Rogers, my previous cell phone provider, is ridiculous.

So for those of you who don’t know, I just moved from Montreal to Toronto. There are very few people who call me these days, but some still do and keeping my old Montreal number subjects me to a bunch of long distance fees I didn’t want to pay every time someone dials my number while I’m here.

I really didn’t want to go to the trouble of changing my cellphone company, so was ready to just switch my number and keep my $60/mo. plan with Rogers. I knew it was kind of expensive, but they haven’t given me much trouble and I do put a premium on my time not being occupied with changing service providers. I also figured I had bigger fish to fry in terms of finding budgetary savings.

But no, apparently the “market” in Ontario is “less competitive”, so my plan doesn’t exist here. After an hour and several levels of polite escalation (in strict violation of the “don’t waste my time” rule), the best they could give me was a $70/mo. plan (a $10 increase) with a decrease of 3gb data -> 2gb. I gave them plenty of opportunities to relent, but they wouldn’t budge. They claimed there was no reasonable alternative.

Did some shopping around: unfortunately Wind (the best value) didn’t seem to work with my Nexus 5, so I went with Virgin Mobile who looked like the next best option. Up and running in just half an hour, and will probably be paying no more than $50 a month now.

So what happened to the legendary Rogers customer retention department? How do they think they can get away charging these kinds of rates?