BY: AMANPREET CHONKRIAN
Lina says she will never allow any door to door salespeople into her home again, after she was misled into signing a 10 year contract for an air filtration system in her home, costing her a total of nearly $5,000.
The Humber River-Black Creek resident said she thought she was helping out two young people who were trying to make a little extra money when they came knocking on her door one morning telling her the air filter would dramatically improve the air quality in her home.
They looked like students, so I wanted to help them,” she said.
Lina invited them into her home, where she says she was told the air filtration system would dramatically improve the air quality in her home. Soon after they looked at her furnace, the senior, who is on a pension, signed a 10 year contract for more than $40 a month without fully realizing what she had signed up for.
“The contract was written in very small print, and would take me the whole night to read the whole thing,” she said.
Lina said that the charges were added onto her gas bill, and she wondered why she was paying so much for a device that didn’t appear to do anything.
Lina said that she didn’t know what to do to get out of it, and by the time she went to Consumer Protection Ontario, it was too late. If she wanted to pursue the matter further, she would have to hire a lawyer.
This is something Tom Rakocevic, the Member of Provincial Parliament for Humber River-Black Creek says is far too common and must stop.
“The consumer protection system in Ontario isn’t strong enough,” Rakocevic said. “Even when you go through Consumer Protection Ontario, one of the things you’re most often told is to ‘get a lawyer,’ which, in most cases, will cost you more than what you’ve been cheated out of.”
Rakocevic recently introduced the Ontario Consumer Watchdog Act into the Ontario Legislature with his Ontario NDP colleagues Terence Kernaghan (London North Centre), Doly Begum (Scarborough Southwest) and Faisal Hassan (York South-Weston) to create an independent Ontario Consumer Watchdog Organization to serve as the first place for people to go when they have been ripped off.
The watchdog would handle all complaints from consumers, and could also conduct public investigations much like the Auditor General.
Unlike the Auditor General, the watchdog could also issue penalties such as fines, to any individual, organization, or company that it has found to have broken consumer protection laws.
“Passing this Bill into law will make Ontario’s consumer protection system the strongest in Canada,” Rakocevic said.
The Ontario Consumer Watchdog Act will be debated and voted on in the Ontario Legislature on Mar. 8, and if it passes second and third reading, it will be written into law.