Frustrated prepaid customers with Rogers and Fido may find some recourse with the Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) following the company shutting down prepaid services last year.

As of December 16th, Rogers and its flanker brand, Fido, shut down their respective prepaid services. Prepaid customers were forced to switch to another Rogers flanker brand, Chatr, transition to postpaid services, or leave for another provider altogether. However, some frustrated customers discovered that they couldn’t get a refund or transfer the money they had paid into the prepaid service. Rogers’ terms of service appeared to be amended in June 2024 to make prepaid balances non-transferable.

One Rogers customer reached out to MobileSyrup to share her experience of going to the CCTS to get her money back from Rogers. In emails, Diane Damario said that she topped up her Rogers prepaid account on October 8th, 2024, before receiving notice on October 22nd that Rogers would discontinue its prepaid service.

Damario said she added $100 to her Rogers account, which cost $113 with tax included. That amount would have covered about seven months of Damario’s prepaid service. She filed a complaint with the CCTS on December 30th and requested to be reimbursed $109.60, which represented her remaining prepaid balance of $97 and $12.60 in tax. Damario stressed in the email that anyone filing a CCTS complaint should remember to include the tax — she initially forgot but was able to update her complaint later.

“The CCTS responded on January 3rd, 2025, with an invitation to submit a complaint online and a link to their online complaint form,” Damario wrote to MobileSyrup.

“I completed and submitted my complaint online later that same day and received an email from the CCTS with a copy of my complaint and an invitation to submit documents to support my claim. I emailed back with support documents less than 2 hours later. At around the same time, I received another email from the CCTS indicating that they were accepting my complaint and had notified my service provider.”

Damario received an email from Rogers’ Office of the President on January 7th. In it, the company agreed to reimburse the $109.60 via a mailed cheque. Rogers also warned that the process would take two to six weeks to complete. Notably, Rogers highlighted in the email that its terms of service state that deposits into a prepaid account are non-refundable, but agreed to issue the refund as a “one-time gesture.”

Along with the details about including tax, Damario recommended that anyone filling out a complaint take their time and be patient because it’s not always obvious which answer to select. If you do select the wrong answer, you can always go back and change it.

“I am trying to spread the word around because I feel that Rogers [is] being unfair and dishonest in keeping everyone’s account balances,” Damario wrote.

Canadians can file a complaint with the CCTS using the commission’s online form, which is available here.