When Anil Sedha decided to cancel his Rogers business internet service, he expected he’d go online, click a few buttons and be done. But the customer support link was broken. A chatbot told him he could only cancel by calling.
Thus began what the Winnipeg man estimates was a seven hour ordeal spread over several weeks last summer, trapped in a maze of hold music, dropped calls and endless transfers between departments.
“It was a non-stop theme of ‘We are having a heavy call volume,’ ” said Sedha. “I tried calling at different times of the day and on different days.”
No matter when he tried, he says the outcome was the same: hours waiting, speaking to representatives who couldn’t help, being disconnected mid-call and starting all over again.
“How many days am I expected to call someone just to cancel a simple internet service?” he asked.
Sedha’s experience isn’t unique. Dozens of unhappy Rogers customers have recently written Go Public and posted on social media, complaining about long wait times, complicated cancellation procedures and poor service.
Many question recent Rogers call centre layoffs and complain about how three major providers — Rogers, Bell and Telus — dominate the industry. Together, they control the majority of the country’s mobile, TV and internet market, a problem critics say was made more severe when Rogers was allowed to take over Shaw in 2023.
Customer service experts say this lack of competition is precisely the problem.
“It reduces the need for these telcos to compete and to provide good customer service because they think, ‘Customers need us, so we don’t really need to do anything to improve our service,’ ” said Eugene Chan, an associate professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University.
A spokesperson for Rogers declined to speak on-camera, but said in a statement that the company has millions of customer interactions every month and works hard “to deliver a great experience.”
While customers complain about poor customer service, Rogers appears to be reducing the number of people who handle those calls.
The company recently ended its contract with Foundever, a Miami-based company that employed hundreds of Canadians who handled Rogers customer service calls. Neither Rogers nor Foundever will say exactly how many people were laid off, or whether those positions were moved elsewhere.
Two former employees who lost their jobs in those layoffs say they were told in staff meetings that Rogers, like so many other large corporations, is “driving digital adoption” — which they believe means more use of AI.
Both said that much of their time in the past year was spent training AI systems.
Rogers customers complain of hours spent on hold as service reps laid off | Go Public
Using a tool called Agent Assist, the AI would listen to calls, generate notes and even suggest troubleshooting steps to the employees. Agents had to approve or correct the AI’s responses, a process monitored closely through their performance metrics on every call.
“Recently, they released something where it actually tells the agent what troubleshooting steps to take,” one former employee explained. “It’s hearing the customer’s issue, so the agent doesn’t have to figure it out.”
CBC is not identifying the former employees, because they fear professional repercussions.
While AI may streamline operations for Rogers, the former worker said it risks removing the human element that many customers need.
“I think it’s going to cause customers to feel the coldness, not the warmness from an agent,” said the former customer service agent. “If a family member has passed away and someone is calling to close an account, how can AI have compassion?”
Another former employee echoed the concern, saying Rogers’ policy often requires agents to pitch offers or upsell customers, even during sensitive calls. He says human agents can decide not to do that, even though they might get in trouble, but suggested AI agents wouldn’t make the distinction.
Rogers says its investment in AI is “enhancing” its customer service by making it easier for agents to find solutions “more efficiently.”
Rogers is under scrutiny by regulators because, as part of conditions for the Shaw merger, the company has to create 3,000 jobs in western Canada by 2027.
The telco giant says it’s on track to achieve that, with more than 1,800 jobs already created. But the merger conditions don’t prevent them from reducing staff in other regions. The recent layoffs at Foundever don’t count as a staff reduction at Rogers, because they were contract employees.
At the time of the merger, Rogers also promised to move overseas jobs back to Canada to provide “100 per cent Canadian-based customer service.”
But now, a Rogers spokesperson says “the majority” of agents are based in Canada. He wouldn’t specify how many jobs have been moved offshore.
Dealing with Rogers has also been exasperating for Fran Munro of Pender Island, B.C.
A few months ago, a technician arrived to replace her old modem — a routine service call that turned into a billing nightmare because it created a new account, while their old one was never closed. As a result, Munro and her husband received bills for two separate accounts.
Despite paying the new bill each month, they continued to get overdue notices for the old account — and, eventually, they were given a warning that their service would be disconnected if they didn’t pay.
Like Sedha, she spent hours on hold, was repeatedly transferred between departments and still couldn’t find anyone who could fix the problem or even explain what went wrong.
“I wasted a lot of time and some sleepless nights wondering, ‘What am I doing wrong here? Why can I not get in touch with anybody?’ ” said Munro. “It’s just extremely frustrating.”
Then Rogers cut off the couple’s television service, which Munro suspects was due to the billing confusion.
It was only after she contacted the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) — an independent ombudsman that handles unresolved telecom disputes — that they finally got help. The CCTS doesn’t handle general customer service complaints, but was able to intervene because the issue involved billing errors.
Rogers apologized for the “frustrating experience,” reduced Munro’s monthly bill by $40 and offered a one-time $250 bill credit as a “goodwill gesture.”
Munro said she’s relieved to have the situation resolved but remains frustrated by how difficult it was to reach a solution.
Meanwhile, other countries are mandating minimum levels of customer service and forcing companies to make it easier to cancel contracts.
Spain is drafting legislation to force large companies to answer 95 per cent of calls within three minutes and limit how automated systems are used. The EU is adopting rules to make it easier to cancel contracts and Germany already requires companies to provide “two-click cancellation” for many contracts.
Canada has no such legislation, aside from a law that allows users to cancel mobile services simply by signing up with a new provider. Chan says the telcos don’t need to provide good customer service, because there are no rules to make them.
“They can get away with it in some ways because there’s so few federal regulations that govern the customer service experience,” he said.
Keldon Bester, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP), says there should be legislation to ensure customers don’t experience unnecessary friction when ending a service.
“It should be as easy to cancel a service as it is to sign up for one,” he said.
Sedha agrees.
“What’s so complicated with just giving a simple, ‘I want to cancel button’?” he asked.
In a statement to Go Public, a spokesperson for the ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada said the government has taken steps to make the industry more competitive, such as allowing telecom providers to seel internet on their competitors’ neworks.
After weeks of frustration, Sedha finally learned that to cancel his service, he’d need to send an email — something no one had mentioned in his many previous calls.
“My first reaction was, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” he said.
A Rogers agent then said he would be dinged for another month of service because he had to send back the equipment — but Sedha pushed back and got that charge waived.
Sedha’s ordeal ended in August only after he sent that final email and mailed back his equipment — after spending about seven hours trying to reach someone at Rogers who could help. The experience has left him with a nagging concern about how others might have to deal with the same problem.
“What if this were one of my family members? A senior person? Or a new immigrant?” he asked. “How would they handle it?”
Go Public is an investigative news segment on CBC-TV, radio and the web.
We tell your stories, shed light on wrongdoing and hold the powers that be accountable.
If you have a story in the public interest, or if you’re an insider with information, contact [email protected] with your name, contact information and a brief summary. All emails are confidential until you decide to Go Public.
Read more stories by Go Public.
