Many of the scams we report on here at The Advocacy Blog are perpetrated by anonymous individuals and small, unknown companies. That’s how we often picture the bad guys: as people and organizations no one hears about until their frauds are discovered.
So it’s particularly shocking when the FTC uncovers a scam that was carried out by a well-known company with over 2,300 stores all over the US.
Fake Scans and Phony Results
Office Depot (which also owns Office Max) and one of its partner companies (Support.com) recently agreed to pay $35 million to settle claims that they engaged in a fraudulent computer-testing scheme designed to encourage consumers to purchase unnecessary computer diagnostic and repair services.
According to court filings made by the FTC, Office Max and Office Depot stores ran promotions between 2009 and late 2016 that encouraged people to bring in their computers for a free “PC Health Check” or a free “PC tune-up” valued between $20 and $60. These “checks” and “tune-ups” were supposed to determine whether the computer being tested was infected with malware or viruses. In fact, no actual tests or tune-ups were done. If consumers indicated on a questionnaire that their machines were running slowly, crashed frequently, or often displayed pop-up ads, the “health check” automatically reported the presence of malware and other infections.
After consumers were told that the phony scan had determined that their computer was infected, they were then encouraged to buy diagnostic and repair services to address the non-existent problems. Some of these unnecessary services cost as much as $300.
Store employees were pushed hard to promote the free scans and the unnecessary repairs. Office Depot tracked the number of these services each store sold and rewarded stores that hit their sales targets.
Office Depot knew that the results of its “scans” and “health checks” were determined solely by the customer’s responses to computer performance questions. In fact, the company warned its salespeople not to run a scan after tech maintenance had been completed, because the results would be the same so long as consumers answered the screening questions to indicate that they had had performance issues with their computers.
One thing that made Office Depot’s scheme especially egregious is that store-level employees wrote to management about their concerns, but were ignored. One employee wrote, “I cannot justify lying to a customer or being TRICKED into lying to them for our store to make a few extra dollars.”
How Can You Avoid Being Scammed Like This?
While it’s certainly easier for consumers to deal with one company for both diagnosis and treatment of computer problems, that may not always be the best policy. There are many well-respected and inexpensive anti-virus applications that will scan your machine for the presence of adware, malware, and viruses. Many of them also quarantine or delete suspicious files. If your computer isn’t performing well, it might be better to run one of those scans and then take the information it reveals to your service tech.
Another way to protect yourself is to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers—pretty standard advice for avoiding all sorts of scams, but still applicable here. If your service tech tells you your computer is infected, ask them to tell you the precise file names of the suspect files and specifically where they are located. Ask what date those files were added. Most of that information is usually revealed by a genuine anti-virus scan.
In the end, though, this is a difficult kind of scam to protect against. Computer diagnosis is a complicated process. It involves a lot of technical jargon and expertise. Most people just want their computer to run smoothly without knowing precisely how it works—and what might be wrong with it. You’d think that going to a large, well-known company for help would be a good strategy, but in this case, one such company clearly abused its customers’ trust.
What Can You Do If You Were Tricked Into Buying Computer Repair Services?
The FTC expects to use the $35 million settlement to reimburse consumers who bought needless computer maintenance services. At this time, no information is available about how or when that will happen, but we will update this article when the FTC announces how the funds are to be disbursed.