According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Office Depot and its sister company, Support.com, have agreed to pay fines totaling $35 million to settle complaints that they tricked customers into buying computer repair and technical services after deceptively claiming they had found malware symptoms on the customers’ computers.
Office Depot and OfficeMax stores offered a free computer health check between 2009 and November 2016. Consumers who brought their computers in for a scan were asked four questions, including whether their computers ran slow, received virus warnings, crashed frequently or experienced other problems. The PC Health Check program was configured to report malware infections if the customer answered yes to one of the four questions, regardless of whether any malware was found on the computer. The program would then display a description of recommended services possibly costing hundreds of dollars to fix the probably non-existent problems.
The FTC claims that Office Depot and Support.com have been aware of complaints about the PC Health Check program going back at least to 2012. One OfficeMax employee complained to management in 2012 that, “I cannot justify lying to a customer or being TRICKED into lying to them for our store to make a few extra dollars.” However, even after this and other warnings the store continued to promote the PC Health Check program and encouraged employees to sell the services to customers.
In addition to the $35 million fines, the settlement also prohibits Office Depot from making misrepresentations about the security or performance of a consumer’s electronic device and requires the company to ensure its existing and future software providers do not engage in such conduct. As part of its proposed settlement, Support.com cannot make, or provide others with the means to make, misrepresentations about the performance or detection of security issues on consumer electronic devices.
The FTC plans to use the $35 million paid by Office Depot and Support.com to issue refunds to affected customers.
