Cable Company Publicly Shames, Lectures Overdue Customers On Facebook

from the punishment-in-the-public-square dept

Apparently bored by the traditional route of collection agencies and courtesy, one Canadian cable operator recently decided to try something different: it started posting the names and account balances of customers with overdue accounts on Facebook. After complaining that it “always get excuses from everybody,” Senga Services in Fort Simpson, Canada started posting the notices to all manner of local community Facebook pages. Not content with that, at least one of the company’s representatives thought it was a good idea to lecture locals on fiscal responsibility and living “within one’s means”:

Not too surprisingly, locals weren’t too impressed with the cable operator’s new bedside manner:

“Connor Gaule, an administrator of the popular Fort Simpson Bulletin Board page, took the post down immediately. “I thought that it was kind of illegal for her to be posting the people in arrears,” he said. “And there’s better ways to go about it. Especially on social media, where half the people on that list are elders that don’t have access to that.”

…Michelle L?ger, a Fort Simpson resident studying in Fort Smith, said the post “just wasn’t right.” “If I had been a person on that list, I would have been really embarrassed,” she said. “It’s publicly shaming people. That’s kind of abusive to your customer base.”

Except, as we all know, the cable company doesn’t have to care about whether or not it’s abusing its customers, because usually it’s the only game in town. Senga responded by insisting that not only was the practice effective, it’s legal under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act for companies to disclose personal information without consent — if “the disclosure of the information is necessary in order to collect a debt owed to the organization.”

Not true, says the Canadian government. A few days after the original story broke, the CBC asked the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada whether Senga’s behavior crossed the line, and the agency stated the law doesn’t say what Senga thought it did:

” In an email response, Tobi Cohen, a senior communications adviser at the office, told CBC that Senga Services had been contacted and “the company has complied with our request to take down the post.” Cohen wrote that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act “allows organizations to use or disclose people’s personal information only for the purpose for which they gave consent.”

“There is also an over-arching clause that personal information may only be collected, used and disclosed for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances.” Cohen also wrote that were an individual to make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the office “could look at investigating further.”

After a wrist slap from the Privacy Commissioner Senga has backed away from the practice, and returned to what cable companies historically do best: doing a piss poor job of providing an extremely expensive service.

Filed Under: canada, public shaming, social media
Companies: senga services