Never Say Devil

Most of the people who know me have already heard this story, over and over, until their ears have been bleeding. I’m afraid I’m probably getting quite the reputation as an obsessive compulsive because of it too. That’s really just too bad, folks. Here’s another dose of crazy for you. First I’ll set the stage for those of you who might not know what’s been going on up here in Canada.

Last year, around June, 2009, I was excited to hear that Rogers Wireless, one of the two major wireless carriers in Canada, released the first Android powered phones the HTC Dream and the HTC Magic. My friend Andy, on TMobile in the US had had a G1 (HTC Dream) for nearly a year at that point, so we were already far behind the technology curve as usual. Being Canadian we’re used to this, of course: many of us are still trapping for furs and selling them to the Hudson’s Bay Company. I decided to sell my snowshoes and buy a cellphone contract.

I quickly learned what a joy this little cellphone could be. I began to develop small programs that showed my location on a map, and learned as much as I could about the technology, the operating system, and how even how to compile the operating system from source code and deploy parts of it to my phone. The platform was sufficiently malleable to allow quite a bit of experimentation. People from all over the world began brewing their own Android OS variants, and I tried many of these out on my phone, but I always came back to a distribution called CyanogenMod, produced by Steve Kondik. His Donut based (Android 1.6) distribution was consistently faster than the stock operating system my phone came with, and I learned to make it even faster by employing a 10 MB (on a phone even 10 MB of extra RAM is a noticable improvement) modification to the kernel… stealing RAM from the 3D Graphics processor and giving it back to the operating system (like Robin Hood stealing from the rich… a little). I even started writing an application that would speak the current time through the headphones when the headset button was pressed, so I didn’t have to take my phone out of my pocket while commuting in Canada’s frigid winter weather.

In September of last year, a bug was found and fixed in the Android operating system. The problem was that if you had your GPS enabled on your phone, and you made a 911 call, your phone might lock up. The danger being: you might freeze to death before they could send help. CyanogenMod had the bug fixed and out to the masses within a few days. Updates were quick due to an efficient over-the-net software distribution mechanism called CmUpdater.

Recently my world was shattered by an upgrade that Rogers Wireless decided to force upon its customers. Here’s how they did it: they first cut off all of the HTC Dream and HTC Magic users’ data plans. Never mind that they may have been trying to navigate through the Northern Tundra using Google Maps, or waiting for that email about their profits from selling their beaver pelts. Rogers said ‘No Data For You!’ until every user upgraded their phones using software not even compatible with Windows 7. They did promise one month credit on our Data plans. The upgrade, that was supposed to take 20 minutes, ended up taking me well over two hours to do my wife’s phone and mine. I guess that’s worth a free month on each of our data plans?

After the upgrade, I found that I was no longer able to use CyanogenMod! They had patched all of the holes that allowed those freedoms. They had pretended to fix a 911 bug and had instead turned my lovely phone into an antiquarian communications device. The new world of Android 1.6, and the promises of Android 2.1 are no longer available to me. Rogers had thrown me outside in the cold Canadian winter without my coat on, and left my there to die a lonely death while waiting for my three year contract to run out so that I would then be eligible for an upgrade.

Rogers has told me that they will not supply an upgrade from Android 1.5 to Android 1.6 on the HTC Dream due to a ‘memory limitation’ on this device. Strange that I was able to run Android 1.6 on this device just fine for many months. Rogers has now been telling us that they are willing to upgrade our phones to HTC Magic devices, and that they will be updating the Magic phones to Android 2.1 sometime in the future. There’s two problems with this plan. The first is that I prefer a device with a physical keyboard, which the Dream has and the Magic does not. The second problem with this plan is that while the upgrade to the Magic is free, Rogers will be ‘resetting’ our contracts another 3 years from the date of the swap. Why would I want to be stuck with a smartphone for three years when the current rate of progress on these devices is so high? In three years I’ll have a phone that manufactures beaver pelts from yogurt atoms, and sells the results on eBay without any user interaction whatsoever. Does it really make any sense to lock me into a device for three years?

I guess I shouldn’t have signed a contract with Rogers, should I? So, what should I do about this problem? I’ve decided to be as vocal as I can about it and have contacted Rogers to begin escalating the issue until I am satisfied once again. I figure I have nearly three years. So this weekend I began my small campaign. Here’s a few of my favourite quotes so far:

We are very sorry that we are unable to assist you further with this matter; and hope you will remain loyal to Rogers to allow us to provide you with superior customer service down the road.

I love the dismissive tone here. You can be assured that they will hear a great deal from me on this matter.

I’ll leave you with some late breaking news. If you don’t upgrade your phone to the latest firmware, Rogers will keep your data plan cut off. If you upgrade your phone’s radio software but leave CyanogenMod on your phone you will still have your data plan cut off. This reminds me, very much, of the type of warfare that the satellite providers used to do against the various satellite hacking devices out there. It’s just like Rogers is sending out Electronic Counter Measures against people who like to have a newer version of the Android operating system. That, in my opinion, is definitely not a crime.

The only way to get your data plan back is to comply with Rogers and install their Mandatory Upgrade (read downgrade). I have to be clear, I have complied with the upgrade orders, and my data plan is working fine. They have even stopped sending me several text messages and phoning my cellphone twice a day. So that’s good. They’re no longer harassing me. However now my phone is as useless as a skipping stone for killing beavers with.

I will be writing emails to the office of the president, and the office of the ombudsman starting tomorrow. Next I will be phoning them. I must have developed a form of OCD late in life. Or it has quietly been simmering for a long time. Either way, I’m not going to sit idly by and watch while Canadians everywhere are being frozen. We deserve better customer service than this!

UPDATE:

Rogers told me to contact HTC tech support. HTC has said they can’t do anything without the express permission of Rogers. I have just got off the phone with Rogers tech support and have been told that there is a waiver form that can be signed by users who do not wish to upgrade their phones to the latest Rogers Mandatory User Update. This doesn’t help me, but it may allow HTC to provide me with a fix to solve the issue I have with not being able to flash my firmware any more. I will continue to pursue that angle of it. Thanks to Ian M. at Rogers tech support for being so helpful.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

HTC has flat out told me they will not be producing any more software for the HTC Dream. I guess they’ve moved on now that their new products are coming out with Android 2.1 on them. Oh well, I guess it’s back to learning to re-love the Android 1.5 again. I doubt very much that Rogers will find a way to help me with these issues either. I guess I’ll just have to hope for another local root exploit in the Linux kernel this version of the phone is released with.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE:

Absolutely no response from HTC so far. My wife’s HTC Dream has been malfunctioning since the RUU update, so she phoned Rogers to get a replacement. I got onto the call and talked the CSR into replacing my Dream with an HTC Magic. My friend Denis has one and seemed quite happy with it. Rogers has committed to upgrading it to Android 2.1 which is really all I want in the end. So I’ll wait for it to be delivered, and hopefully Rogers will stick to their promises in the future. I wonder if the phrase ‘I dearly hope this call is being recorded because I really want your management to hear how truly terrible my customer satisfaction experience has been.’ helped with getting the Magic well after any replacement plan was over. Rogers, I’m still watching you, but you’re not in my bad books anymore. Keep it up. Please, listen to those of us who want to help with Android Open Source development and build in a way to allow us to do so without becoming criminals in the process. Thanks.

I am also not the only one out there who’s upset. Here’s a link to a blog posting collecting the works of all of us ‘complainers’. I feel much better knowing I’m not the only one in Canada with these feelings.