Dear Urban Diplomat: should I rat out my landlord for stealing cable?
Dear Urban Diplomat, I live in a ground-floor suite and pay my own utilities, including cable. My landlord lives above me, and we have a good relationship. However, I just noticed a splitter thingy coming off of my Rogers cable box. I Googled it and sent a photo to my friend who installs cable for a living, and now I’m 95 per cent sure my landlord is stealing my cable. I’m annoyed that he’s getting free TV on my dime, and I’m a little worried that a Rogers technician will eventually notice and I’ll get dinged somehow. What to do?
—TV Drama Star, Leslieville
You’ve done nothing wrong. If you’d rewired things yourself or were enjoying the fruits of stolen programming, then you’d be culpable. Are you morally or legally obligated to rat out your landlord? I say no. It’s not a B&E, and Rogers rarely penalizes for it, so don’t lose sleep fearing the knock-knock of a glowering cable man. Rogers does warn that someone in your circumstances may experience a decrease in the quality of the feed or periodic service outages. If that happens, I suggest you broach it with your freeloading landlord before dropping a dime on him.
Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com
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