Olu Awoseyi remembers that sinking feeling after boarding a plane that he didn’t have his three-month-old, pricey Samsung phone.
Awoseyi, his wife and two children were returning from a vacation from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. They had just taken their seats on the Toronto to Edmonton leg of their trip when he realized his phone was missing.
He got his wife to call the phone, only to be disappointed, “We didn’t hear vibrate or ring around me, so I knew I dropped it at the point of boarding.”
It was too close to take-off to go look for it. But when he returned home, he remembered he’d installed a security application called Bitdefender on the phone. The app was set up to snap a photo of anyone who tried to unlock the phone with the wrong PIN.
Sure enough, he found a photo taken approximately 90 minutes after he’d boarded his flight: It was an Air Canada employee staring back at him.
He studied the photo carefully, double-checking the colours of the person’s uniform. “At first I was kind of excited,” he told Go Public.
“I think I’m in good hands. If it’s an employee of Air Canada that found it, then I’m OK.”
That was Oct. 9. Over the next five weeks his optimism turned to anger and frustration as he repeatedly called and emailed Air Canada’s customer service and communicated with its online customer support chat service — to no avail.
He also tried to track the phone using Bitdefender and the Google Find My Device app. But the phone appeared to be switched off, so the trackers didn’t work.
Olu Awoseyi was optimistic the photo would help him get the phone back. Over the next five weeks his optimism turned to anger and frustration as Air Canada seemed unable to locate it. (Trevor Wilson/CBC)
On Nov. 9, an Air Canada agent said a Samsung phone had been turned in at the Pearson Airport’s lost and found. But Awoseyi had checked, and the lost and found service said they did not have his phone.
A little over a week later, Air Canada customer service wrote a conflicting email, saying the airline had identified and interviewed the employee in the photo.
WATCH | Missing phone, mystery employee:
Edmonton man battles Air Canada over lost cellphone | Go Public
20 hours ago
Duration 2:02
Edmonton’s Olu Awoseyi has spent months trying to get Air Canada to either retrieve or replace his expensive new cellphone. An airline employee found it and claims to have placed it in a lost and found, but it disappeared. Awoseyi says the airline has given him the runaround ever since.
It said, according to the employee and an eyewitness, the phone had been returned to the Air Canada customer service desk, in Pearson’s international area.
Despite this, the email went on to explain, the phone was nowhere to be found.
“We have conducted our own thorough search this morning at the airport’s Lost and Found, as well as at Air Canada’s Lost and Found,” it said, “but regrettably, we have not Located your phone.”
Awoseyi is still paying for the lost Samsung S23 Ultra phone that he bought as part of his mobile plan contract. (Samsung)
That Nov. 16 email was Air Canada customer support’s last communication with Awoseyi. Even the chat bot stopped replying to him.
In a statement to Go Public, Toronto Pearson Airport said it has “no written or video record” of the phone being dropped off at its lost and found.
Go Public asked the country’s two largest airlines and Canada’s busiest airports about their success rates reuniting customers with their lost items. The airports report thousands of lost items each year, especially electronics like phones and tablets.
Air Canada claimed a 92 per cent success rate last year. Pearson appears to have been in second place, behind Vancouver International Airport, saying it got more than half of its lost items back to their owners.
In a statement to Go Public, Air Canada denied responsibility for the lost phone “as it is a personal item. Regrettably, several efforts to locate the item…have been unsuccessful.”
With the case unresolved and the last documented sighting of the phone in the hands of an Air Canada employee, Awoseyi is left thinking the worst.
This is the photo and alert Awoseyi received from the Bitdefender app. (Bitdefender)
“Why try to unlock [the phone], when you don’t have a code for the phone? So that made me believe this was a case of a theft.”
Regardless of what happened, Weston Powell, a Toronto lawyer, says Air Canada likely had an obligation to take care of the phone.
“Finders keepers, losers weepers — that’s not an accurate summation of the law,” Powell said.
Toronto lawyer Weston Powell says Air Canada is likely liable for the lost phone. (Mark Bochsler/CBC)
“When someone comes into possession of someone else’s property and that person’s identification is known, they do have obligations to return that property.”
Powell says the person snapped in the photo holding the phone may have some explaining to do, “But beyond that, Air Canada would also owe obligations because they are vicariously liable for their employee’s actions.”
Chris Choi, a professor at the School of Hospitality, Food and Beverage Management at the University of Guelph, says Air Canada’s response is the sort of thing that erodes customers’ trust.
He says it’s not only the fact that the airline can’t account for the missing phone, but that its customer support has stopped communicating with Awoseyi altogether.
“Ignoring the customer like that seems like you’re trying to avoid fixing the problem,” Choi said. “This situation can harm the airline’s reputation for a long time.”
Awoseyi has since redoubled his efforts to hold Air Canada to account. He filed a complaint with the Peel Regional Police, the closest municipal police force to Pearson Airport and hired a lawyer, who in a Jan. 8 letter asked for compensation for his phone and legal fees.
That letter received no response until almost three weeks later — three days after Go Public’s initial inquiries about the case — from a lawyer in Air Canada’s department of Litigation and Management, Global Claims.
That lawyer asked for the same information Awoseyi had already communicated to the airline’s customer support channels multiple times, and promised to get back to him “as soon as possible.” As of Friday, Awoseyi has received no response.
For now, he says he’s still on the hook for about $2,000 left on the contract for his uninsured phone.
“I think it’s disappointing.” he said. “I would think an organization like Air Canada should have a zero tolerance for things like this.”
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MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
