Slashdot Mirror
First Test of New Canadian Privacy Act
dave_mcmillen writes "In Canada, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) took effect in January 2001. An upcoming case will put the act to its first test: Canadian Business Magazine is
reporting that in late May, Mathew Englander will sue Telus Inc. over their right to charge him two dollars per month to have an unlisted phone number. Two other test cases are coming up later this year."
It's called "extortion".
Differentiate between:
1. Thanks for moving to my neighborhood. If you give me $100, I'll refrain from giving your address to my morally-impaired crack-addict friends.
2. Thanks for subscribing to our phone service. If you give us $2, we'll refrain from giving all of your contact information to our ethically-impaired telemarketer clients. For now.
From Sept 2001, until this January, I was living in Alberta which has Telus for a phone company. During that time I experienced such things as a $65 "Miscellaneous Service Charge" about which I contacted them many many times to find out how exactly I came to incur this fee. They were never able to give me any reason for it being there, and suggested I pay it to settle my account, and I could apply to have it refunded. The charge was never removed, and I never did pay it. I never did get my $100 deposit back that I had to put down in order to make long distance calls either. In the last month that I lived in Calgary, I sent them a bill for my time that I had invested in trying to find the source of this charge. That invoice was for $65, which I thought was reasonable because it took away from time that I could be pursuing business intrests. I never recieved even a phone call to say they wouldn't pay it.
For a brief time I was a subscriber of their ADSL service as well. In all the places I've lived, and all the providers I have dealt with they were by far the worst when it came to service, both technical and operational.
I'm not sure how it works south of the border, but in Alberta they have a complete monopoly over local phone service. If I were ever to live there again, I would be using a cell phone from someone else just to avoid their beurocracy. But I'm back in Manitoba now, and MTS (which also has a local service monopoly) has been very good to me so far.
I would like very much to see them have a ruling against them even if it has nothing to do with my situation.