Rogers/Shaw Tops Telecom Complaint List in New Watchdog Report

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Canada’s telecom frustrations are no longer scattered irritations. They are becoming a measurable pattern, and the newest watchdog data puts Rogers together with Shaw at the center of it. The latest report shows a sharp rise in accepted complaints across wireless, internet, phone, and TV services, with billing confusion and contract disputes doing much of the damage. It also shows how a single provider can dominate the national complaint picture when scale, integration, and customer friction collide. These ten takeaways unpack what the report says, why Rogers/Shaw landed at the top, where the biggest pain points are emerging, and what the broader complaint surge reveals about telecom life in Canada right now.

A Complaint Surge Too Large to Shrug Off

The newest watchdog figures are striking because the increase is not marginal. The CCTS accepted 19,157 complaints between August 1, 2025 and January 31, 2026, up 61% from the same midpoint a year earlier. That kind of jump changes the tone of the conversation. It suggests this is not just a story about a few angry customers venting online, but about a formal complaint system processing far more unresolved disputes than it did only a year earlier. In a country where telecom service is woven into work, school, travel, and home life, that kind of movement matters.

The raw totals also show the scale of the pressure on the system. The CCTS received 24,375 complaints, accepted 19,157 of them, and concluded 16,103 during the period. For households, the most frustrating part of telecom trouble is often how ordinary it begins: a plan price that looks wrong, a discount that disappears, a fee that was never clearly explained. The report suggests those everyday moments are adding up fast, not fading away.

Rogers/Shaw’s Lead Is Not a Narrow One

Rogers/Shaw did not merely finish first on the complaint list. It accounted for 6,583 accepted complaints, representing 34% of all complaints accepted by the CCTS during the reporting period. That is a significant share for a single combined provider name, and it helps explain why the report’s headline feels broader than a routine ranking. When roughly one in three accepted complaints points back to the same provider grouping, it becomes a sector story, not just a company story.

The year-over-year rise is equally important. Rogers/Shaw complaints were up 95.4% from the comparable midpoint last year, when the combined total stood at 3,369. The report notes that Rogers and Shaw are now counted together to reflect their integrated branding as “Rogers together with Shaw.” That matters because it changes how the public sees the numbers: not as legacy brands still moving separately, but as one customer-facing system whose billing, activation, cancellation, and service problems are increasingly read as a single experience.

Billing Keeps Showing Up as the Core Problem

The report makes clear that the biggest source of friction is not some exotic technical failure. It is billing. Across all complaint types, incorrect charges for monthly price plans were the top issue, appearing 4,807 times and making up 15.5% of all issues raised in complaints. That category alone rose 65.9% from the previous mid-year period. For a consumer, few things erode trust faster than opening a bill and feeling unsure whether the amount matches what was promised at signup.

That helps explain why billing disputes carry such emotional weight. Telecom services are recurring costs, and they often sit beside mortgages, rent, groceries, streaming subscriptions, and insurance in a monthly budget. When the charge is higher than expected, the frustration is immediate. The CCTS also said billing remains the top concern across all service types, and that missing credits or refunds ranked among the largest issue categories as well. In other words, the anger is not just about price itself. It is about accuracy, predictability, and whether promised savings actually show up.

Activation, Reconnection, and Cancellation Are Becoming Flashpoints

One of the most revealing details in the report is how quickly startup and exit fees are turning into complaint magnets. Issues tied to installation, activation, or reactivation charges surged 367.6% year over year, reaching 1,141 issues. That is a huge jump, and it points to a specific kind of customer pain: the feeling that the trouble starts the moment service begins, rather than months later. It also lines up with the CCTS’s note that the increase in Rogers/Shaw complaints was driven in part by installation and activation charges.

The same tension appears at the other end of the relationship. The CCTS said Rogers/Shaw’s complaint increase was also driven by customers saying they were not able to cancel service. That matters because onboarding and offboarding are moments when providers show whether their processes are clear or confusing. A household that signs up after a promotion, then faces disputed setup fees or friction trying to leave, tends to remember the experience far more vividly than a month of uneventful service. That kind of frustration spreads fast by word of mouth.

Wireless Still Carries Most of the Burden

Wireless remains the most complained-about service category by a wide margin. It accounted for 17,307 issues, or 56% of all issues raised in accepted complaints. Internet was next at 8,736 issues, or 28.2%. TV accounted for 2,899 issues, and local phone 1,885. Those shares matter because they show where telecom tension is most concentrated: the service people carry in their pockets, use while traveling, and depend on for constant access to work, banking, messaging, and identity verification.

The broader industry backdrop makes that result understandable. According to the CRTC’s 2026 market report, mobile services represented 56.4% of Canadian telecommunications revenues in 2024, while fixed internet accounted for another 28.0%. Wireless is not just another telecom segment; it is the largest revenue engine in the sector. So when complaint volumes swell in wireless, it tends to signal stress in the heart of the consumer relationship. The complaint data and the revenue mix tell the same story from different angles: mobile service is where trust is won, lost, and increasingly disputed.

The Rest of the Leaderboard Tells Its Own Story

Rogers/Shaw may have topped the list, but the complaint picture is not isolated to one company. TELUS ranked second with 3,078 accepted complaints, Bell third with 2,505, Fido fourth with 2,080, and Koodo fifth with 799. Together, those five providers made up 79% of all accepted complaints. That concentration says something important about the market: most of the formal complaint burden still sits with the country’s biggest brands and their flanker labels, not with a long tail of smaller firms.

The growth rates are revealing too. Fido posted the sharpest increase among the top five, up 155.5% from the previous mid-year period. Rogers/Shaw followed at 95.4%, while Koodo rose 38.7%, TELUS 31.4%, and Bell 26.0%. That means the report is not a simple tale of one provider collapsing while others hold steady. It points instead to broader stress across the major-brand ecosystem, with particularly strong pressure around wireless pricing, activation-related disputes, and monthly plan charges. Rogers/Shaw is the headline, but the discomfort extends well beyond one logo.

A Single Complaint Often Contains More Than One Problem

One reason telecom complaint reports can look more serious than expected is that a complaint is not the same thing as a single issue. The CCTS said the 16,103 complaints concluded during the period generated 30,928 issues. A customer may complain about an internet bill, a roaming charge, and a disputed contract term all at once, and the system records those separately. That helps explain why the report feels dense with trouble spots. Many Canadians are not running into one annoyance; they are colliding with several at the same time.

The top issue list shows how layered those disputes can be. After incorrect monthly plan charges, the leading categories included disclosure issues, credits or refunds not received, intermittent service, regular price increases, breach of contract, complete loss of service, third-party credit reporting, installation or activation charges, and changes to the contract. That lineup matters because it mixes hard financial pain with communication failures. Often the problem is not only what happened, but whether the customer believes it was explained properly, agreed to clearly, and corrected quickly once challenged.

Not Every Telecom Frustration Falls Within the Watchdog’s Reach

The report is also useful for what it cannot solve. The CCTS identifies a range of issues that fall outside its mandate, and the top ones are revealing. The largest categories were service provider general operating practices and policies, customer service concerns, pricing, infrastructure, and false or misleading advertising. In plain terms, some of the things that make people maddest, like long wait times, rude interactions, or dislike of a provider’s pricing structure, do not always become accepted complaints the watchdog can resolve.

That boundary matters because it helps explain why formal complaint totals still understate the wider mood around telecom service. A customer can have a miserable experience and still discover that the ombud process is limited to certain disputes tied to billing, contracts, service delivery, and related code obligations. The system is built to resolve concrete disputes, not act as a general review board for every irritation in the market. So the accepted complaint figures are powerful, but they do not capture every point of consumer dissatisfaction floating around the sector.

Consumer Protections Already Exist, but the Rules Are Still Evolving

Canada is not operating without safeguards. The Wireless Code and Internet Code were created to make contracts easier to understand, prevent bill shock, and make switching providers easier. The Wireless Code says every Canadian with a mobile plan is protected, and it includes rules around capped data and roaming charges, easier switching, and contract cancellation after two years without cancellation fees. The Internet Code similarly emphasizes clear pricing, understandable contracts, and better disclosure around promotions, bundles, and time-limited discounts.

Even so, regulators are still adding new layers. In 2026, the CRTC updated the codes to require stronger notifications before a contract ends, before a time-limited discount expires, and when roaming charges build up. It also moved toward self-service tools so customers can modify or cancel internet and cellphone plans without having to fight through a live representative. Those changes will not take effect until 2027, which means the complaint spike is arriving in a transitional moment: protections are expanding, but many consumers are still dealing with the older version of the system.

This Is Also a Story About a More Integrated Rogers/Shaw

The Rogers/Shaw label matters not just because of arithmetic, but because it reflects a combined identity after the merger era reshaped the market. The CCTS explicitly says it now reports complaints for Rogers and Shaw together to reflect integrated branding. That means the complaint story is landing in a post-merger environment where consumers often judge the experience as one organization, even if legacy systems, policies, and customer histories may still differ behind the scenes.

That backdrop makes the complaint ranking more politically and symbolically potent. The Competition Bureau had argued during the merger fight that the transaction would likely harm consumers through higher prices, lower quality service, and lost innovation in wireless. The deal ultimately went ahead, but today’s complaint numbers will inevitably be read through that older debate. The new report does not prove merger effects on its own. Still, when the combined Rogers/Shaw name leads the complaint list so decisively, it gives fresh life to long-running concerns about competition, service quality, and how concentrated telecom power feels to ordinary Canadians.

What the Report Really Means Now

The most important takeaway is not simply that Rogers/Shaw was first on a list. It is that the underlying complaints point to repeat frictions in essential services that consumers depend on constantly. The CCTS says 88% of concluded complaints were successfully resolved, and most of those resolutions happened within 20 days, which shows the system is doing meaningful work once a file is accepted. But a high resolution rate does not erase the fact that far more customers are arriving at the ombud’s door in the first place.

For Rogers/Shaw, the report is a reputational warning. For the broader industry, it is evidence that billing clarity, contract disclosure, activation practices, and cancellation pathways still need serious attention. For consumers, it is a reminder that telecom problems often become formal only after direct resolution fails. And for regulators, the timing is notable: new protections are on the way, but the complaint surge suggests the demand for simpler, clearer, less adversarial service is already here. That is why this report matters beyond one ugly headline.

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