Updated: Rogers has been in touch, through the kind offices of Tod Maffin and their corporate communications director, Liz Hamilton. Apparently the staff I spoke to were mistaken; there is a phone replacement program that applies to the iPhone. That program allows you to replace a lost or stolen phone at retail cost, provided you meet certain conditions (which I do). With the iPhone 3G, though, that full retail cost is $850. So I’ll limp along for a while with an older smart phone I’ve been able to scavenge. Thanks, Liz, and especially you, Tod.

Congratulations on that new iPhone you just got. Now, you’ll want a nice case to protect it… and probably that cool Bluetooth headset they sell…

…Oh. And a pair of handcuffs, to chain your iPhone to your person at all times.

Because – as Rogers probably forgot to tell you when you plunked down your money – there’s effectively no way to replace a lost or stolen iPhone. (Actually, there is: see above.)

That’s unless you’re willing to buy a new phone and a new data plan, change your phone number… and fork over $400 to cancel your old data plan. So say Rogers’ customer service people.

Sadly, I’m able to attest to this first-hand. On Friday night, we took a family trip to the Twilight Drive-In in Aldergrove, just outside Vancouver. At one point during the show I hopped out to re-settle my toddler in the backseat of our car.  And that was the last I saw of my iPhone – whether someone grabbed it from the roof of our car, or the seat, or the ground, it vanished.

Whoever has it has yet to follow up, return the phone, or answer any of our many calls. (If you’re still out there, please email me: rob at robcottingham dot ca – there’s a cash reward for the phone’s safe return.)

By Monday I’d given up hope of getting the phone back, and called Rogers to find out about getting a replacement. The short answer: no.

The longer answer: if I really want to do it, I’ll have to cancel my current account, lose my current phone number, pay a $400 cancellation penalty for my old data plan, and then pay $299 for the new phone.

Rogers’ customer relations person told me they have to levy that cancellation charge because they’re subsidizing the cost of the iPhone in order to get data subscribers. But since they aren’t about to tell you or me what they pay per iPhone, it’s impossible to tell whether that’s true, and if it is, if the penalty is reasonable.

(In fairness to Rogers, they’ve offered to let me use my current $30/month data plan and sell me a different phone. But there’s a reason I bought the iPhone instead of, say, a Blackberry; as a Mac user, it’s infinitely more usable for me than any other smart phone out there.)

Here’s the thing, Rogers. If you’re going to make it pretty much impossible for people to replace a lost iPhone without paying a stiff penalty and losing their phone number… isn’t that the sort of thing you ought to tell people before they sign on the dotted line?