Woman pwns Rogers Wireless in court over fraudulent charges
By Chris Ziegler 
posted February 24th 2007 12:09PM
posted February 24th 2007 12:09PM
Note to carriers: don't falsely bill customers -- who just happen to be lawyers -- for $14,000 in charges they never racked up. That's the lesson Canada's Rogers Wireless learned the hard way this week, getting slapped with a $2,000 fine (pennies by Rogers' standards, we know, but a nice little bonus in the customer's pocket) for turning off customer (and lawyer) Susan Drummond's son's phone after she refused to pay 14 grand in long distance calls she hadn't placed (we're pretty sure those are Canadian dollars, but it's still some serious dinero). But wait, the story doesn't end there: it turns out the original incident had taken place in 2005 after Ms. Drummond's phone was stolen out of her house while she was away. Ted Rogers -- as in, "Rogers Wireless" Ted Rogers -- personally got involved after he caught wind of the situation, turning the phone back on, wiping out the bill, and hooking up the Drummonds with a cool $5,000. Ms. Drummond decided to ignore the goodwill gesture, though, and take Rogers to court anyway for breach of contract, where she won. Paying attention here, AT&T?[Thanks, Brian]
Well apparently what most Canadian customers aren't aware of is that when you agree to service agreement with Rogers Wireless and it's subsidiaries you're actually waving away the right to sue, or join a class action lawsuit. You have agreed that you will go to arbitration, and not take legal action on the company, but reading this there must be a loophole, like you've cancelled your phone service, so contract destroyed, or in this case no service at all, contract suspended. Unfortunately we in Canada are at the mercy of monopolies which control major things here, and Canadian politicians are wondering why must Canada always live in the shadow of success of the United States, gee I wonder...
God, it is embarrassing to be Canadian sometimes. To any Americans reading this - we are not all hoser redneck anti-American idiots! I love America and Americans, and always find it amazing that when I come back home to Canada, it seems that the ONLY cultural identity Canadians have, is to be anti-American! Let's face it, we are a totally insecure nation, desperate to be noticed and recognized and determined to be "unique" - and yet there is almost nothing to distinguish us from Americans in a general sense. Canada sold out to the US years ago. We basically are an auxiliary company of the US corporation. At this point, we have a more conservative government than they do! We consume American products and culture, and every chance we get, we visit American cities like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami etc etc. One writer on here calls Americans (generalizing as only Canadians can) "gun loving" - as though all 300 million (300 million!!) Americans could be painted with one brush. America is a mosaic in the truest sense of the word. Canadians for the most part are a xenophobic and sanctimonious lot who need to take their heads out of their collective asses and contribute something to the world rather than sitting back and judging America, who in spite of its flaws, can never be accused of being insecure like we are.
Oh, and also - Rogers sucks.
Verizon Wireless charged me $2500.00 for their glitch... and they knew about the glitch too. 5 months, 2 reactivations and unknown amount of phone calls and late fees later it was finally fixed.
I wish I knew Susan Drummond!!
You make it sound like the Canadian dollar is a frikkin Peso. Hello??? Get your U.S. heads out of your inward looking, navel gazing insular arses. This woman sued and won involving a $14000 dollar cell bill. Period.
Wow, you Canadians are very quick on the trigger there. Calm down JD.... chill, it's ok. There is no anit-Canadian bias or slant in this article, how you perceive that is beyond me.
Don't kid yourself. That was a crack about Canadian currency. There's always a l'il joke whenever something Canadian comes up. And I'm writing this from the American southwest.
____________
So let's get this straight. The head of the company - presumably a very busy man - gets involved in a dispute over this woman's kid's bill. Makes it right and ponies up a $5,000 credit as a bonus goodwill gesture... And she still sues.
No wonder people hate lawyers. Way to set an example, c--t!
I'm Canadian and don't see how the value of 1 unit of a particular currency is important. If a standard like a loaf of bread costs $1US, $1.20 CDN, 0.5 Euros, or 383838383.002 Manulian wombas, it doesn't matter (the fact that the loaf of bread's components may be heavily subsidized is another matter, of course). Hypertext software was supposed to auto-convert for us, so in the meantime it's an opening for editors to insert "jokes." Funny how you never see these cracks applied to currencies where 1 unit is > $1 US, though. Quite simply, the professional approach is to write $14k CDN ($12k USD).
Now on the other hand, if we want to talk about wireless Internet access, then Canadians are definitely second class world citizens. 1 CDN wireless internet access plan = .0001 WIAP.
And yeah, lawyers and big companies usually suck.
@ Angry in Arizona
What you don't realize is that many Canadians hate Rogers as much as most of the world hates lawyers.
They need to have their corporate ass kicked MANY more times..for cable, internet and wireless issues.
They are evil.
I for one am glad that woman sued ROGERs they are a shitty company and lay people like me can't do anything or at least don't know what we can do when a big crappy company like that screws us over. I signed a 3 year contract with rogers a few months ago and since then they have cut off my phone almost 10 times saying I went over my credit limit. It turns out that they failed to give me the proper credit for my plan, they would charge me for every minute called which should be included in my monthly package or they charged me for long distance minutes that I have on my plan. they always say that they fix the problem but it happens again and again. just yesterday my phone was cut off because i made $200 in phone calls within a week! again, it was ROGER's mistake, not mine. I HATE ROGERS!!!
Bell felt it necessary to charge me for accidently using there data bandwidth on one of there big product line phones , I regret this seriously as they wanted to slap me with a $7000 bill for doing this. They are very upset as they do not know how i did this and it is the first time it has ever happened. For reasons of my own all i will say is I "dropped" it. I was told that they would retract 75% of the debt because it was an accident. So as a sign of good faith as this message is probably being monitored i will only talk about 25% of the details. What i know involves more than one model and will work with pay as you go and is unmonitored to date unless you own the phone and are on a plan.
WILL BE IN TOUCH
OMEN
Interesting dynamic of the value of the Canadian dollar. As of Oct 12, 1 Canadian dollar is worth 1.0297 American, oh how the Americans love there egocentric view that all the world is a step down from them. Poor Bush is bringing down your whole country, but before one of you gun hungry people shoot one us poor stupid Canadians, let's stay on target and talk about why the lawyer did this. First Canadian lawyers do not get to bring frivolous lawsuits to court. Unlike the American "hey I was wronged someone must pay" In order to bring that matter to court there has be a set of parameters met. I am glad she pushed it and didnt settle as this set's a precedent for people to know you can fight back. I won't rant my issue with cell phones, but we all know this. Good for you lady, to take this step and bring into a Canadian court means allot more than a American Court where you can sue because someone looks at you funny. Besides you need to save your money in case you wind up needing a prescription, at least in Canada we don't have to get another mortgage to pay for health care!! Do not worry US we got your back.
p.s. I am looking at buying a summer home in Oregon, cuz your money is so low. I'll bring some Canadian Bacon!!