Achi news desk-
Tim Hortons insists that a potential class action lawsuit involving customers who were mistakenly emailed during the company’s Roll up to Win contest has “no merit.”
About 500,000 customers across Canada received the emails from the coffee giant on Wednesday, falsely claiming customers had won a boat and trailer worth more than $68,000, according to court filings by Montreal-based law firm LPC Avocats.
Over 2,000 social media users joined a Facebook group where many shared their frustration at being told they had received the prize, only to be told it had been sent by mistake, without any compensation.
Tim Hortons apologized for the error and asked customers to ignore the content of the email.
LPC Avocats filed a class action application with the Quebec Superior Court on April 19. The claim has not yet been approved as it is awaiting a hearing on permission to proceed.
The company claims that the company violated the Consumer Protection Act, which states that merchants are obliged to make statements or advertisements about their services, including the Roll Up To Win contest.
The class action seeks $10,000 in punitive damages for each customer who received the email and other potential damages, to be determined by a judge.
Tim Hortons said in a statement to CTV News that it will handle the matter in court.
“Despite this human error, we firmly believe there is no merit in the lawsuit and we will address it through the courts,” a Tim Hortons spokesman said in an emailed statement.
“After the Roll Up To Win contest ended, we sent a summary email to give our guests an overview of their play history. Unfortunately, there was a human error that caused some guests to receive incorrect information in this summary message. When we became aware of the error, we quickly sent an email to the guests informing them of the error and apologizing.”
Gilles Le Vasseur, a law and business professor at the University of Ottawa, says these contests have exclusion clauses in their rules that make class action lawsuits difficult, but clients can still seek punitive damages.
“They can make a claim against the company for the damage. But the question is what damage can you claim?” LeVasseur said Saturday of the 580 CFRA’s live! With Andrew Pinsent.
“Situations like this, yes it’s frustrating, yes it hurts, but the people didn’t really lose personally in a given account. They lost in terms of options.”
Labasor says that if the lawsuit moves forward, a judge could offer customers a maximum of $500 in damages to quickly close the case.
“Unfortunately, the amount that is usually settled is not very high,” he said.
Labasor says he would like to see Tim Hortons be more transparent with customers and apologizes profusely for the injustice. He suggests that the company appear on television or in the media to repair the lost customer trust and repair the credibility of the competition.
“You need to act immediately, that’s the first step you need to take. Acknowledge your flaws, act immediately and find a solution,” he said. “By making people wait like that, they lose faith in the business.”
“Right now, Tim Hortons doesn’t do that.”
He adds that the company should consider compensating customers for the error to help quickly restore its brand.
“Marketing right now is a very different concept than we had 10 years ago,” he said.
“Social media creates its own marketing strategy so when the system kicks in and it becomes an anti-Tim Horton’s movement, you might not lose 50 percent of your business, but you might lose 10 to 15 percent of your customers — and that’s your business at the end of the day.”
