once again, rogers’ online billing system has proven to be a completely useless piece of technology.
almost one year to the day since my last rant about their craptacular website and online-billing process, i once again experienced the profound frustration of trying to use their easy, user-friendly portal.
let me just say that it was not easy, nor user-friendly. it was a big, fat pain in my ass.
and all i wanted to do was reset my user password. simple, right? WRONG.
first off, because i’m a terribly responsible consumer and keep track of such things, i knew that my annual cable bill should be coming in any day now. but, since i’d signed up for online billing and knew that rogers’ site bllllllows hard, i wasn’t sure if i’d get an email notifying me that my bill was ready...or whether the bill would just magically arrive in my account and then sit there, unmentioned and unannounced, until it went past due. i was determined not to miss it and to stay on top of its arrival.
but – once again because of my previous frustrations with the site – i hadn’t logged on to rogers.com since last spring...and, as such, i’d forgotten my password. so i hit the handy “forgot your password?” button, answered the security question and was told that a temporary password would be emailed to me within seconds. after that, i was to use it to sign in and reset my password to something new and fabulous. (i added that last part. rogers doesn’t care what i do and certainly has no interest in my password’s fabulousness.)
so.
i checked my email. lo and behold, there was a message from rogers with my temporary password. i followed the email’s instructions, returned to the login page of rogers.com, entered my username and temporary password and was welcomed to the “reset password” page, where the very first thing it asked me to do was...
“enter old password.”
um.
what?
dear morons on the rogers.com web team: if i knew my old password, i wouldn’t have clicked on the “forgot your password?” button in the first place. you are idiots. xoxo, vickie.
so, i thought i’d try entering the temporary password. “maybe that’s what it wants?” i thought. tap, tap, tap...no. that didn’t work. after i hit “submit,” it logged me out and told me my session had timed out.
okay. :::: gritting teeth :::::
i tried again.
this time, i guessed at what i thought my old password might have been...i hit enter...and was immediately told that i had entered the wrong password, and that i had two more tries before my account would be frozen.
WTF?
i repeated this process twice more using the temporary password in two different browsers (because i remembered that rogers.com doesn’t take kindly to safari), but the exact same thing happened.
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY do they even bother having a website?!?!?!
frustrated, i clicked on their “contact us” button to get their customer-service number. before the site would give me that info, it asked me to choose what kind of issue i was having. a drop-down menu appeared and i selected “questions about rogers.com” since it was the only one close to what i needed.
a screen appeared with a long list of FAQ about the site...the fourth or fifth of which was “how do i reset my password?” i clicked on that. a message appeared onscreen, telling me to dial a 1-877 number so that a customer-service rep could reset it for me. ah, human assistance! perhaps that’s what this whole endeavour needed all along!
so i dialed the number. the number that the website specifically GAVE ME in response to the resetting-of-a-password question. i then had to go through a series of touch-tone options to get to someone who would assist me with my “rogers online billing account.” again, despite the website giving me this specific 1-877 number in direct response to “how do i reset my password?”, there was no “reset password” option in any of the touch-tone option menus.
this was getting beyond ridiculous.
after wading through the options, an operator picked up and asked how she could help me.
“i’m trying to reset my online-billing password and the website keeps logging me off, so i’m wondering if someone there can help with that.”
she paused. “ohhhh, i’m sorry. i’m actually not the right department for that, and my computer is down...”
she’s joking, right?
YOUR COMPUTER IS DOWN????? at a call centre for a WEBSITE???? this is not inspiring confidence, lady.
“i’ll transfer you to the department you need. please hold!”
and off i went into the telecommunications abyss. another operator answered.
“hi, this is whateverhernamewas, thank you for calling rogers, how may i assist you today?”
i explained my problem again.
“oh, i’m actually not the right person to talk to about that. let me transfer you to our online billing department and they can...”
i cut her off (nicely) and explained that the online billing department had JUST transferred me to her. she was very apologetic and very nice, and said that she was going to put me on hold and then find me an actual person who would help me with my problem. “i’m going to stay on the line with you until i make sure you’re connected with someone in the right department!”
very good. so i waited on hold. after a few minutes, she popped back on the line. “hi, i just wanted you to know that i haven’t forgotten about you. there’s a bit of a wait at the department, so i’m not going to transfer you until someone is ready to take your call.”
no problem, thanks.
after a couple more minutes, she returned, said the department was ready and conference-called me with a rather unfriendly fellow in whatever magical corner of the rogers call centre handled passwords.
very brusquely, in a tone that implied “okay, moron, you’re clearly too dumb to navigate the complexities of our amazing web portal so now i have to waste my time talking you through it,” he said:
“you need to go to www.new.rogers.com.” then there was silence on the line.
“do you want me to do that NOW?” i asked.
“yeah.”
would it have killed him to maybe ask me if i was actually online at the time? because i wasn’t. i was on the PHONE. so i got up, went to the computer, waited for it to connect, typed in the URL and saw a page that looked remarkably similar to the one from which i’d already been booted four times.
“okay, i’m there.”
“enter your temporary password, then just follow the instructions.”
“i did that last time, and it didn’t work. plus, why does it ask me for my old password when i obviously don’t remember what it is?”
“just enter the temporary password where it says `old password.’”
skeptical, i did it. and this time it actually worked. WHAAAAAAAAAAAT????
“wow! it worked this time!” i said, grateful that this mess was finally over.
as though he were reading (very unenthusiastically) from a script, and with the same tone of disdain mentioned above, he said, “has your issue been resolved?”
“yes, it has. thanks very much!”
“have a good day,” he said flatly and then hung up. somehow, i don’t feel he was being sincere. but whatever. i finally had a password and could view my account and could see that there was no invoice sitting within it, waiting to be paid. but i will be checking that account daily (now that i have that password tattooed on the inside of both eyelids) until it arrives.
then i will pay it.
then i will IMMEDIATELY opt out of this stupid-ass, endlessly frustrating and totally lame online billing system to go back to paper invoices sent through the mail like God intended.
