I recently noted a very interesting development about changes to Canada’s law governing railroad cargo service in this country. As I understand the proposed change, which comes after years of complaints by grain farmers, in the future there will be “reciprocal penalties” for not fulfilling shipping agreements. Reciprocal means applying equally to both parties in an agreement. In the past, the shipper was the only party held responsible for not holding up his end of the bargain. If the shipper missed getting his cargo to the train on time, the shipper paid a penalty. The change will mean that if the railway company is to blame, then the shipper will also be able collect a penalty in the form of a payment from the railway. This seems so basically fair it is hard to imagine why it is only coming into existence now; but my reason for noting this is not to comment on railway service, which is not my area of expertise. What I find so interesting is that this reveals a basic principle of fairness – one that I think should be implemented in several other areas of our lives.
We are accustomed to problems arising from technologies that don’t work properly, to many other issues that can cause irritation and which actually cost us time and money – unfairly. Take for example, bank service charges. We pay them because the bank or credit union, which makes money on our deposits, says they are a charge for the service they provide to us in managing our account. This would include holding our deposits safely, keeping track of our deposits and withdrawals, and providing us with a statement of these transactions each month. But what if the bank makes a mistake? Recently, a friend of mine showed me his bank statement which had withdrawals wrongly posted to his account. His bank fixed the mistake when he brought the errors to their attention. But when he questioned who should be held responsible for the mistake, the financial institution told him that it was up to him to check his monthly statements – in other words, the customer was held responsible for the bank’s mistakes. This is another example where I think fairness would dictate that the customer should be able to have a penalty assessed against the bank and to compensation for the time it has taken him to double check what the bank is supposed to be doing carefully. After all, a customer’s time is also valuable. Banks have a whole lot of different charges for mistakes that clients may make: overdraft charges, NSF penalties on cheques, normal service charges just for posting transactions (even mistaken ones), among others. So why shouldn’t a customer also be able to charge a bank when the bank makes a mistake on the customer’s account. This would be implementing the principle of Reciprocal Penalties – like the railroad company example – and establishing some basic fairness in our everyday lives.
The same principle could be implemented in other areas of daily commerce as well. Have you ever had to challenge incorrect phone charges on your telephone bill; or your cable bill? Or maybe even your tax assessment? I know some people might say these things fall under the heading of “Don’t Sweat the Small Things” – a generally wise philosophy for living in a complex world – but are we in danger of allowing corporations, big computer systems, and big bureaucracies of making a lot of money at the collective expense of all of us, and not being held accountable for their mistakes, as we are for ours? Have we become so used to being treated unfairly that we don’t think it’s important anymore? I think that’s a bigger question that we should think about.
Thanks for reading!
Sibo Zhang, REALTOR®