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Calgary

Rogers looks into long distance billing blunder

Published: 

The sisters were charged long distance for some calls but not others.

Two Alberta sisters call each other often and were surprised to learn that one side of their conversation was considered long distance by their cell phone provider.

Lee-Ann Voechting lives in Calgary and her sister Terry lives in Strathmore.

Both have their own cell phones but Lee-Ann gets the bill for their family plan with Rogers.

Two months ago, Lee-Ann noticed that her cell calls to Terry in Strathmore were still local but Terry's calls to Lee-Ann from Strathmore were long distance.

"If she's being charged, why am I not being charged and if they're doing it to us, how many other people are they doing it to?” said Lee-Ann.

Lee-Ann says she called Rogers and the customer service rep confirmed that the calls from Calgary to Strathmore were local and removed the charges.

The next month, Terry was charged for long distance once again.

This time when Lee-Ann called she says the Rogers rep told her that Calgary to Strathmore calls were considered long distance.

"If you're gonna tell someone something, make it consistent across the board and it angers me to no end that I can't get a straight answer," said Lee-Ann.

Next, Lee-Ann engaged in an online chat with a Rogers rep and got confirmation that calls from Calgary to Strathmore are not long distance.

Armed with that information, Lee-Ann says she called a Rogers supervisor who said that the online rep was wrong and it is in fact long distance from Calgary to Strathmore.

"They just wouldn't budge and I told him, I said I have it in writing, she was looking at your internal system, you're obviously looking at the same system, why am I getting conflicting information?” said Lee-Ann.

Lee-Ann contacted CTV Calgary’s Consumer Specialist Lea Williams-Doherty for help.

Lea emailed Rogers and was told that Calgary to Strathmore is a local call.

She asked what was up with Lee-Ann’s bill.

Rogers investigated and found that a software error encoded onto its Strathmore cell tower earlier this year is responsible for the incorrect long distance charges.

"So we're looking at the specific sector now to see if anyone else has been affected and if we find that mistakes have been made and customers have been wrongfully billed then we'll proactively credit those customers accounts,” said Luiza Staniec, Rogers spokesperson.

Lea checked to see why two reps told Lee-Ann that Calgary to Strathmore is a long distance call.

"Unfortunately at this stage I can't say why the customer was misinformed but we do apologize and we'll find out and rectify the situation,” said Staniec.

Lea says that Rogers isn’t sure if other customers are affected as they have only just become aware of the problem.

The communications company says it is now doing a proactive review and bill correction and will retrain reps to make sure they have the correct information.

(With files from Lea Williams-Doherty)