Some Rogers customers report third day of continued outages, poor service

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Two days after a massive outage threw Rogers customers across the country offline, some are still reporting lost or poor connection issues even as the company says nearly the entire network is back online.

"Since the so-called return to service report by Rogers, I have had nothing but poor service," John Layne of Oshawa told CTVNews.ca in an email on Sunday.

"I cannot access many websites including TD bank, Toronto real estate site and many others. The service that I have is very slow."

Multiple people wrote to CTVNews.ca over the weekend to say they continue to be without phone, internet or TV, or are experiencing poor connections, which the company warned could be a possibility for some.

The responses were emailed to CTVNews.ca and have not all been independently verified.

The widespread network outage has affected not only phone and internet services but also banks, debit purchases, passport offices, calls to 911 and Canada's ArriveCAN app, which is required for travellers coming into the country.

Images of people standing outside of coffee shops seeking free Wi-Fi highlighted the lengths some people went to reconnect.

Rogers said in a statement Saturday that it had restored services to the "vast majority" of customers. The company's CEO, Tony Staffieri, apologized for the outage and said "pretty close to 100 per cent" of the company's network had returned online as of Saturday afternoon.

But as some services come back online and traffic returns to normal, the company said regaining full service may be delayed for some customers. Staffieri also told CTV News Channel that "less than one per cent" of customers were still experiencing "intermittent issues."

Staffieri also blamed the network failure on a maintenance update, which caused some routers in the system to shut down.

But as the issues continued Saturday, some customers continued to be stranded, including some older Canadians.

"I live in (an) apartment with a large number of seniors who only have landlines," Lindy Adams of Owen Sound, Ont. told CTVNews.ca on Saturday.

Adams said the phone lines remained down Saturday, with no way to contact family or 911, and at least five people were unable to get their prescription medications.

Engy Ayad of SEM Construction in London, Ont., said because Interact payments were down, the company couldn't pay half of its employees, who receive their pay by e-transfer.

"Went to the bank and was told nothing they could do to help even though they had Bell internet, but Interac itself was down," Ayad said in an email to CTVNews.ca on Saturday.

"People('s) livelihood was affected by not being paid on time. It was simply horrible."

Rogers says it will automatically credit customers to make up for the lost service.

The company's cellular network also experienced a similar nationwide service disruption in April 2021, which Rogers attributed to a software update.

'LEAP OF FAITH'

After the payment machines went down at Bufala Pizzeria in North Vancouver, B.C., manager Michael Littleford put in place an IOU system, taking customers' names and phone numbers in the hopes they would come back and pay when they had the money.

Within 24 hours, everyone had come back and paid their tabs, Littleford told CTV News Channel on Sunday.

"To be able to say we trust you to come back and pay your $200 food and bar tab, it's a pretty big leap of faith to be able to say that to somebody in this day and age. It seems very unusual and uncomfortable," he said.

While frustrating, the moment reminded him of "the humanity of people," he said.

"But we're a community restaurant. We're not in downtown Vancouver, we're up in North Vancouver in Edgemont Village and a lot of the people here are locals and regulars, and the level of trust I think is increased being in a smaller community than in a city centre."

With files from CTV News