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Canadian Android Carrier Forcing Firmware Update
Wolfier writes "For wireless carrier Rogers in Canada, it seems that 'Customer Safety' only becomes a concern after months of neglect. Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada and so the only choice for Android users. Months ago, a customer called Rogers to report a firmware bug that was preventing users from making 911 calls under certain circumstances, and informed the carrier that Google had fixed the bug (recording of that call). But Rogers is only doing something about it now — namely, cutting data access of paying customers until they accept a mandatory firmware upgrade that not only fixes the 911 problem, but also contains 'extra' features that prevent users from ever gaining root access to their phones — even non-subsidized ones. And some phones are also getting bricked by this 'official' update. The moral: we really need to open up the competition here up North."
Considering that Rogers isn't giving you data service anymore, a service that you pay for, could this be used as a way to break out of the contract?
After all, they refuse to provide the data service, they're not holding up their end of the deal, and you're paying for a service you cannot use.
Hell, at least call them and demand a credit for service not provided. Or move the SIM card to an iPhone and demand they activate the data service.
It's not like the data comes with the plan - you're free to buy any voice plan with a data plan.
My experience too.
I live in Europe (UK at the moment) and took my (unlocked) GSM phone to Canada when I went on vacations there. Since I was going to be there for almost a month, I bought a SIM card from Rogers to use in Canada and avoid roaming costs.
My experience:
- A Pay-As-You-Ggo (i.e. no contract) SIM is ridiculously expensive (C$50 with no included minutes). For comparisson sake, £35 (about C$60) in the UK with no contract gets me a SIM card, a mobile network dongle (really!) and includes £15 in credit (and the UK is hardly the cheapest mobile phone market in Europe, in Holland I got a SIM card for 5 EUR).
- In Canada you pay to receive calls (wtf!)
- Top-ups expire after a while: in other words, you load money into the phone and if you don't use it before a set deadline date then Rogers just takes it away.
- Making calls does cost about 2/3 of what it costs in the UK. Again, please note that the UK is far from the cheapest mobile market in Europe.
- Checking your voicemail is free in the UK but costs money with Rogers in Canada.
To top it all up, they assigned me a mobile number which was re-used from somebody else and came subscribed to some "pay-to-receive one SMS joke a day" scam - this required a call to Rogers support where they first tried to deny all responsability and finally relented and repayed the money taken from my account only after I got angry, mentioned that number re-use was not my choice - their problem not mine - and mentioned something about "deceitfull sales practices" and that maybe it should be escalated to the local regulatory entities. I had to demand a block be put on all SMSs to that number to avoid further such issues.
All in all I'm happy this was only for a month and I don't see how you Canadians take it.