Ontario Court Orders Rogers To Pay $500,000 Over Misleading Chatr Ads

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Rogers was fined $500,000 by an Ontario court after the carrier did not conduct enough research to prove a claim that its Chatr discount brand had better coverage than its rivals.

The ruling was reached on Friday by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and the decision was closed on Monday by Canadian independent law enforcement agency, Competition Bureau.

Previously, the court dismissed the claims from Competition Bureau that claimed Rogers used misleading advertising to promote Chatr. At that point, the independent law enforcement agency was seeking a fine of $10 million, the maximum allowable amount.

The latest ruling found Rogers did not conduct enough test to claim that Chatr was more reliable then some of the newer Canadian wireless carriers. The claim Rogers was making in the ads was customers who use Chatr will suffer fewer dropped calls than those using other carriers.

“It [the court] did find that certain testing should have been completed by Rogers before any of the ads were published and therefore imposed a modest penalty of $500,000.”

Chatr is a Rogers-owned company which was launched several years ago to fight off new wireless carriers, such as Wind Mobile.

[via CBC]

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