I have no idea if Wicked City is a show that will catch on or not. First of all, they delayed it until way after premiere season, don’t know how many people even noticed it premiere this week. Second, it follows what was rumoured to be the original premise for when Law and Order: Criminal Intent premiered — half on the cops, half on the killer. CI apparently ditched that in production and went with standard L&O format, partly (supposedly) because some people find the show less compelling if you know who the bad guy is. More pointedly, I think, you don’t care about the bad guy because it is really hard in a one-off episode to create a truly vivid character who isn’t a cliché.
The new cop drama is set back in the summer of ’82 when L.A. was apparently the murder capital of the U.S. There’s definitely a “Almost Famous” feel to the way it is set and staged, even plotted with a naive reporter trying to break into the rock ‘n’ roll reporting scene.
Ed Westwick (Gossip Girl) is the killer, and his first kill is nicely staged. Ruthless, he could just be a cop or victim getting his jollies until the kill. One of the benefits of ’82 is you don’t have to worry too much about advanced forensics or databases. Heck, they’re having trouble just identifying his victims.
Jeremy Sisto is the lead detective…dark, brooding, scruffy. You’ve seen him before in Purgatory, Six Feet Under and The Returned, none of which I watched. I realized his other cop pedigree pretty fast as his movement, carriage, and personality all scream “Lupo”. He actually used to be on the original Law and Order back in 2007-2010. Slight change in time, and a marked difference in tolerance for bending the rule book, it’s a bit like Miami Vice brought to the street level — all the drugs, none of the glitz. He’s having a small existential crisis, both with his marriage and with his former partner having killed himself, but other than that, he’s Lupo still. Which is a good thing.
Erika Christensen is Westwick’s girlfriend, Betty Beaumontaine, and it looks like he’s going to focus on corrupting her throughout the first season i.e. you think she might bite it in episode one but she’s contracted for ten episodes, so doesn’t look like it. She also stars in Parenthood, so you may have seen her there, while oddly enough, I only remember her from an episode of Lie to Me. Her character is hard to nail down, and maybe that’s the point — single mom, overworked, underpaid, kids to look after, struggling to find some excitement in her life and she’s tagged by Westwick early as easily vulnerable. I don’t know if she becomes his partner or not, guess we’ll see, but the writers need to nail her down soon, her wishy-washy-side is hard to watch.
Taissa Farmiga plays the intrepid, young reporter, Karen McClaren (really? is she supposed to be a superhero in disguise?) and at only 21 years of age in real life, she looks in the show like she’s barely legal for the bars. Very innocent, very naive, very fragile. There’s a strong father thing with the detective, and if something romantic happens there, there is going to be a giant ick factor. Something weird happens at the end of the first episode, she seems to disappear, and there is no explanation of what happens — did the killer get her, is she dead, what? You know he isn’t leaving with her, he’s with another woman instead as he realizes the cops are on to him, but it’s a weird gap.
There are a bunch of other characters, and hard to know if any of them will end up being relevant. Sisto is willing to work with his new partner by the end of the episode, after the first half sets him up as the biggest opportunistic d-bag around. Add in a daughter, a wife, a frumpy detective and a hot detective, plus a Captain that Sisto leaves in the dark, there are lots of people running around. Even a next-door neighbour who has the secret killer babysit regularly.
The first episode was interesting, but we’ll see if the killer keeps it so…
So, I have to say, today was a very long day. Here’s a recap…
Started off neutral
Last night, when I was leaving work late (7:15 or so, a rarity for me), I thought my headlights seemed awfully dim. Turned out I had no regular head lights, just running lights or high beams. Sweet. Confession time though, I knew the passenger side one was out from Monday night, so I was looking to have it fixed this week, just hadn’t gotten to it yet. However, with both out, and nights starting earlier (eek!), I needed them fixed. Off to the Nissan dealership this morning. They’re in South Ottawa, not too far from my house, but I work across the river in Gatineau. Their shuttle only goes to Gatineau on the 9:00 run, I had meeting at 10 where I was hosting 7 DGs and an ADM, not an option to be late, so I dropped the car and splurged on a taxi all the way in. $35, but better than being late. Actually at work earlier than normal even. All good, right?
Let’s talk for a second about the drop off though. First, the guy tells me how basically he’s doing me a favour to get me in today because he’s all booked up, and this isn’t an “express service” option. Then, he notices I’m due for a service, which I’d already told him, and he offered to do that too — wait, what? You’re so booked you’re squeezing me in for the headlights check, may just be a bulb even though odd both are out at same time, but you have time to do a level 2 service too? Umm, okay. Anyway, we talk about the afternoon shuttle, I tell him I need to be picked up at the end of the day. Usually they go and add me to a list, but the driver was making a run, so they will “make a note” when he’s back. I figure this is their daily business, so no worries. Before I finish checking in, I remind him I need the shuttle pick up and I’m in Gatineau. No problem.
Still neutral
At work, do my meeting at 10:00. We have a management dashboard that my team runs. Each quarter we go through it in a bit of detail, about 15 minutes to do a check in on “where we are”. It isn’t about the tool, it’s to prompt the discussion, but it’s been working well over the last year. I’ve been running the tool for about 8 years now and it is finally working the way I want it to (my standards are high — not too onerous a product, simple to understand and fill out, and just enough detail for a DG to say, “Well, it’s a bit off the rails here, let’s chat for 30 seconds so everyone else knows why/how, etc.”). For the discussion, not cuz there’s a tool. We start in, 10 seconds in the ADM jettisons it for topic 2 because we have a new government and our priorities are about to change considerably. Topic 2 is all the work we have to do between now and the end of the year…guess what, exact same content as the dashboard, we cover all the topics anyway, just a little less structured. I am but a humble servant, I live to serve. Good discussion, just not what I expected. We discuss a third topic that I wanted to defer, and lo and behold, all the stuff we didn’t have for them by way of background is what they want to discuss at the big budget meeting I’m having in two weeks, where I wanted it discussed anyway. Weird, weird, weird meeting. Moving on.
Huge bump up
I had my performance feedback session today for mid-year. Standard stuff, I’m awesome all around. No, seriously, that’s most of the conversation. I’m a manager, my boss treats me like a Director, we agree on the way forward on all our files with only minor nuancing at times, and he feels like I appropriately consult him when I need to do so. Generally a home run. But then he added some cream, and I have to say, it may have been the single greatest comment I have ever had from a boss during an actual performance discussion. He said he really enjoyed working with me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. He wasn’t saying he really liked me, I wasn’t getting his personal seal of friendship type of comment. He and I have a unique working relationship and we work hard on it together. Normally, there would be a director between him and I, or I would be acting. I don’t want to act, and they don’t have the budget right now for the director position (a fourth one in our Directorate), and while he could reconfigure and overload the other three, we have worked out a structure whereby I directly report to him. To be honest, with all my special files, I’ve reported to a DG regularly for the last 7 years anyway, but now it is without the EX-01 safety net / mentor / boss sitting there to rely upon. When he comments he enjoys working with me, it’s about that type of structure and that he and I together make the files as “fun” or at least as “little painful” as possible. We have a pretty high pain threshold doing the corporate files, including privacy, audit, etc. and yet our conversations about the files are not down in the weeds filling out templates but rather the strategic aspects that touch our programs. I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms, but I too really enjoy working with him, as I have the last two DGs as well. Honestly, it’s rare that I don’t like my boss throughout my entire career, sometimes because I’m particular about who I work for and partly because I have a very structured way of talking to bosses that has served me well. Mostly along the lines of “here’s the basic files and what I plan to do about them/have already done” and “here’s where I need some guidance / am still thinking through an approach”, with regular check-ins.
But stop yourself for a second…how powerful a statement is that? My boss actually enjoys working with me on our files. Forget the personal side, forget the rest of the performance side, that is a damn good indicator of your performance right there. I can think of some other people where I would not have that kind of working relationship. It’s a pretty awesome compliment.
Of course, I *am* awesome, so what’s not to like? 🙂
Small high continues, starting to trend neutral
Anyway, moving on. Moving forward on hiring a new staff member, working on crunching some budget numbers, and herding cats for a transition note tied to the morning meeting. Not awesome sauce, but it’s working.
The downward turn
I call Nissan at 3:00 because I haven’t heard from them about the car, just want to make sure everything is going okay and on track for end of day. Yep, working on it now, no problem. I ask about the shuttle again, do I need to reconfirm that I’m on the list, nope, they have my number, all good.
At 3:45, I realize I haven’t heard from the shuttle. I work in Gatineau and I am the first stop for the shuttle — after me, he goes to downtown Ottawa. I call Nissan again, wait five minutes, shuttle driver calls. I’m not on his list, he’s never heard of me, am I sure I’m being picked up today? Umm, yeah. He’s already picking up downtown, can’t get me, but offers to drop them and come back for me. It’s at least a 20-30 minute run one way, and he hasn’t even picked everyone up yet. Best scenario he would pick me up at 5:00; worst, well past 5:00, and I wouldn’t get out of the dealership in time to pick up Jacob by 6:00.
The death spiral
I’m out the door, no cabs of course as it is raining, but I manage to run for a bus (my knees will hate me a LOT tomorrow, I can’t run on pavement), get to Tunney’s, switch, make it all the way to Hunt Club and Merivale. Pouring rain. No umbrella. No hat. Wearing a fleece jacket (I was only going to be in a car, I swear that was the plan). Driving rain. 20 minute walk to Nissan.
I arrive, and I’m basically a puddle. I’m wet, I’m cold, and oh, yeah, I’m pissed. I scrambled because I had to, there was no other option, I needed the car to go get Jacob. I had Andrea scrambling for contact numbers in case I couldn’t make it to the school by 6:00, but I was at dealership at 5:15 by a miracle. Creating small floods on their tiles. I was going to enter by the service entrance, and I thought, “F*** it, if someone says somethin g, I’ll show the dealership manager what a pissed off service customer looks like.”
Get to service counter, somebody is having long detailed discussion with them about what they did, what they were authorized to do, blah blah blah, I don’t have time for this. I go over to the service manager’s door, and I reservedly tell him to look at me carefully for two reasons. First, the drowned rat in front of him (soaked hair, jacket, pants are like paint at this point, shoes dripping) is what a customer looks like when the dealership doesn’t put him on the shuttle list after he confirmed it three times. Second, I thought he should also see what $40K in business looks like walking out of the dealership.
He was all apologetic, wanted to know who I talked to, etc. I said, “Sorry, that’s not my problem anymore. I don’t work here, and I am not your customer anymore. I’m done.” And walked away. I was so cold and miserable, plus I’m fighting a cold, I didn’t have any energy left to avoid turning into THAT customer. He came out and chased around to find my service agreement, waved all costs (about $350 worth of service), as he probably should have, apologized again, explained what they did. Very professional. I took my keys, contract, and left.
Turning some of it around
I put on some music in the car on the way to get Jacob, but I’m soaked to the bone. I call Andrea and get her to pull together pants, shirt, underwear (yes, I’m THAT wet), socks, and a towel. In the door, strip, dry, washroom, back out to get Jacob. My wife is awesome. And she thought to give me Jacob’s rain boots and rain jacket. It’s still pouring at that point.
Jacob and I grab some stuff at ToysRUs and then over to Swiss Chalet for dinner. He and I have an awesome boys night, lots of stuff we’re looking at together. Good time. I’ve been looking forward to trying their rotisserie beef, a different take on roast beef, looked good. It’s not. How a rotisserie beef ends up “greasy” I don’t know, but the level of fat and grease was a complete turn-off even for me, and that’s saying something. I still occasionally eat dead bird in a box (aka KFC).
Get home, put the cub to bed, start blogging. Most nights, I kind of take mental stock, “How was today?”, just as I ask the cub. I have no idea how to answer it for today. I survived, that’s good, right?
Oh, I left out one of the best parts. The headlights? They said it was all fixed, but when I got to the house, I realized the driver side one is still out. Awesome. I’m hoping I can live with it until the weekend and I can figure out a new service centre to repair it.
Over the last five blog posts, I’ve detailed my changes as I cut the cord. Here is the list of changes, and you’ll quickly see what prompted the commitment to make drastic alterations to my setup, mostly triggered by conversations with a few key friends and family members who got me thinking about alternatives, even though many of them haven’t done this yet themselves!
The other posts give you the details, blow by blow, etc. This just shows the bottomline. How much did I save?
Internet: From Rogers to TekSavvy, same basic setup, slightly less than “unlimited” but faster speeds, $80 a month to $55 a month, $200 in hardware, $100 saved in first year, $300 saved ongoing;
TV: From Rogers to Kodi, streaming through internet instead of cable box, much more manual, $85 a month to $0 per month, $300 in hardware the first year, $700 saved the first year, $1000 saved ongoing;
Home phone: From Rogers to Ooma, VOIP instead of landline, slightly reduced quality, $40 a month to only $4 a month, $125 for hardware, $325 saved this year, $450 saved ongoing;
Cellular: Stayed with Rogers, tweaked package, better service, no change in cost; and,
Internet hosting: From Netfirms to GreenGeeks, same or better service, $15 a month to $5 a month, no hardware costs, saved $120 per year ongoing.
Where does that leave me? I saved $25+$85+$36+10 = $156 per month. Which equates to $1872 a year. This first year, I spent another $625 in hardware so I’m only saving $1250 the first year, but that’s not chicken scratch. I’ll take either number. And, more importantly, most of the services are only slight downgrades from the previous option, or actual improvements in service.
I honestly had no idea I could save that much without sacrificing the farm to do it. The TV part was the major part for me, more so than for the family, but the replacement options work just fine. Particularly when it costs me $1800 less per year.
When people cut the cord, most just look at TV, internet and home phone. Some add in cellular. For me, there was a fifth area — internet hosting of my websites. Yes, you read that correctly. Plural.
After a redesign about two years ago, I had PolyWogg.ca set up as my “personal” site. ThePolyBlog.ca was my more “professional” site, writing and musings about more formal topics. I also host AstroPontiac.ca for a board I sit on. And within polywogg.ca, I also had sub-sites for photos, calendars, to do lists, etc. Most of the sites were fully integrated with my photo site cross-linked to my personal and professional sites so that I can post my media there without duplicating it in WordPress. I’ve messed around with my site design going back to 1998, seventeen years of tweaking etc. The latest tweak was creating a new subsite for astrophotography blogging and pics.
I have had various hosts over the years. One big one I had was a small company in the Prairies that a friend was using. Small, decent support for tweaks, not a lot of bells and whistles but definitely personal support. I mentioned in an earlier post that I considered running my own server, partly because of the cheap hosting costs and partly to have my own private cloud available to me easily. In the end, I decided not to run my own server, but I was ambitious with my web design and the small company wasn’t going to meet my long-term storage needs. I went big.
Mostly the company here in Ottawa worked well for me for a long time. I was paying for a business account to give me more email addresses, more storage, etc. and a LOT of room to grow, but mostly to get the higher level of support if and when something went wrong. When they were bought by Netfirms in the U.S., and everything was merged, there were definite growing pains. It took a lot of work and some complete redesign in the end to get me where I wanted to be, with multiple subsites running and everything separate by function. It worked, but the overhead to keep it all up to date was killing me. Too many updates, plugins, etc. The separated design helped immensely though to figure out what one set of subdesigns would look like, and then the other. In the end, they were similar but just slightly different enough that previous single-site solutions had been confused. Then disaster struck. Kind of.
Netfirms had a DNS attack, and it took down a bunch of their servers. My site has some plugins that monitor the site being “up” or “down” through regular monitoring from the plugin’s websites, and my inbox filled up with notifications. Site A is down. Site B is down. Site C is down. Site D is down. Site A is up again. Site B is up again. Site A is down again, etc. 36 hours of notifications of sites being up and down. Then I got the message from Netfirms that was the all-clear signal. Everything had been resolved, all was working. Except my sites weren’t back up yet. They were still down. I contacted support who assured me everything was fixed; I assured them it wasn’t since I couldn’t log in to my site. They refused to help, basically arguing with me that the problem was fixed. When I finally convinced them, no, it was still not fixed, they said, “Oh, yeah, they’re still working on it.” Really? That’s what I’m getting for business level support? $180 a year to host all my sites, minimal load on their servers, and outright lies. “It’s fixed” and then “they’re working on it” when the first lie didn’t take. I escalated to Tier 2 and got the same run around. I waited a day, still not fixed, tried again, same run around. First they told me it was completely fixed, and then when I showed them my site was down, they said the technicians were still working on it. Really? Again with two completely opposite stories? Sorry, I called it quits right then and there. I needed a new webhost, and why not look for one a bit cheaper while I was at it.
There are lists out there of the top five webhosts and some of the deals are awesome. But I liked the personal side of the first host, not thrilled about being the little number in the big cog again. I canvassed some friends, and one of them suggested GreenGeeks.com. I fell in love with them just from the name. Ignore the fact that I called them GreenGreeks about a dozen times when I was accessing their site, I checked the specs and price. I basically need unlimited subdomains and full domain hosting. Not really, probably 10 would suffice, but more than most small companies offering 1-2. This often runs into a problem not with the subdomains but with the number of databases it will let you create — some stop at 5-8, and if you count 1 for PolyWogg, 1 for ThePolyBlog, 1 for astropontiac, 1 for a calendar, 3 for separate to do lists, 1 for a photo site, 1 for a cloud/file manager, etc., I’m at 9 and I’m not even maxing out my plans yet. I can get by without a lot of upload/download bandwidth for the sites (I don’t get a lot of traffic), but I like having lots of storage space to have an easy-to-access personal cloud. Mail servers are a must, but almost everyone has those. A few other bells and whistles, and I’d be good to go. What did I get?
GreenGeeks gives me unlimited storage. Sweet. Unlimited bandwidth. Double sweet. Three different choices for email server. I’m in love. Simple user interface for the control panel, personalized support that is decent, subdomains, addon domains, DNS management and registration (which I don’t need, but nice to know it’s there), some SEO and marketing tools (not as extensive as Netfirms, but decent), access to my logs (what? really? would have had to ask at some other sites), and perhaps most important, the Softaculous Apps Installer as their default install program (not the only way to do it, just the default). I’ve installed another app that does ToDo lists well, had to do it manually as not available in Softaculous, and it was a relative breeze. The help files could be a little more up to date, but I got it to work first time, just a little tweaking of the instructions.
So Netfirms was charging me $180 for the year. GreenGeeks? Also $180. For three years. $5 a month instead of $15. For better support, more options, and a personalized experience. Tailored more to my needs. An easy trigger to pull.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Moving my old site over has been a pain in the patootie. WordPress went relatively easily, but I ended up with a config issue the first time and even though they fixed it, I wasn’t 100% confident it would stay “patched” and not self-destruct later on. Kind of a background hack that solved the immediate problem, but I wasn’t sure it didn’t have others lurking in the shadows. So I blew everything off and reinstalled manually from scratch. Then imported as much as I could of the existing base.
There is one thing missing from GreenGeeks but it was missing from Netfirms too. None of the sites will let you stream video directly. They make you upload and store it at Youtube or its clones. Video just kills them and like most hosts, they just don’t support it without a lot more cash outlay. My videos are only personal videos and I was crossposting with DailyMotion. But the wife wasn’t happy with the ads that went with DailyMotion, so I’ve moved the video files over to Google Drive. Which necessitated re-adding the links to the photo site, but that wasn’t about cutting the cord, or the new host, just something that happened coincidentally at the same time as I made the other change. I only mention it as it is a factor for a lot of people when they make a change — the cost and structure change, but how complicated do you make it to take advantage of the window of opportunity to implement other changes at the same time? As an aside, I had to threaten Netfirms with legal action to get a partial refund of the remaining year’s worth of prepaid service (I basically asked for a refund because they had not provided the contracted service). It’s only $30 back, but better than nothing.
Overall, I love the new host. At a third of the price and better service, what’s not to love?
I’ve already covered my efforts to cut the cord for internet (Cutting the cord – Part 1 – Internet), TV, and home phone. Next on the list is cellular service. As with the first internet one, this isn’t about eliminating cell service completely, it’s about reviewing your packages and finding ways to get more service for the same price or, more often than not, the same service for less money.
In the cell market in Canada, you have the two biggies — Rogers and Bell. They fight it out, they gouge everyone, the CRTC slaps them, they reset, they duke it out some more. Generally speaking, our cell costs are much higher than anywhere else in the world. According to an OECD report based on comparable 2013 data across 34 countries, we’re the most expensive for data only plans and top ten for data and phone. Not surprisingly, that puts us dead last for number of wireless subscriptions per capita. Is it all infrastructure costs that are driving the difference? Nope — it’s profit margins –> Canadian carriers are third on the list of “revenue per user” in the G8 and fourth across all the countries. We get gouged, no question about it. The CRTC knows this, and has put the screws to the telecom companies on things like extortionary three-year cell packages and transparency in price-gouging, but not much to reduce overall costs.
Cost differentials are left to the secondary tier of cellular companies to drive down costs through competition — Telus, Wind, Koodo, Virgin, Fido, a bunch of others. You might think that was a decent range of competitors. But the branding hides some basic facts.
Rogers and Fido are basically the same company, just different branding;
Telus and Koodo? The same;
Bell and Virgin? The same;
Wind is one of the few that is separate and not simply affiliated with a regional carrier (like SaskTel in Saskatchewan). Which means Fido, Koodo and Virgin are just special plans of the other three big ones (often discount plans for narrow markets). They often too have much more limited variety in packages, phones, data plan options. In the end, you’re often left with a choice of Rogers, Bell or Telus. Back in 2013, Telus and Bell had just under 30% of the cell market each, with Rogers just above 20, and the rest divvying up the remaining 20%. I don’t have the recent data, but I think the other 20% has shrunk to about 15% and the big three have gobbled up some more.
Does it matter which of the three or four you choose? Well, that depends on what you’re doing and where. If you are in a big urban centre, coverage is pretty much the same for all of them. The larger the urban centre, the increased likelihood of small gaps in the city, particularly if you want LTE service on your latest-and-greatest smartphone. If you are doing a lot of data usage (i.e. smartphone internet use), those dead zones could kill you if you’re with the wrong carrier. Most of the dead zones are starting to disappear as networks expand their LTE coverage more uniformly, but could be an issue. Some people also note that it depends on how much you use your phone at home without wifi vs. working in an office building made of signal-blocking concrete, as some carriers work better indoors more based on the distance to the local cell tower than the technology. The technology probably won’t affect you much though for most urban centres.
If you are in a rural area, there can be a huge difference in service. I have a Rogers cellphone, and I get lousy reception in some parts of central Ontario (north of cottage country, like Algonquin Park, Bancroft, even along Highway 7). Out by Luskville in Quebec? Nada. A friend has a Telus SIM card for when he’s roaming in Quebec (including around Luskville) and it works like a charm. Fortunately there are coverage maps that you can search that show which service is best for what area (like a rural community, cottage area, etc.).
Devices? The big three all support the big smartphones like iPhones, some will have slightly different deals for cost over the long-term, etc., but not significant enough to warrant a change against the other factors.
For me, I was with Rogers partly because I offset at one point with my wife’s phone (back when we were dating). She had a Bell phone, so I went Rogers to extend our coverage map (one or the other would work). Eventually, we switched most things to Rogers, she got a smartphone (iPhone 4) and it was just easier to just put her on my account with the new phone. We’ve upgraded a couple of times between us, and my contract was set to expire December 31st of this year. I bought my phone on a 2 year contract, her latest one (in August), we bought straight outright. So after December? No more commitment, just month to month.
Most big networks will let you switch your phones for an unlock fee and SIM-card switch. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes they give you a big hassle. But since the big three often only offer you much in the way of deals for completely new activations (often limiting you even on transfers), the savings can be more theoretical than real.
I have unlimited text and talk in Canada. I don’t use it, I don’t need it outside Ottawa, really. Except when we travel to Peterborough, mainly so I don’t get hit with a roaming fee. Way under what they offer me for a basic package. Which is why they can offer such a large basic package — many people don’t use it, so it doesn’t cost them that much. Standard voicemail, basic caller ID (numbers, not names), 911 access, blah blah blah. Unlimited video texting too. You pay for international roaming, international calls, and if you exceed your data plan.
I used to have a sweet 6GB data plan. I thought it was awesome. You know how much I actually used? Less than 1 GB per month. I thought my regular usage would climb, but most of the time I’m doing surfing and data munching, I’m on wifi somewhere, not wireless. My wife had a separate 500MB plan on hers. Eventually, we merged them, but my plan was a special offering, so with the merger, I had to give up 6GB and settle for 2. With me less than 1 GB, and her less than 1 GB, seemed like a no brainer. Once in awhile we go over it, often when our phone settings aren’t taking advantage of wifi hotspots enough. But each time I go over, I get a $15 overcharge (used to be $25).
I wanted another GB of data, but wasn’t really looking to go with Bell or Telus right now. We love our current phones, no setup issues, everything works, just not enough data. So, partly inspired by the whole blog writing thing, and the other cutting the cord attempts, I did a minimally invasive tweak to my current package.
I was paying $80 a month for my phone package with 2GB data. My wife was added to my plan and her package was $35. Everything shared. Since my contract was coming to a close, I could pay off the remaining balance ($35 — which was cute since I had a $40 credit sitting on the account after a full credit for this months’ charges anyway), and modify the plan to a simple “Share Everything” month-to-month plan. My plan? Dropped $5. Her plan? Upped $5. Even Steven. Why would I bother? Because they gave me 5GB of shared data. We can go crazy, no more worries about reaching our limit. If we do, our phones REALLY have the wrong settings. Unless I start streaming a lot of music or videos that I’m not doing now, I suppose. I do have a bunch of course videos I want to watch, but most of those will be through wifi, not wireless. Nice to have the option though. Heck, I may even let my son stream a video on Kodi if we’re stuck in a waiting line somewhere. 5GB is more than double what we have now, and we barely exceed 2 now. For the same cost, no commitment, and no overage charges of $15. Oh, and just for fun, they throw in free Shomi, Spotify or NextIssue. I might give Spotify a try.
If I was still bundled with Rogers for everything else, they’d knock 10-15% off that bill. I’m not getting anything “special” with that deal, it’s a good package and a regular price. Still way above what I would pay in Japan or Europe, and marginally above the U.S.
Can you get better deals? Sure.
Telus has a deal for bring-your-own-device, $60 per month, 4GB of data. If you want to add another user, you basically pay for their voice plan. Probably about $100 in total when finished. Or about $20 cheaper than what I’m paying. Bell would likely charge me $90 for the first plan plus thirty for the second, giving me the same price as Rogers i.e. $120. Wind, by contrast, with their smaller market options, different configs and access to the other networks, would be about $40-$45 per phone setup, or about $80-$90 in total. Save about $30-40 for less reliable network. One that has been rumoured to go bankrupt regularly since it started.
So I’m paying a bit more for the Rogers network, partly as it has slightly different coverage than Telus or Bell or Wind, and it costs me a little more. But not as much as yesterday where I would regularly blow my data limit. Instead, same cost, more service. When I need to upgrade my phone or my wife’s phone or maybe add one for my son, I’ll see what deals are available then. For now, I can live with my (newly-tweaked) package.
