Thieves steal millions of PC Optimum points | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Please consider registering
guest

sp_LogInOut Log In sp_Registration Register

Register | Lost password?
Advanced Search

— Forum Scope —




— Match —





— Forum Options —





Minimum search word length is 3 characters - maximum search word length is 84 characters

sp_Feed Topic RSS sp_TopicIcon
Thieves steal millions of PC Optimum points
March 23, 2018
8:52 am
Wayno
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 100
Member Since:
January 10, 2018
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

http://www.cbc.ca/news/busines.....-1.4586135
CBC News Posted: Mar 22, 2018

Thieves steal millions of PC Optimum points

Lenore Biever lost more than one million PC Optimum rewards points after someone apparently hacked her account and went on a shopping spree.
The points — which are worth more than $1,000 in product rewards — were spent on March 7 at two Loblaws-owned Pharmaprix drug stores in Laval, Que.
Biever lives in Saskatoon and has never been to Quebec.

CBC News interviewed eight people across Canada who say they've each had more than 100,000 points stolen from their accounts after Loblaws merged its two rewards programs — PC Plus and Shoppers Optimum — to form PC Optimum on Feb. 1

The reported thefts are just one more problem plaguing Loblaws, which is already dealing with technical glitches with PC Optimum, and fallout from a bread price-fixing scandal, including related fallout over asking some people to send ID to collect a $25 gift card as compensation for the overpriced bread

March 23, 2018
11:28 pm
Loonie
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 9396
Member Since:
October 21, 2013
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

I appreciate that people got ripped off, but why tanyone woud stockpile so many ponts is beyond me. There is no financial advantage to doing so, and always the risk that they will be devalued before you cash them in.

March 24, 2018
5:02 am
lhsaid
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 166
Member Since:
May 22, 2015
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

Loonie said
I appreciate that people got ripped off, but why tanyone woud stockpile so many ponts is beyond me. There is no financial advantage to doing so, and always the risk that they will be devalued before you cash them in.  

Loonie, the value of Optimum points was not a linear increments, it use to pay better if you accumulate the points. I guess that's why some people tend to not use them.

March 24, 2018
9:48 am
AltaRed
BC Interior
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 3145
Member Since:
October 27, 2013
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

Loonie said
I appreciate that people got ripped off, but why tanyone woud stockpile so many ponts is beyond me. There is no financial advantage to doing so, and always the risk that they will be devalued before you cash them in.  

I am with you. One should monetize on an ongoing basis to optimize the use of cash. Never understood this kind of behaviour.

March 24, 2018
10:04 am
Loonie
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 9396
Member Since:
October 21, 2013
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

lhsaid said

Loonie, the value of Optimum points was not a linear increments, it use to pay better if you accumulate the points. I guess that's why some people tend to not use them.  

It's true that the Shoppers points were worth more the longer you accumulated them, but the ceiling was well below a value of $1000! Last time I looked, it was $150, but they may have raised it a bit. Also, they devalued them at least once that I remember. There is never any warning as to when they will be devalued, and this is the biggest reason to cash them in promptly.
I essentially stopped shopping there several years ago as there were no bargains there for anything I wanted.

PCpoints, however, were worth the same regardless of how many you had, so there was no excuse to accumulate them.

April 5, 2018
11:22 am
fionag11
Member
Members
Forum Posts: 40
Member Since:
April 4, 2018
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline

I can see how the theft could have easily happened, no hacking required. Unable to find my PC Plus account to transfer it to PC Optimum, the representative erroneously gave me someone else's with a similar (not very similar) name. This person had fewer points than me though.sf-surprised

I do wish I'd already spent all my PC and Shoppers' points rather than deal with PC Optimum at all.

Please write your comments in the forum.