Canadian Cable Company Shames Non-Paying Customers Publicly On Facebook (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: If you've ever been late on paying a bill, it's unlikely that you ever thought that you were running the risk of being publicly shamed about your shortcomings. However, for a few unfortunate individuals, one Canadian cable TV provider doesn't see things quite the same way. Recently, Senga Services, which is located in Canada's Northwest Territories, decided to begin posting the names of customers that had overdue payments to its Facebook page. The initiative was spearheaded by company employee Jennifer Simons, who felt so strongly about her right to expose late bill payers, that she debated with those on a Facebook community page who thought she was in the wrong in doing so. Simons claims that public shaming has proven to be the most successful method of getting customers to pay up. Exposing someone's name and amount owed might be a gross breach of ethics, but Simons claims that it's not illegal. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada urged the company to pull the post outing these tardy customers, and the company has since obliged. The Privacy Commissioner is now mulling whether this issue is worth investigating further.

Comments

Re:Can't wait for the aftermath.

[PKFC]

Yeah this is a town of 1200 people and they only got a highway in the 70s. NWT has its own scale of how sparse it is. The largest city, Yellowknife is about 25k people and likely at least a four hour drive from that town. If you think the duopoly everywhere else in North America is bad, try NWT

Re:Wall of Shame

[JaredOfEuropa]

There is a huge difference between naming an shaming someone on a bulletin board in a small local store, and doing so online for the whole world to see until the end of time. In terms of more traditional punishments, it's the difference between a thief being put in the stocks for a day, or being branded.