the big red giant. The second I figure out what HSPA means, and that it essentially = GSM, I'm switching my blackberry to Bell.