Business community taking massive hit due to Rogers outage

From phone service to payment services, the Rogers outage is causing major disruptions across the country.

And that includes the business community, which says commerce has taken a major hit today.

Some businesses are in a situation where their payment systems are limited or completely out of operation.

Others don’t even have phone or Internet service.

“What is unfortunate with this situation today, is that some businesses could lose sales, at a time where more than half of small businesses in Canada are not back to normal revenue,” said Jasmin Guenette with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

“The last thing that businesses need is a long shortage of phone and internet access.”

Guenette says the loss of these services is a harsh reality for a small business.

“It’s like when you start your day without hot water in your shower … it’s not a good day,” he said.

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Meanwhile, some industry representatives point out this goes way beyond sales.

“They need to get product, they need to get inventory, they need to ship goods,” said Anita Huberman with the Surrey Board of Trade. “Yes, there’s credit card options, but there’s also the budgets that companies, especially small businesses, need to meet. And it’s absolutely true, every business has been compromised.”

The problem is leading to customers leaving some essential stores empty-handed.

“We know some of our grocery store members, they have customers that can’t use their debit cards,” said Huberman.

Huberman says the longer the outage continues, the more businesses will pay the price.

“This is concerning if it continues to escalate more than a day,” said Huberman. “Every single business day is so important, whether you’re a small or large business.”

Rogers is the parent company of CityNews.

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