CCTS Report: Rogers customer complaints doubled since 2022

New report shows Rogers-Shaw buyout has been a consumer disaster

January 15, 2025 — Today the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television services (CCTS) released a damning report on telecom complaints from Canadian consumers over the 2023-2024 period, highlighting that they received more complaints than any previous year in their 17 year history. Year over year, complaints rose by 38%, led by an astonishing 68% increase in complaints from Rogers customers. Since 2021-2022, complaints from Rogers customers have more than doubled. The CCTS also dismissed a lower share of consumer complaints than in past years, and found more filed complaints were correctly within its mandate.

“Canadian consumers are furious,” said OpenMedia Executive Director Matt Hatfield. “When our government allowed Rogers to buy Shaw, we were told it would be a net benefit to Canadians. Instead we’ve seen Rogers spike prices and the sharpest increase in consumer complaints in five years. Every federal party should look this failure in the face and tell Canadians how they’d undo this disastrous deal, and stop similar monopolistic power grabs in the future. Canadians cannot afford to be growing our oligopolies when our economy is already amongst the most concentrated and least competitive of any OECD country.”

The Competition Bureau, Canada’s competition watchdog, opposed the Rogers-Shaw buyout. However, the CRTC, Competition Tribunal, and ISED Minister Champagne supported the deal, paving the way for Rogers to become Canada’s largest telecom company. Despite conditions imposed by the government as part of the deal and promises that prices would not increase, in 2024 Rogers increased prices on mobile plans, home Internet, and TV boxes already installed in customer homes.

During consideration of the Rogers-Shaw deal OpenMedia and peers delivered over 93,000 messages from concerned people in Canada calling on policymakers to block the deal. A further 23,800 actions have been taken by the OpenMedia and Ekō communities in support of OpenMedia’s Anti-Monopoly Charter, which lays out principles for reforming Canada’s economy and reducing the power of Canada’s oligopolies.