Rogers Increases Data Protection Cap; Not Good News

Along the release of the $150/month 15GB data plan, Rogers Wireless has increased the Data Protection Cap for all new and existing customers. At first this may sound good, but it is not good. Not at all. Therefore, it will be added to our growing list: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Die

Data Protection Cap Increase

Let’s do some background first.

The Rogers Data Protection Program is a system that sends text alerts to your mobile device, in this case the iPhone, when you are at risk of becoming close to or exceeding your current monthly data bucket. These alerts came at 80% of your data bucket and 100% of your data bucket. This program was put into place to essentially prevent those $20,000 data bills that everyone heard about a few years back.

Up until today, the Data cap was at $100 including the monthly service fee. So for example, if you have a $25 500MB data plan, your maximum monthly charge for data overage fees would be $100. That breaks down into $25 for the actual data plan and $75 for the remainder. At $100, the data caps and you can no longer exceed it nor use the feature. Hence, Data Protection. Honestly, it is was a great system.

The New Data Protection Program

Effective September 9 2009, that Data Protection cap is being increased to $500 not including the monthly service fee. If you have not fallen off your chair yet, let me explain a bit more.

For example, if you have a $25 500MB data plan, your maximum monthly charge for data overage fees would now be $500 + $25. That breaks down into $500 for the Protection cap and $25 for the actual data plan. At $525, the data caps and you can no longer exceed it nor use the feature. Hence, Data Protection.

In other words, prior to today, if your data bill hit $100, you paid $100 and incurred no further charges. Now that cap is moved to $500, so you will be paying 5 times more if you happen to purposefully or accidentally go over your data bucket.

But the fun does not stop there.

The text alerts have also been changed. Alerts still come at 80% of bucket and 100% of bucket but now also come at $50 in overage, $100 in overage and $500 in overage. If you have a Data Sharing Plan, you only receive the dollar amount in overage alerts and no percentage amount.

Previously the text alert at 100% of bucket would cut you off and you incured no further charges, but not anymore. Now the text alert of 100% just tells you if you have reached 100% of your data bucket and then goes on to let you know that you have been charged $50, $100 and $500 in overage fees.

Bottom line is, this $500 cap is silly and should have stayed at $100. But that would not be Rogers’ style.

Who Is Affected?

In a word, everybody.

For more specifics, read on:

  • New data plan activations that occur on or after September 9 2009
  • New customers that sign up on a data plan on or after September 9 2009
  • Existing customers changing their data plans on or after September 9 2009
  • Existing customers that are currently on any data plan. These customers can look to their invoices soon for updates (this one really irks me)

Also note that this Data Protection is for Canada-wide use only. None of this counts toward Roaming Data, Rogers applications or anything related.

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