A request to bring a class action against the Canadian telecommunications giant Bell has been accepted. The company could have to pay $1,000 in damages to customers it entered into contracts with as a result of door-to-door solicitations.
The class action claim for punitive damages against Bell Canada was filed in November 2021, on behalf of Marie-Josée Langlois-Vinet, a customer who believes she was wronged. She accuses the company of having “carried out the activities of itinerant merchants without holding the permits required under the Consumer Protection Act”. This request was accepted Tuesday by the Superior Court of Quebec, as first reported The Journal of Montreal.
The facts alleged by Mr.me Langlois-Vinet at Bell Canada took place in February 2019, at his home in Laval. According to the documentation in the file, a representative of Bell would have presented himself at the door of the residence of Mrs.me Langlois-Vinet one evening, around suppertime, without her asking.
The representative would have “presented to him the various products and services of Bell as well as the promotions related to these”, without however having any promotional document, “with the exception of a leaflet to choose the additional television channels” .
Following a discussion, Mr.me Langlois-Vinet would have accepted the offer made to him by the representative. However, the latter did not have a paper contract to sign on him and claimed that he had to “telephone the Bell telephone exchange in order to transmit all the details of the transaction between them and have them confirm everything [par] a Bell call center employee.
According to the plaintiff, this practice violates the Consumer Protection Act – which is why she is asking for damages of $1,000 for Mr.me Langlois-Vinet, as well as for each customer who found himself in the same situation.
For its part, Bell Canada “argues that the class action is ill-founded because the causes of action proposed do not present any chance of success”, is it summarized in the judgment on the authorization of class action.