Do tenants have EV charging rights? Plus, a Scotiabank outage: CBC's Marketplace cheat sheet

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Is it a tenant's right to charge an EV at their rental?

This electric vehicle owner says tenants who pay hydro should be able to plug in

11 days ago

Duration 3:25

Renters might find themselves in uncharted legal territory if their landlord wants to make them pay for charging their electric vehicles even if electricity is included in their lease.

An Ottawa man feels it's his right to charge his car overnight at his apartment building since electricity is included in his rent, but his landlord disagrees.

Joel Mac Neil says he has been charging his electric vehicle (EV) at his apartment building, the Park West, with no issues for three years until now.

"I should be allowed to do this, and I don't have to hide," Mac Neil said. "I have every right to do this and charge here."

On Oct. 7, he says the property owner saw the charger at his assigned parking spot and disabled the outlets in his row, saying they wouldn't pay for his drive to work.

Mac Neil counters that he asked his rental agent when he bought the car if he could charge at the building, and she gave him the green light.

He's been forced to make other arrangements to charge his vehicle, something he says is a violation of his tenants' rights.

Mac Neil thinks his situation is exemplary of a problem more Canadians will find themselves in, as Canada encourages its citizens to buy EVs.

"Because they're the building owners, they think they can do whatever they want and kind of trample over the little guy and what little rights I do have as a renter," Mac Neil said.

The building's owner, Empire Holdings, and its property manager would not comment on Mac Neil's allegations.Read more.

Some Scotiabank customers still unable to access accounts after 'scheduled maintenance'

Last Friday, Scotiabank's customer service account on X stated that there would be scheduled maintenance starting that day and ending on Tuesday, affecting several credit card and line of credit services.

But that quickly turned into an outage for many customers, and they flockedto social media to report that they were unable to even view their accounts online or send e-transfers.

And, a day after maintenance was supposed to have been completed, customers were still experiencing outages.

The bank acknowledgedin astatementon X on Wednesday afternoon that "some clients areexperiencing intermittent access to some banking services."

"Scotiabank is working diligently to restore all functionality as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our clients."

The outage, which comes after Scotiabank suffered a technical issue this summer that disrupted the deposit of customers' paycheques, has resulted in a slew of angry comments online, as well as a proposed class-action lawsuit.

Scotiabank did not directly answer CBC's questions on whether it was aware of more services being down than it had previously stated would be impacted. In a statement, it said point-of-sale transactions had not been affected.Read more.

Subaru Crosstrek driver blames car's lane-centring technology for accident

Tobias Marzell doesn't think he'll ever use the lane-centring feature on his 2021 Subaru Crosstrek again, after he believes it caused an accident during his morning commute last month.

Marzell was driving on Highway 30 near Brossard, Que., when he noticed the steering wheel tugging him a bit to the left. As he headed into a curve, Marzell said he made his own adjustments to keep the car to the left of the centre line.

All of a sudden, the steering "decided to jerk to the right heavily and instantly I collided with the vehicle on my right side," said Marzell, who was travelling at about 100 kilometres per hour.

Marzell spends about two hours a day driving back and forth to work. It can be exhausting, so he often switched the feature on.

"You don't always have to be firmly gripping the steering wheel and having to correct all the time," said Marzell, 23. "It lets drivers relax a bit."

Marzell bought the car from a Subaru dealership in the fall of 2022. Initially, he said the lane-assist feature was much more subtle and the tugging would stop as soon as he'd correct it.

But in the past few months, he said he felt the wheel tug much more aggressively, but nothing like what he experienced the day of the accident.

Thankfully, neither driver was hurt. But he is at fault for the roughly $10,000 in damage to his vehicle and about the same amount to the other driver's vehicle.

He contacted Subaru Canada, but the car manufacturer would not speculate on what caused the accident and told him to report the accident to his insurer.

"Should your insurer's investigation identify a possible vehicle defect as a cause, the insurer will contact us, at which point we will carry a joint investigation," the email read.

Both Transport Canada and Subaru Canada are now looking into what happened, and whether it is related to the advanced driver assistance technology that is now common in new vehicles.Read more.

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