Reference #WC42215435 1 August 2011 On Jul 31, 2011, at 11:57 PM, digitaltvsupport wrote: >>> My name is Anil. I would be more than happy to assist you with your concerns. Hey, Anil. Let me put this whole debaucle into context so that you can appreciate just what my concerns are. Eight years ago (give or take, I don't have the exact year) I complained to Rogers about a poor signal on my TV. The technician who visited determined that there was a low-voltage (or something like that) situation at the Rogers ground-box on the property of 7 Sykes Ave. to which I was connected. He said it would likely be difficult and time-consuming for Rogers to source and fix the signal at this box and, instead, provided me with a new connection to the ground-box on the property of 23 Sykes Ave. Fast forward to late 2010. Sykes Avenue and its sidewalk were dug up. Our cable was cut several times and the technician who came to fix it thought it more expedient to hook us up to the box on 7 Sykes than to the box on 23 Sykes. I had forgotten by this time about the bad TV signal so many years earlier and attributed the sporadic artifacts, frame freezes, and sound glitches that I experienced over the winter to the specific channels that I was watching. The cables ran over two walkways and one driveway and one had to be very careful not to trip over them as one headed for the street. When we finally complained some six months later, a Rogers technician hoisted the cables from the ground and attached them instead to my house, my neighbour's house (9 Sykes), and his neighbour's house (7 Sykes). The woman at 7 Sykes was furious and threatened to cut the cables. We persuaded her not to and suggested that she phone Rogers instead. Not too long after that the cable was properly buried. In June of this year my TV set broke and, unsure of when I could afford to purchase a new one, on June 16 returned the "SD Box" which I was renting to a Rogers outlet. I started watching some of my television shows on my computer over the internet and, as with the glitches on the TV, attributed the poor connections, picture freezes, etc. to the servers on the sites to which I was connected. Finally, on July 14, I decided to test my Rogers internet download speed. It was only 7.5 Mb/s. In all of my previous testing of Rogers internet download speeds, I had never experienced a rate less than 9.5 Mb/s. I am paying for 10 Mb/s. I continued daily testing of my download speed and averaged only about 5.5 Mb/s over the next few days, so on July 18 I notified Rogers of the problem (case #47106628). On July 20, I was told that I would have to phone for a technician. By this time I had borrowed a spare TV set from my daughter and discovered that I was unable to get channels 40-50. I finally realized that the problem was likely related to that low-voltage situation in the 7-Sykes-box that we had experienced eight years earlier. We requested a technician for both the TV and the internet. The technician arrived on July 21, the hottest day of the year. I told him what I thought the problem was but, either because he did not believe me or because English was not his primary language (and thus failed to understand what I was saying), he puttered in and around my house for a full hour before informing me of a "low wattage" (it might have been "low voltage") situation at the box, in effect exactly what I had told him an hour earlier. I suggested running a temporary cable to the 23-Sykes-box but he declined, explaining that my box was the 7-Sykes-box. I explained to him that we had previously been on the 23-Sykes-box for eight or more years but, again, he either did not believe me or did not understand me. When I begged for a course of action, he told me that Rogers would either fix the signal at the box or provide me with that alternate cable to that 23-Sykes-box "within 48 hours". It was a hot day and I don't blame him for not wanting to run that cable himself. It would be a difficult surface run without either obstructing walkways and driveways or attaching the cable to houses where they have no right to be. The Rogers maintenance truck arrived the next day. I saw it drive by my house and park in front of the 7-Sykes-box. Some time later, after the truck had left, I checked my television signal but it remained as it was: no channels 40-50. Since it was only 24 hours after the technician's promise of a within-48-hours fix, I waited for the truck to return. If it did, that day or the next, I did not see it. So, on July 26, I informed Rogers (case #47181522) that my promised 48-hour-fix did not come. "It is now 120 hours and nothing has been done," I wrote. Carol, of Rogers Cable TV Electronic Support Group, answered on July 27: "In reviewing your account I have found that our Maintenance was out on July 22nd, you would not have seen them as they do their work outside. Please advise if your channels 42-49 are still receiving a poor signal at this time." Really, that's what she said! For now, I'm not going to get into the details of the bureaucratic back-and-forth of the following days. Suffice it to say that I am still waiting on another technician to make another appointment two full weeks after I first contacted Rogers about this deplorable situation. Why we need another technician, I don't understand. We know that the problem is at the 7-Sykes-box and does not involve anything in my home. It had been suggested that "a Senior Technician come out after the Maintenance has done their work, on the notes from the Maintenance they stated you were not home for them to verify if channels were ok." (Rogers Cable Repair Electronic Support Group, July 29.) This is absurd. If there is a "low voltage" situation at the box, you know that it has been fixed when that voltage consistently tests in its proper range. You do not need to look at my TV set to verify the matter. At any rate, as the technician who provided me with the 23-Sykes-box hookup solution eight years ago suggested, it would be difficult and time-consuming for Rogers to ACTUALLY fix such a problem. What would more likely happen if Rogers maintenance were to come again and look at the box (again) and a senior technician comes into my house and verifies that the channels still do not work properly is that they might suggest running a cable to the 23-Sykes-box and, in light of the fact that this is exactly what I requested of the technician way back on July 21, that would now REALLY piss me off! >>> Please note that your issue has been esclated to an Area Supervisor, for a Senior Technician to visit your home. >>> If this matter continues and you would like an update, please call or email us, quoting reference number WC42215435 and we would be pleased to provide you with any updates that are available. By all means, provide me with updates. Let me know when your Senior Technician will be here. Furthermore, since this has now dragged on for such a long time, I am requesting that Rogers compensate me for both TV and internet signal degradation up until the moment the signal is fixed. If you, Anil (or whoever else is reading this), do not know how to engage such compensation, please ask your supervisor (or anyone else who can). If it should happen that Rogers decides to hook me up to the 23-Sykes-box in lieu of fixing the signal at the 7-Sykes-box, I do not want any cables attached to the houses of my neighbours at 15 Sykes Ave. and 21 Sykes Ave. (as such cabling is often attached without asking for the owners' permissions). Furthermore, I expect any such cabling to be properly buried within a reasonable period of time, by which I mean weeks, not months. Finally, Rogers has put me in the uncomfortable position of having to decide between it and another carrier. I read somewhere that Rogers requires 30 days notice of termination of services. While I am certain that such notice would be unnecessarily punitive (because Rogers has not provided the services for which I am paying), I nevertheless seek clarification on the matter. I am putting this message here < http://chesswanks.com/txt/Rogers.txt >, so that Rogers and I can both share it with such people as we think might further our respective causes, which, if there is any common sense in this industry, are one and the same. Respectfully, Hans Havermann 11 Sykes Ave. Account Number xxx-xxxxxxxxx