I was looking at the Rogers Internet plans today and realized that both the $60 Extreme and $47 Express service are now 10Mbps. The only differences are upload speed (1Mbps vs. 0.5Mbps) and bandwidth cap (95GB vs. 60GB).

I’m not much of an uploader and I’ve never downloaded more than 60GB, so it was an easy way to save $156 a year.

I never wash my car during the winter. I do this because I put a nice thick coat of sealant before winter starts and I find that frequent winter washes remove this coat really quickly, because of all the grime and salt that builds up on the car. When the weather warms up, I do a single, full wash and the sealant is still underneath, protecting the paint from the elements. Unfortunately, this leaves the car looking like a salt lick for most of the winter.

A few weeks ago, a hand car wash opened up in the neighborhood, just south of Summerhill. Called Mr. Shine it’s located at Yonge and Roxborough, just across the street from the Shell station. I took the car there to support a new local business – they had the tedious task of removing 4 months of dirt from the car. They did a pretty good job, and I recommend them. A basic exterior wash, without detailing, is $16.99. Usually I spend $13 in a car wash bay, so it’s not that much more. I detail my car myself, so I haven’t seen the results. However I’ll probably stop by soon and find out what products they use – and whether or not they use a sealant or a wax (or both!).

Over the weekend I called Rogers because the Cable TV portion of my bill was way higher than I thought it should be. Turns out a “Speciality TV” package was added to my bill at a cost of $40/month. By removing it I only lost a few channels and none of them I really watch anyways because the VIP package already gave me a lot. Basically the two packages overlapped significantly.

What strikes me as odd is that I didn’t ask for that package to be added. It was added when I had some problems on my account and it was put there for “free” because of the headache I went through from Rogers. Little did I know that there was a term limit to how long it was free for and it quickly turned into a fee package.

So, double check your bills – make sure you’re getting only the services that you want. And be careful when Roger’s offers you something for nothing…