Fridays are usually the busiest days for Abigail Hitchens.
The Collingwood, Ontario florist gets calls for everything from events and anniversaries to birthdays and gatherings.
Sometimes it’s just for an “on a whim” weekend gift.
On days like this, Hitchens will usually be selling flowers.
“Not today,” she said in an email to CTVNews.ca. “My phone isn’t ringing – and many emails aren’t working. I also can’t accept payment by wire transfer. I got rid of the Visa terminal early in COVID. The last time this outage happened is produced, I lost $900 in sales. Today, it’s looking to be at least $1,500.”
Hitchens joins many people across Canada who rushed to get their work lives in order as a massive Rogers network outage on Friday disabled mobile services and customers’ internet connections.
Not only businesses like Hitchens’s have been affected, but also banks, passport offices, airports and hospitals.
People have also been unable to make debit payments and in some cases may have difficulty calling 911. Some have had to stand outside cafes in an attempt to reconnect online.
The outage also led many air travelers to miss important notifications about their flights and exacerbated baggage problems at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
Heather Clark and her husband did not receive a notification that their flight to Toronto from Victoria had been delayed for five hours. In Toronto, they are now handling missing baggage.
“I’m very frustrated, I’m tired,” Clark told CTV National Friday from Pearson Airport.
The couple missed their connecting flight and worried about how to catch a ride if they left the airport without working cell service.
“We’re pretty much stuck,” she said. “It feels like the Dark Ages…”
Air Canada also informed customers that its call centers were down Friday due to the outage, and passengers can no longer contact staff about their missing baggage.
On Friday night, Rogers said its services were “starting to pick up.”
The company did not reveal exactly what caused the outage or how many customers are affected. A spokesman for Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino confirmed to CTV News that the outage was not due to a cyberattack.
Hitchens told CTVNews.ca she relies on Fridays to catch up on slower days earlier in the week.
She and many others answered a call from CTVNews.ca asking readers to share their experiences during the service outage.
Responses were emailed to CTVNews.ca and not all have been independently verified.
As someone with a child to feed and bills to pay, Hitchens says a $1,500 loss like the one she expects on Friday is “enormous” for a small business owner like her.
“That may not seem like a lot of money to a lot of people, but after two years of COVID and no event work, these small amounts are what keep the lights on as we work to recover two years of losses,” she said.
“…Rogers is getting unreliable and absolutely miserable to deal with while being extortionate for what we get.”
Other small business owners have expressed similar frustrations over the Rogers outage and the impact it will have as they try to recover from the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One person said he was unable to receive donations for his nonprofit, while a pharmacist said he could not receive faxes from doctors’ offices and was worried about the impact it would have on patients.
At least two people who wrote to CTVNews.ca said they needed to speak to their doctors and surgeons by phone, but were unable to.
The situation is also affecting customers in other ways, including their home security systems, online schoolwork and bill paying.
Some have asked why Rogers didn’t notify them of the outage. Others say that if this continues, they will have no choice but to switch to another service provider.
The outage even affected customers abroad.
Pamela Tribiger told CTVNews.ca she was on vacation in Northern Ireland with her family and used her phone to navigate.
Suddenly, she says she had no way of finding their destinations or Airbnb.
“It was freakish to be in a foreign country and completely isolated,” she said.
Luckily, they were able to find Wi-Fi at an information center and thus got directions to their Airbnb.
Vancouver’s Sabrina Brosnan said she was currently seeking help with overdue rent and was unable to resolve the issue due to the breakdown.
“It is extremely distressing for many who are trying to reach the government and get financial or medical help, not to mention anyone trying to get a passport or other government help,” Brosnan wrote to CTVNews.ca.
“They should be able to stop this stuff from happening I had to go to my local library to check my email and send this to you, not that I’m complaining about going to my library but we’re supposed to to be beyond this kind of breakdown issue with these companies.”
With files from Adrian Ghobrial of CTV National News, The Canadian Press and Rhythm Sachdeva of CTVNews.ca