When Rogers announced plans to buy Shaw, Canada’s Competition Bureau fought the merger, citing concerns that the elimination of Shaw as a competitor would lead to harm for consumers, including price increases.
At the time, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri pledged lower prices for customers and brushed aside competition concerns.
Earlier this year, Rogers upped the price of some cellphone, internet and home phone plans.
On one hand I think it’s ok for rental prices to go up as device prices increase. But that should never happen after a customer has a device, at that point the device price was already locked in. If they rent an additional device? Sure that one could cost more, but not the existing ones
Honestly I would love to see laws that make rental units without the option to purchase illegal. (With appropriate limits on how much the purchase option costs)
Nah, they’ve already made their money on the rental within a year. Everything after that is gouging.
That’s why, if you have the option to buy a modem to use with their service, you can save a lot of money.
Never pay a rental fee or a subsidy (i.e. smartphone) if you can afford to buy it outright. That way, you save a ton on these overpriced fees, and you still own the device to sell later of you choose.
Hey, everyone – Check out Mr. Moneybags here!
In all seriousness, I do the same. We’re pretty fortunate to win at the game of life and not get stuck in the living-paycheque-to-paycheque hole, aren’t we?
Nah, this equipment is not as expensive as peoole think. But the ongoing cost to rent is astronomical.
Plus, if you can afford a wildly expensive TV service, you can afford to buy the equipment outright.
The real issue is that some equipment, like the Ignite TV box, isn’t sold separately, so you are always being gouged. 🤑
Sure, my experience was twenty years ago, but at the time my modem was roughly one month’s rent at a dive apartment.
No way!?
The last modem I purchased for Rogers supported their 1 gigabit plan, was a TP-Link cable modem back in 2018. It was $112.
Before that, I purchased one through Teksavvy, and it was probably cheaper.
These things pay for themselves in 6-12 months tops, then you’re saving money each month.
Either Shaw was gouging, or the first couple generations of cable modems really were three times today’s cost. This was in the days where the DOCSIS standard capped out at 40Mb/s (which you only ever got close to when you happened to be downloading from a CDN hosted by shaw)