Rogers and Fido customers may be in for a huge shock when those with blocked Internet access receive a bill for thousands of dollars.

Rogers customer service has reached a disgusting new low. Customers with the 2G iPhone are being billing for thousands of dollars in data access fees. These charges are being placed on customers who not only have edge turned off but also those who have requested Internet access blocked on their cellular account.

As an example, a fido customer recently related to me that he was called by customer service demanding $1600 in data access fees for only 29 MB. This was impossible he said because his iPhone had edge turned off and he had called 5 months earlier and requested all internet access be blocked on his account.

The fido rep informed him that background applications on his phone were accessing the Internet via a new apn they setup for the iPhone 3g! Apparently Rogers has opened a new port to connect to the Internet and did not block it for all those customers who requesting their Internet be blocked. Even after a lookup to confirm a call was indeed made to block Internet access, the rep refused to admit this was an error of theirs and is holding the client responsible for the charges unless he agrees to sign up for a data plan.

Through further investigation a source working at fido has informed me that this is a common and intentional practice. Rogers is purposely not fully blocking Internet access when requested by it's customers. This isn't only for the users of a 2g iPhone. Those purchasing the 3g iPhone without data will soon find a huge bill on their hands. By this method Rogers is pressuring iPhone clients into signing up for their over priced dataplan. My source says he is swamped with these situations on a daily basis.

And to make things even worse Rogers is increasing the price of a data plan from $30/month to $100/month at the end of August. Since Rogers has a GSM monoply in Canada customers have no other alternate even if the 3G iPhone is unlocked.