Rogers has joined Bell and Telus in charging a $50 connection fee to customers who choose to activate a plan with the carrier. As before, Rogers will waive the fee for online orders, but not if customers make purchases in-store, through Live Chat or Customer Service.
It’s not clear when, exactly, Rogers implemented the new connection fee — or, as the carrier calls it, the ‘Setup Service Fee.’ However, the new, more expensive fee is now listed under the ‘Show full details’ section of the ‘Plans’ page on its website.
If I had to guess, I’d say Rogers made the change recently. Bell and Virgin Mobile increased connection fees to $50 near the beginning of July, and Telus will follow suit on July 29th. Interestingly, at the time of writing, Rogers’ flanker brand Fido still listed its connection fee as $45. Typically, when one of the Big Three changes a connection fee, that carrier’s respective flanker brand changes its fee too. It’s likely only a matter of time before Fido switches to the $50 fee too.
Update 07/27/2021 at 3:51pm: Fido has now updated its website with the $50 connection fee.
Speaking of flanker brands, Telus’ Koodo also technically still charges a $45 connection fee, but Koodo’s website lists a $5 SIM card charge too. I thought the charge was new, but wasn’t totally sure, so I double-checked the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which last captured a snapshot of Koodo’s website in June. There was no $5 SIM card charge at that time.
According to the fine print on Koodo’s website, the SIM card charge applies to online orders, but it doesn’t mention in-store purchases. However, the $45 connection fee is waived for online purchases and applies to in-store purchases. Update 07/27/2021 at 3:51pm: Koodo has clarified that the new $5 SIM charge only applies to online orders. You can learn more here.
Getting back to Rogers, the carrier last boosted its connection fee to $45 in October 2020. Before that, the fee jumped from $35 to $40 in February 2020. Based on that pattern, I’m looking forward to another $5 connection fee increase in March 2022.
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