What does filing a complaint with the Office de la protection du consommateur do?

In the United States? This answer is Québec and Canadian law. The US side of this site answers different questions, state by state: different law, and different coverage. Go to the US side

In detail

The complaint follows a path the Office describes. It is filed by telephone, online or at the Office's premises. An officer first checks whether it is admissible, that is, whether its subject falls under the Office's responsibility; if it does, it is entered in the merchant's file. The officer may ask for the relevant documents: a written assessment, an invoice, a contract, a document laying out the terms of a warranty.

What the complaint produces belongs to monitoring, not to settling an individual case. The Office writes that complaints help determine which business sectors or practices are problematic, better define its interventions with merchants, and find out which merchants fail to obey the law. It also states that it receives a very high volume of complaints every year and is unable to check each one systematically: an automated prioritization mechanism targets the merchants to be verified, based on the severity of the violations, aggravating factors, the merchant's history in the Office's records and the number of complaints received.

The possible interventions are listed on the page: a reminder notice of the applicable provisions, a notice of non-compliance, an administrative fine, or a recommendation that penal proceedings be brought. Some interventions are then made public in the "Get Information About a Merchant" section.

On the consumer's side, the steps remain theirs. The page mentions that the officer may send an information kit based on the problem, along with other useful documents such as a formal demand form, and may suggest negotiating through the Parle consommation platform where the merchant agrees to take part. A separate compensation route exists, but it turns on another condition: according to the Office's Compensation page, "Compensation is available where a merchant has provided a security to the Office."

What to document

The invoice or contract, with its date. The method of payment · a bank or card statement carries a date no one disputes. Exchanges with the merchant, with their timestamps. The condition of the goods when the problem appeared: a photograph carries its date; a recollection does not.

Official sources

• Page officielle « Porter plainte auprès de l'Office » (Office de la protection du consommateur) ; fonctions de l'Office : art. 292 et suivants LPC · read on 2026-08-09

Related questions

• What do I have to write in a formal notice?
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