Rockefeller would be proud.

I’m currently reading “The Prize”, a fascinating book on the history of the oil industry. In the early stages of the book, the author highlights the profitable, albeit unethical, practices that defined Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company.

For instance, Standard Oil had worked deals with the local railroad companies, such that they would receive discounted transportation rates that their lesser competitors would not be privy too. However, Rockefeller’s company went one up from this, in fact demanding that the railroad companies in effect create a tax on their competitors – the proceeds of which would be funneled back to Standard Oil. Evidently it wasn’t dictated in such a transparent manner, but this was the gist of it.

The extent of these practices weren’t really known at the time – they came to light later. Same thing with ENRON‘s lengthy manipulation of their finances. And one day, they will discover the same of the Canadian telecommunications giant Rogers. And if there’s anything that would do Standard Oil‘s early beginnings proud, it would be Rogers.

First of all, let’s go over a simple fact: the people that work in the Rogers callcenters lie. In your face. They will do whatever it takes to get you off the phone – politely. This is not me being peeved, there has been a case example of this with virtually everyone I know. Evidently, something here is amiss.

The way it works is that such practices are never written in black and white. You will never find a directive that says “lie, lie, lie.” Rather, it’s more subversive – but still done in such a way as the end-result is the same. This is a tactical decision, with generals in the form of executives, purposefully setting out policies that will knowingly induce certain behaviour. For Rogers, it might be that the customer service reps have an incentive, financial or otherwise, to go through as many “succesful” calls as possible. If certain negative practices to end up with these results take hold in a particular call center, such negative behaviour might end up being the wisest choice for a call center rep.

But it’s not only the call centers. For instance: I recently purchased a Blackberry. The cost of such a device, if you sign on for a three year contract, is $199. If you don’t, it’s $550. So I signed on to a three year contract, as my old one was to expire that very month. How much did they charge me? $550.

Figuring something was amiss, I called their call center. They informed me that the three year contract deal was only for first-time customers. Funny, I thought – everyone else I’ve known to renew a contract has not been denied the associated deals.

I told him that it would of thus been wiser for me to let my contract expire, and cancel my service? Then, as a new customer, I could of saved myself $250! “Oh, no no no” he claimed. There was a bit of disconnect though. He eventually claimed that as a returning customer, I still got a discount… they would now only charge me $400. Okay, so now this is better than the $550.

I got my bill today. They charged me the $550 for the phone. It was to be expected.

And then you have the technician sham. You see, due to telecommunications legislation, third parties are able to use Rogers’ infrastructure for their own ISPs. This is anti-monopoly legislation – Bell has to do the same thing. Rogers doesn’t like this; it would rather that people use their ISP.

And thus we get the practice of the “predictable unreliability of Rogers technicians.” You see, when you sign up with an ISP, you set up an appointment with a Rogers tech. Now if your ISP is Rogers, you’ll be up within a reasonable amount of time. But if your ISP is not Rogers, well the technician will conveniently not show up for the appointment. Multiple times. Again, this is predominant. Smaller ISPs even out-and-out say to their customers to expect such behaviour.

Bell is just as bad in this department, but this isn’t about Bell. This is about Rogers. Now let’s go into another, unethical, practice shall we? This is best exemplified by the following Q&A.

Q: How much does it cost for a $20 cellphone plan with Rogers?
A: $40.
Q: Wait… Huh?

You see, Rogers will add all these fees to a basic cellphone plan. They charge you an extra $10 on top of your $20 plan for using (“accessing”) the network. Theoretically, that’s what your plan is for – using the network. But still, they charge you this. Then they charge you for 911… Now these are costs that are incurred no matter what – Rogers knows that no matter what, they will be part of your bill.

And yet, when you sign on to a plan, they abstain from including these “additional” fees. They aren’t additional, they’re base fees. Additional would be getting elective services such as call waiting, caller ID, voicemail, etc.

No, this is blatant false advertising. This is something that all the large cellphone providers here do, but again – I’m focusing on Rogers. There’s another major unethical practice that Rogers undertakes: abstaining from providing you with your calltime for the month, or data usage.

This goes back to the large revenue that Rogers derives from people that go over their plan limits. For instance, Rogers charges you say $30 for 200 minutes of talk time. For every minute over that, however, they charge you an extra $0.30/minute. So, for instance, if you talked for 300 minutes, your bill will not be $30… but rather double that.

I’m not really against this practice of charging that much extra for those who exceed their plan limits, so much as the fact that Rogers purposefully hides your calltime information from you. They do this so that you do in fact remain unaware whether you’re over the limit or not. This is in the hopes that people actually do exceed their limits.

Rogers even locks the “call time” features on a selection of their phones. They could very easily have it displayed on your account online – they certainly know and keep track of every call. It’s not a matter of logistics. It’s a matter of again, business strategies. They’re completely unethical – but Rogers does this. But from a legal standpoint, Rogers is untouchable. What is it they’re doing wrong? You can’t sue them because they aren’t offering what would amount to “additional services”, despite the zero cost of implementation. It’s win-win for them.

But as costly as it is for regular calls, Roger’s makes it even worse for their corporate types. It costs me $60/month for 25MB of data with my Blackberry. For every MB that I exceed, they charge me $7. That’s pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as what they charge corporate types that use their Blackberries while in the USA: $500/MB. You read that right.

In fact, you can still incur those charges if you’re in Canada. If you’re anywhere near the border, then your Rogers phone will divert away from the Rogers network and onto an American telco. And Rogers does advertise this in their fine print, as much as third-party energy plans (read: scams) for a constant hydro rate advertise in the fine print of their contract that they aren’t your power energy company. But like most people, this is glossed over – and the seamless transition of service from Rogers to the American counterparts insures that no worries are raised… up until the bill shows up.

I had talked to a Rogers representative about this. They grinned. As it turns out, despite the exorbitant fees, there is no infrastructure in place to disable the data part of the Blackberry when roaming. The rep informed me that there was a semi-solution, in the form of diverting emails away from your device – but that was it.

Meanwhile, many corporate customers are being tagged with these insane fees. The $1/minute that Rogers charges for the voice communications part of the cellphone is nothing compared to the data fees. Tons of Canadians travel to the US on at least a semi-regular basis… and to that extent I’m sure Rogers is just watching the cash roll in.

It’s pretty easy for Rogers. Again, all they have to do is nothing. It’s win-win for them. Their execs are of course fully aware of these sources of revenues. For them not to be complicit in these unethical practices would mean that they would be completely unaware of their financial structure.

Rockefeller would be proud.