Why Rogers Will Win The “Cheaters” Lawsuit
You might recall that I posted a story about a woman who is suing Rogers for $600,000 because Rogers merged her mobile phone bill with her husband’s bill and he found out about her affair as a result of that. I was doing some thinking and I decided to browse the Rogers Terms Of Service (Warning: PDF) to see if there was an out that Rogers could use. After all, you basically agree to these terms of service if you use Rogers services (and I would imagine that the same is true for other companies) . In any case, I came across this little tidbit:
Confidentiality of Your Information
29. Unless you provide express consent, or disclosure is required pursuant to a legal power, all information regarding you kept by us, other than your name, address and listed telephone number, is confidential and may not be disclosed by us to anyone other than:
• you;
• a person who, in our reasonable judgment, is seeking the information as your agent;
Note the part in bold. That means that if Rogers believes that you can act on behalf of the account holder (say, you’re their spouse for example), then Rogers is good to go in terms of disclosing information, or in this case creating a “global” bill that was sent to the husband of the woman who was cheating.
I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds like Rogers may be off the hook here. Any actual lawyers care to comment?
May 20, 2010 at 12:40 pm
LOL I blogged about this just this week.. I love the whole I lost everything and it’s everyone’s fault but mine.. For once I actually hope Rogers wins this one
May 22, 2010 at 6:59 pm
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I personally don’t feel sorry for the woman at all. She cheated. Her husband should know about it. I feel that way about anyone who has cheated. However, I do wonder about the privacy issue.
My husband and I have different last names and he arranged for our Rogers services so they are in his name (cable is the only Rogers service we currently have left). However, I’m the only one that deals with the bills and Rogers. We never bothered to change the name on the account as it isn’t a big deal. No information could be given to me until I was added as an authorized user on the account. Even as an authorized user I am not able to make account changes or cancellations without his permission. When I wanted to cancel our internet (this year when Rogers took away our grandfathered 60 GB), he had to get on the phone first and tell them that he gave his permission for me to cancel or do whatever I wanted with the account.
So, I think it is good that this woman’s husband found out the truth, but am not sure that just because he was her spouse that Rogers could assume that he was her “agent”. Rogers has deep pockets and dropping some cash on lawyers in this case will be nothing for them if they want to drag this out and make it too expensive for her to carry on with the case. It will be interesting to see privacy laws tested in this court case (even if the woman got what she deserved by her husband finding out).