A review of Rogers’ new Chatr discount wireless plan

Yele Holder, I have to add on what you have written.
The Truth of matter is that the big Canadian mobile companies such as Rogers, Telus, and Bell have been very arrogant to customers and have been gorging Canadian Customers with one of the world highest Mobile phone rates. They have also been very dismissive of their new competitors, Mobilicity, Windmobile, Public Mobile etc. Worst Yet, companies like Rogers have assumed that most of its chatr customers are stupid and insulted customers intelligence by introdcing the cheapest two band phones in their chatr line up. Now their competitors for the same price as chartr’s garbage have introduced multiband multi featured phones |Better Value for the Buck. Farther yet they have introduced phone plans unbeatable by Chatr. Most Chatr customers ended up paying exorbitant phone bills different from what chatr had claimed to be unlimited. Compared to Kudoos, were people paid bills of what they expected. Chatr customers are not happy cutomers. Both Chatr and its parent company Rogers are very notorious for over billing. Like some one said, why is it that phone companies never seem to make mistakes and under bill customers They always make mistakes and over bill.

So you see, many are excited about the unlimited plans, by these new phone companies, cause they assume that their phone bill is going to be finite.

Yesterday I went to the local Mobilicity store in Vancouver. Sales were very brisk Infact, they had run out of the popular Totem w660 phone. (A very good phone with both touch screen and buttons. It is a chinese product from a company called longcheer that is ten times better than any of CHATR phone at same price). There was no surprise to find that many of the customers getting mobilicity where former CHATR subscribers. I heard one customer swearing at chatr and claiming it to be the worst mistake he had ever made. This fella traveled to Europe and discovered that his phone had only two bands. And these Bands do not work in Europe. Another Chatr Customer was asking if he could port his chatr number to mobilicity and what concessions he would get. And another and another were also CHATR customers. Then there were those that were just buying the phones without plans. Also Present were those that were buying just the sim Cards because they had former unlocked rogers phones. So you see Rogers may have underestimated its customers base.
The next day I decided to visit the windmobile store expecting to see the same. I was surprised to find that here were no customers. Not even one. I asked the staff at windmobile some questions, the staff were disorganized and had no product and services knowledge of their brand. They did not have any phones in stock. They were not even aware of when the next phone shipments would arrive. They were not even aware that a new competitor named mobilicity had arrived in town.
It suffice to say, that when i checked the windmobile website, I could see that they too have run out of stock for certain Phones. I would think that this is a good indicator for companies especially Rogers to be worried. I would also assume that since windmobile came to vancouver before mobilicity, the same excitement that mobilicity has, was also enjoyed by windmobile.
The surprising thing is that both Windmobile and mobilicity have negotiated roaming agreements with rogers.
As for buying stocks in these new phone companies, I ran into a brick wall. Discovered that windmobile is owned by privately held Globalive which is also owned by ORASCOM of Egypt They dont trade in Canada and are Global. As for mobilicity and parent company Dave wireless, stock information was inconclusive considering Dave raise its money in the USA not in Canada.

What remains to be seen is what the BIG three phone companies are going to do, and also whether these new competitors are going to survive.

Just to add on There are numerous websites on both Facebook and private forums who are “CHATR SUCKS subscribers” That is they hate chatr.

I was using Chatr for couple of months on a pre paid basis. They have a policy of renewing the monthly charges on the 28th of the month even if your renewal date is later 28th of the month. This is never explained to customer. Customers are expected to read.I would expect the sales person to inform you about this, rather than leave it to customer. If the customer misses it Chatr has an opportunity of making money. Its a question of ethics

But the practices is what is questionable. Chatr give couple of numbers to call to cancel the connection. These numbers are busy most of the time or they are closed. I made repeated attempts to call and cancel my connection, as there was no one I could speak with, they ended by charging my card. When I did manage to get hold of them the next day, they refused to refund my money. Chatr is earning my misleading customers, and charging for service customers do not use.

Chatr conduct of business is unethical and practices even more deploreable. I will do all I can to discourage people from using Chatr.

What’s with all the h8ting. Been using Chatr with an unlocked iPhone. It’s awesome. 35$ a month and talk all u want on an iPhone!!!! Come on that’s sweet! Sure no 3G or edge but I don’t care, I use wifi at work and home and just about everywhere else. In Quebec there is even less competition then the rest of Canada. We have public mobile and that’s it, but they use CDMA and that’s no good for my iPhone 4.. No wind or others, we here in Quebec are being price raped like crazy by Rogers bell and tellus. At least Chatr is a step in the right direction. True public mobile is cheaper but they still don’t cover Chateauguay even though their site says it should have been completed by now.

I have had Chatr for 7 months now and I’m thrilled. They’ve changed the price. 25/mo for unlimited talk province wide (limited text and 25c for vmail retrieval) you can, however get your msgs free from a land line. The other plan is 35/mo and includes everything, I mean everything unlimited and canada wide. (No data.. but who cares, I have my laptop)
My calls never drop, they’re clear and I can talk as long as I want and text my heart out.

As far as the comment about the renewal date.. Not happening to me my renewal date is the 14th of the month and has stayed that way.

In short this is the best no BS deal around, period!!!!! If I could get an unlocked I phone I could put a chatr card in I would but for now the Nokia C3(the most expensive chatr phone) that sells normally for 100 I got for 69 at Zellers. It’s a great phone, looks similar to a blackberry and is really easy to text on. It has wi fi and a great cam/video and big bonus I have a 4 gig micro sd card that goes in and I can upload all my music and bigger bonus I can use any of those songs as my ringtone free. It even has an fm radio. I can get the audio cable and plug into my car and play my mp3s in the car too .. Chatr you’re awesome.. I know it’s owned by Rogers .. Why anyone else would have anything else other than Chatr is beyond me.

Whats with all the Chatr hate, I’m not a big fan of Rogers because I had all 4 of their services and every month there would be billing errors that would takes me hours to correct and just have to deal with them again the following month, that and their gouging prices had me cancel them entirely. I replace my cable internet with Teksavvy cable which just resells Rogers but their prices are better and the main selling point was they had great caps (300gb) or an unlimited option and with Rogers changing their packages I got a free 14Mbps upgrade (paying for 15Mbps now getting 24Mbps), also Teksavvy doesn’t have a usage monitor in effect so even the the 300gb cap plans are unlimited until they apply a usage monitor and its been over 6 months now for me. As for cable and home phone I figured I would just drop them entirely and rely on a cell phone (altho Teksavvy does resell Bell plain old telephone service (POTS) for very cheap and even cheaper if u bundle but I just don’t have a strong need for a landline) and as for cable now that I’ve got unlimited usage for internet (bandwith) I can download/steam anything good that gets broadcasted in North America including Europe and many other countries and I bundle that with a cheap Netflix subscription, and also can download/steam any old/new movie at will so since I dropped them 6-12 months ago I’ve had even more to watch then normal with only having to drop $7 approx on netflix (and could even do with that too) compared to the $120ish a month I was paying ‘Robbers’ for the Rogers VIP TV package which comes with TMN which Netflix kills. Now onto my final service which is the main topic here, cellular phone service which initially I had went with Mobilicity (because at the moment I had no knowledge of Chatr) and wasn’t very pleased I couldn’t use my iphone with them cause of the 1900mhz CDMA sepctrum all these bargin brands are using, so I bought a cheap totem phone off them for a lil over $100 but realized immediately they service was absolutely horrible in south Mississauga even though their coverage map showed that area is covered and beyond up to Oakville. I could get very erratic service outside of my home but no where inside, was even trying to find just 1 lil sweet spot I could just leave the phone at but no service anywhere inside my home so they were useless and returned for a refund. I assumed wind who had a similar coverage map and same band would probably have similar results I googled a little and found my savior, a sub Rogers company named Chatr which was created to compete and try and push out the other discount brands (lol good luck with that as I hear GTA has solid service unlike my experience) but regardless I was excited because it was obviously operating on Rogers cell network and my gsm iphone would be usable and I would get unlimited talk for a very reasonable price. Been with them for 6-8 months now and haven’t looked back, no over billing which was a concern since it was a rogers sub company but things have been great. Also with being able to use my iphone I just install a sweet app call Text Plus which even gives you your own free local # and you can send/recieve text messages for free so I didn’t need to bump to a higher plan for txt and with the free 50 txt included my my lower tier it is sufficient for when I’m not near wifi (which 90% of the time I am). Only thing I would like is a little data which Chatr has added 100mb but it would bump my plan up $20 and I can’t justify a $20 increase for 100mb of data (altho I would get unlimited text, Canada wide calling, and the 100mb of data but the other 2 are features I don’t need only the data). I’m excited with the new iphone 4s release cause it seems to have both bands in it so I can swap over and take advantage of the better packages that public/wind/mobilicity offer with data, I’m just hoping that they have improved their networks a lot since my last trial with Mobilicity, I’ll probabaly try the other 2 first.

Absolutely sucks. Rogers is using VoIP over their data channels. If network busy then calls don’t ring but get missed call message. Call quality worse than Skype. Threw my Nokia in garbage.

I was with rogers since 1996, have 4 accounts (whole family). Their service becoming worse and worse. Last year I had a few problems with overcharging, over billing, network problems, charges for text mssgs while I have text included in my plan. I’ve spent hours on the phone with rogers tech, billing, other “specialists” – it feels like it’s bunch of idiots that can’t or don’t want to find a problem, instead they bouncing calls between tech, iphone, billing, supervisor, etc. then you have to wait days and call again to see if problem fixed (more often – not). First few days of 2012 New Year and another problem. I’ve noticed that in first couple days of my billing cycle most of my minutes included in plan are gone. Again after 25 min on the phone they informed me that there’s nothing can be done or checked until next billing cycle. I feel that they will hit me with another $200 for “extras”. It’s obvious – they can’t gent new customers because their plans suck – so they decided to rip off existing (and loyal for many years) customers. Can’t wait when my contract with rogers ends in a few month – this will be the last day I deal with them. People – whatever you do – DO NOT get into any contract with these crooks – ROGERS SUCKS, it’s the WORST company on the market!!!

Rogers has no customer service, they are unaware of their own policies and often give inaccurate information. I’ll take any other provide than Rogers, Fido

I’m happy with a simple phone from chatr I call in a zone from Hamilton to toronto with a good network monthly price and when I bugged the kiosk kids they always helped me. It was reasonably priced samsung with a pull out qwerty keyboard My calls are clear and I’ve never got an extra charge. they gave me 60$ credit over 6 months which helped with the nickel and dimeing on calling the message center. I aient fixing what isn’t broke that rogers network is real clear without the dead spots of virgin