Mitigating Losses
I realized the phone had been stolen on August 27 when Rogers told me there were over $14,000 that had been racked up on my stolen cell phone between July 26 - August 16, 2005. I had just returned from being away the night before, August 26, 2005.
At that point, Rogers had already escalated my account to the Legal Department and sent it to Account Receivable for “collection treatment”.
As the Manager of Rogers Fraud Department unwittingly revealed, Rogers had a means of mitigating losses all around: Rogers has had a computer generated program for detecting atypical calls since 1997 and a fraud protocol that involves shutting off the consumer’s phone if the Fraud Department cannot get a hold of the consumer to notify him or her that there is some very unusual activity appearing on the account.
I had no capacity to mitigate losses because I didn’t realize that someone had stolen my cell phone until Rogers’ Accounts Receivable (not Fraud) Department called me 10 days after the calls had stopped.
It couldn’t be more nonsensical for Rogers to argue that I didn’t allow the corporation to mitigate its losses by calling as soon as I knew my phone was stolen. I only found out it was stolen the day after Rogers called ME – and by that time, the calls had stopped a full 16 days earlier.