Class Action Law Suit against Bell ExpressVu

Its not a "collection fee". They don't send these people to collections. They don't even discontinue your service. Lets say you pay 30 a month. You go 60 days late for whatever rerason.

They send you a bill for 30 + 30 + 60 cents (2% on the first 30) + 1.21 (compunded interest) +$25 "late fee".

They expect you to PAY this. Not cut off your service, not send you collections and have someone call you and chace you. They slap it onto your regular invoice. They have not incurred any substantial cost for this. If you pay tyour bill after 61 days in full you are paying 26.81 for the use of 30 dollars for 60 days and 30 dollars more for 30 days. It meets the legal definition of a CHARGE FOR THE USE OF $.

Can we get of this idea that the $25 is a collection fee of some sort. These people have not been sent to collections. They have not had service discontinued for non payment.
 
the point i was trying to make is he should've paid his bill on time in the first place, then he wouldn't have been charged $25 late fee, then he wouldn't have had to brought up this law suit.

i'm just saying a class action law suit against system access fees would make more sense than a late payment fee... since its preventable... by the customer.


edit: and my quote was to say that mr wolfe won't learn that responsibility because he is trying to fight bell over a late payment charge that he "technically" created himself.
 
Regardless of what you call it, I disagree that it is usury and I think the judge was ignorant of basic mathematics.

The 60% nonsense is a red herring. According to the judges logic, Bell would not be guilty of usury if the persons overdue bill was above $42.

I can see no reason why a flat charge would be deemed usury in some cases and not others.

The discussion should center squarely on whether a penalty fee for amounts in arrears for more than sixty days is legal. Many companies in Canada, including the federal, provincial and municipal governments impose additional fees for late payers so how is BellTV any different?
 
I agree with haystack in principle. A TOS/contract cannot impose conditions that are against the law. Some people assume that a contract can impose just about anything, but thats not true, even if you signed it.

However, I cant say that I know enough to know whether or not Bell did something illegal.
 
Too bad Mr. De Wolf is unlikely to learn to take responsibility for his actions and start paying his damned bills on time!
 
Out of curiousity. Is everyone seeing this notice on their bill? I have never been late for payment and found it odd that they would let me know about this.
 
I would think that this may certainly be an argument the court may bring up .

Their terms of service say if you don't pay in 30 days we CAN cut you off charge you $50 and then charge you again to reconnect. But if you go 60 days we can charge you and additional 25$. So if these people are habitual late payers why aren't they cutting them off?

Because late payers aren't a problem they are a revenue source. Sky high interest plus $25 a pop. If you are NON payer then yeah we'll cut you off charge $50 and let collections take over but if you are late that's OK we like that because it makes us more $.

The idea that the $25 offsets collections is ridiculous when they have a mechanism to avoid being put in collections mode repeatedly. That $25 is by and large being applied to people who do actually pay their bills (albeit late) not the deadbeats who never pay and need to be cutoff.

Also very fair points made above. No one is saying its unfair or unreasonable to penalize a late payer.Only that there is a reasonable and legal limit as to how much you can penalize them. 26% annual interest seems like a pretty harsh penalty. Slapping $25 flat on top is unreasonable and constitutes an effective interest rate that is illegal. If Bell changed their TOS to say overdue accounts will be charged interest at a rate of 50% per annum would people still defend it with "people should pay their bills" or would law stating maximum interest rates be brought up?
 
I just got my BEV dish installed on friday, so I havent gotten my first bill yet.
 
i agree.. if it was a "access fee" or one of those "hidden fees" then it would be more appropriate.

but its a late fee, you got charged that for a reason... for not paying your bill on time.

how would you like it if your employer never paid you on time?
 
When its over 60%

Not over 60%

It has been the law for a long time now.

Lots of laws that we don't agree with that we have to abide by or suffer the consequence.
I agree with one thing, "lets not blame someone else" lets blame those that broke the law.
 
April 8 my bill does not say anything regarding a lawsuit. Was it on the bill or in the advertising throw away.
 
lurker, very interesting post. Thanks

I would comment on this statement


The class action suit had 33,000 so the numbers suggest that there are at least 33,000 requiring a "high degrees of handling by CSRs and other methods." I question that 2% per month would come anywhere near the cost to collect for these people. Multiple phone calls combined with all the paper handling and time spent by CSR's likely costs hundreds of dollars per delinquent customer so I'm not sure I agree with that point.

Other than that, enjoyed your post.
 
It was on the actual bill in the small writing at the top just below where it says Television Services. I have a ONE bill setup so it may vary. Bill date is Apr 18

The other annoucment just below the Legal Notice was that Bell has added 2 HD channels. NG and SWC.
 
Well he was already being punished for not paying on time by incurring an interest charge. Yes you should pay youtr bills on time and if you don't suffer A consequence a reasonable interest rate that helps a company offest lost revenue form overdue accounts. But tacking a $25 charge (which is a flat fee and not proportional to the overdue bill) is absurd and obviously the judge agrgees with that.

Things like that maje it in Bell's best interest to see people miss their billing date. Imagine an extra $25 in revenue simply by doing something like not processing a transaction until the next day. Not saying that is doen every time or at all. But the potential for abuse is staggering. Its one thing to charge an NSF when someone bounces a check but to charge $25 on top of accruing a days interest when the bill DOES get paid . I hope they appeal and lose and we get to hear their arguments.

I've missed the date for my Power Bill or Visa by a day or two before. Not becuase I couldn't pay it but becuase I forgot or the internet transfer was set to take place the day before and it was a Sunday or Holiday and didn't go through to next day. I got charged interest. I paid the interest and was sure to pay it on time. But never a $25 LATE fee.

Through a glitch on a couple of times my pay was late from direct deposit by a day or 2. I can assure you I wasn't able to charge my employeer $25.
 
Indeed, the charges either don't amount to 60% as noted in the previous post, or there are many that do go beyond 60% but its just that nobody has challenged them yet. Typically, it takes a complaint to a regulator or a challenge in court to prompt anything being done about it. Typically, the police are going to go after the loan-shark types as opposed this sort of "white collar usury" if you will.

The definition or standard includes the computation of any actual interest charged, plus how the interest is compounded, plus any additional fees or costs that are considered to be charges for the use of the money which in this case is the unpaid bill. The breach comes in the way that Bell combined these factors. And yes, they could simply charge a flat fee for being late, however, depending on the size of the actual unpaid balance, the flat fee may be acceptable or illegal. Therefore, most businesses typically charge just a late interest charge.

I believe that those "arguing" this side all agree with personal responsibility, paying your bills on time, and that this guy pushed the limits of things. However, two wrongs also do not make a right and a corporation or business with the deep pockets of Bell should not be permitted to flout the usury laws just because of an unsympathetic customer's case. They have many other tools at their disposal to manage arrears, including a procedure outlined in their own TOS that they choose not to follow, and hence I have no sympathy when they get caught out taking the low road.
 
Thanks, Hugh. At work we're coincidentally looking at these concepts as they relate to loan arrears as we're looking at revamping some systems which are impacting our procedures. As a result, we're having to review the impact on policy and risk tolerance with the additional variable that the new system is expected to reduce costs. There are strong parallels to this story.

While 33,000 late payers seems like a lot in absolute terms, and it is, the context is that it really represents only around 2% or less of their subscriber base (assumes 1.7 million subscribers noted in some media stories on the topic). This is a very reasonable number in a business as large as they are.

Now scale up the number into dollar terms: 33,000 x $25 = $825,000 in revenue every month just from the fee. Add in another $50,000 from interest if the average bill is only $75. Now, translate all that into a head-count at $50,000 per capita for salary + benefits + overhead and this comes to around 200 staff. I'd be pretty surprised if there were actually 200 staff whose only role was to look after some component of dealing with these 33,000 clients. Adding accounting, IT, operations, CSR, etc staff all together there cannot be 200 people who only focus 8 hrs a day every day just servicing these people day in and day out.

I'd estimate that we have about 20-25 people running 6,000 - 8,000 accounts. Scaling this up to 33,000 accounts (using the worst case in our numbers above) would maybe put us into 140-150 people. At their account load number however, there would be several technologies and approach that we could apply to be more efficient that just don't make sense in our volume environment.

All that said, I don't pretend to be an expert in all of this, and, I don't pretend to have any great insights into their operations and management goings on. I just know enough to be able to say that the risks and costs of carrying these late payers probably isn't near to what they're charging these folks. I think that this is really more of a profit grab and it is not really a reflection of costs and risks, especially given the other remedies already available to them in their TOS, or, any number of other ways that they could come up with other means. The $25 fee was also the easy way out.
 
I don't get a paper bill...i'm going to log into my account at bell.com and see if it says it on my online bill.

I don't see anything on the website...
 
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