How Rogers is making their customers vulnerable to fraud
kennberg.com
kennberg.com
Rogers also sends text message spam every month. You can't opt out. I have called on 4 separate occasions and spoken to a manager, asking to be opted out of the spam. The first few times, they apologized and told me I'd be taken off the list. After I wasn't, I asked to speak to a manager, who called me back.
He told me, "Sir, that isn't spam. Those are Rogers marketing messages." After I told him that I, the customer, considered it spam and would no longer like to receive them, he told me, "I will forward your request to our marketing department, and they will determine whether it is spam."
Best company.
You are completely just the commodity to them since they've had such a huge opportunity to control the market in Canada. They know it's hard for you to go somewhere else, so they have zero incentive to offer a quality user experience.
Recently, Bell customer service called my other out of the blue and talked her into getting a new package for her long distance on her land line. She's a senior citizen on a fixed income and she was under the impression that this was a cheaper plan. It turns out this wasn't a better plan at all. When she tried to cancel the plan she was told that she was on a contract and would have to pay an early termination fee.
The really great part is that she was never told that she was under contract and she never signed anything. There was apparently something in the fine print of the paperwork they sent her after the phone solicitation that said "we sent you this, so consider yourself as having agreed to a contract".
I couldn't believe it, so I called Bell customer service myself and I got the same response. She switched providers and refused to pay the fee (over $100), but Bell debited her bank account anyway, since she had set up pre-authorized billing. Nice way of doing business.
They've helped me in the past with stupid things Rogers and Bell have done, but they don't have any legitimate power. I'm usually for deregulation, but this market is too highly monopolized. What I'd give for a FCC
Monthly flyers under my apartment door were annoying. Visits from actual Rogers reps to my door were also annoying. But once they even resorted to having a crude printout shoved under my door with "NOTICE FROM MANAGEMENT" on it. Sure looked like a notice from the landlord, but turned out to be another Rogers ad.
They also once tried to call me. I asked to be taken off their list and the guy actually had the audacity to argue with me about why I would want that and why I don't want their service. The only way out was for me to resort to repeating "Take me off your list" over and over until he finally did.
It's really an awful company.
This year however, Rogers got a student internet plan which is almost equivalent to TekSavvy (~$5 more expensive, but it's 300GB of bandwidth). At least they're getting the message, albeit very slowly.
Because my old cellphone number was the account number, they started giving me information about the Department of National Defense employee who now owns my old cell phone number.
Hows that for a security failure on Rogers' part?
It would be really nice if there was a better way to ensure the identity of parties on either end of a phone call. In my case, an inability to remember dates causes a headache every time I try to do telephone banking where it seems to be the only type of security questions they use.
Sure, you me and many others on HN could try this or be defensive when we get asked for our information but the common customer wouldn't balk. They would just rattle off the information and continue the conversation.
The point of the article is that this style of marketing is training customers to feel comfortable with giving out personal information when they're on the receiving end of a call.
These types of attacks are why you typically see messages like "we will never ask for your personal information" from service providers.
It's a nice first step, but then they break the security model by sending emails with a link to click on.
Every single service provider, bank, credit card, airline, or utility that sends me email, sends it with embedded links.
Customers have now been trained to click on links and give their passwords to login screens if they look halfway authentic.
Browsers have been getting better about protecting users when it comes to online bank phishing attacks. Secure connections are emphasized more and getting rid of basic auth in the URL helps defend the customer from spoofing tactics.
Except that you know what happens when you give ridiculous answers to (secondary) security questions when signing into a bank account or credit card online? You get locked out of your account.
I don't think that Rogers' telemarketing system would behave the same way, but just be prepared to have to call Rogers back--answering yet more questions--to re-activate access to your account.
When he signed up for service with "Mogers" they messed up his name on his bill, instead of e.g. "John Smith" they put "J ohnSmith".
Then a week or so later he starts getting junk mail addressed to a "Mr J ohnSmith".
But to get back on topic: The policy this blogger has encountered deals with how a dealer must authenticate a customer before making any financially-impacting decisions or contractual obligations. As far as the lawyers are concerned this is to protect the company. If we mail out a new iPhone 5 and charge an account $100, then when it turns out you are not who you said that's simply too bad for us. We just lost an expensive phone. Arguably, it appears to make no sense in some scenarios like the one mentioned (where one could reasonably assume they are speaking to the correct person) but the reality is the person calling you has no bloody clue who you are. The account likely came up on their screen and the system dialed your number. You could be the account holder or a kid holding the phone.
The poor sucker calling you is likely sitting in a mile-long row of phones tethered to the desk by cords forced to listen to people complain all day long. Really, that's no different than just about every call centre. You asked for a manager... now guess what? You (if you're lucky) just got transferred to another call centre. Go figure.
Sales and service isn't all about money but that's all these big blind companies are able to see. You can complain about it all day long and it doesn't change a thing. Call up and cancel your service, perhaps then one of the dolts overseeing operations will see the light.