Telus faced a significant legal setback as the B.C. Property Assessment Appeal Board denied the company’s right to appeal the assessments of 18 properties, citing a preventable email error.
The telecommunications giant’s failure to adhere to the timely filing of an appeal notice as per the provincial Assessment Act was central to the board’s decision, reports CTV News. The company claimed that the delay was caused by factors outside its control.
However, the board rejected this argument last week, stating, “These were circumstances that, with reasonable effort, could have been avoided and therefore were not circumstances beyond the owner’s control.”
The crux of the issue was an incorrect email address used to send appeal notices. Intended for greater.vancouver@bcassessment.ca, the notices were erroneously sent to greater.vancouver@bcassessement.ca. You can see an extra “e” was added in the spelling of ‘assessment’.
Telus blamed a new employee who, according to the decision, “did not receive any return email that would have indicated it had not been delivered.” The copied email address was from a previous spreadsheet. The error was realized in May, after the deadline for appeal notices for 2023.
The board highlighted that the error was identifiable and correctable, asserting, “Had the appellant’s employees reviewed the delivery address, the error in the email address would have been identified in a timely manner.”
Telus attempted to draw parallels with a previous case where an appeal was granted under similar circumstances. However, the board differentiated the cases, noting, “In that case, the appellant was navigating an online form that the appellant did not control and could not have determined the error on their review of the completed notice of complaint.”
