Rogers let horoscope texts bill its customers — $5.42M in refunds

Third-party premium text services — games, quizzes, horoscopes, ringtones — showed up on Rogers and Fido phone bills as monthly subscriptions, sold through ads in pop-ups, apps and social media whose recurring charges were not adequately disclosed. The Bureau concluded that Rogers made, or permitted to be made, false or misleading representations in those ads. The investigation had opened in 2012 against Rogers, Bell, Telus and the wireless industry association together.

The consent agreement of 16 March 2015 made Rogers the first of Canada's big carriers to settle: refunds and credits of up to an estimated $5.42 million, covering charges from two third-party providers between January 2011 and late 2013. It was then the Bureau's largest-ever refund package for wireless consumers.

The pattern the sweep exposed was structural: the ad promised a game, the click enrolled a subscription, and the charge arrived inside a phone bill the carrier sent under its own name. Rogers was answerable not for writing the ads but for permitting them to bill through its own relationship with the customer.