A sophisticated new Rogers scam is leaving some Canadians on the hook for thousands of dollars in iPad charges.
CBC News has reported on a scam that’s been leaving people on the hook for $2,350 iPads.
The scam works like this:
The scam starts with a phone call from an alleged Rogers employee, who explains how to get a cheaper phone plan with a free iPad.
The employee explains how to sign up for the promotion on the Rogers app, and a couple of days later, the iPad arrives in the mail, followed by a phone call from another person in the Rogers activation department.
You get upset because you were told that this was a free iPad, and there weren’t going to be any charges, but it turns out there’s a $120 monthly bill for the iPad with the data plan.
The Rogers employee tells you that if you just return the iPad with the shipping label they supply, you won’t be charged.
However, the returned iPad never goes back to Rogers — it goes to the scammer. And you didn’t sign up for a new phone plan; you actually signed up for an iPad financing agreement. Now you’re on the hook for this $2,350 iPad that you have to pay off over the next couple of years.
Worse, Rogers won’t reimburse people who fall for the scam. According to CBC News, one customer who fell for the scam was only able to get the $20 monthly fee removed and a one-time $50 “goodwill gesture” after the publication contacted Rogers.
Pretty sophisticated
Multiple people have fallen for this scam already. Toronto police financial crimes Det. David Coffey told CBC News that this scam isn’t tricking people into buying something fake, but it gets people to give away something real, and he has been seeing more victims of this crime. Outreach Officer Jeff Horncastle calls this a pretty sophisticated scam and says these types of scams have been around since 2022.
The obvious answer might be to just find out where the iPads are going, but these scammers are smart. The report indicates that the return addresses go to vacant homes or sorting facilities as delivery addresses. Sometimes they also pick random addresses, wait for the iPad to be dropped off and grab it or get someone else to pick it up from the porch. In one case, the return address was located in Brampton, Ont., while another person had to return their iPad to a location in Edmonton.
Avoiding scams
Rogers told CBC News that when a customer gets a new device, the company tells them by email and through a note inside the shipping box not to return it to any address other than a Rogers location. The note also says that Rogers will never call asking them to return a device — although in the scam, Rogers only told the person to return the device after they said that they didn’t want to pay for the monthly data plan.
“We understand how difficult it is for customers who fall victim to fraud, and we actively share information on how to stay protected against fraudulent activity, including return scams targeting consumers globally and across industries,” a Rogers spokesperson told the CBC News.
The Canadian Telecommunications Association, which represents various telecom companies including Rogers, says that this happens across various industries.
Source: CBC News
