Canadian Tire Censors a Customer Review for Mentioning the Poisonous Mercury in CFL Light Bulbs

Why would Canadian Tire censor a customer review about household lightbulbs? Well, these are CFL light bulbs, and they contain mercury, which is poisonous. If they break, anyone nearby can be harmed by the mercury vapor that escapes. As well, when these bulbs eventually burn out, they need to be disposed of as hazardous waste, to avoid harming wildlife and contaminating groundwater.

Hence, the mercury in these light bulbs is a safety issue. But Canadian Tire forbids customers to mention any safety issues in their product reviews. So if a review mentions the mercury in these light bulbs, it will be censored.

How did I learn about this? Well, I bought a pack of these light bulbs at Canadian Tire recently. Subsequently, they emailed me an invitation to review the light bulbs on their website. So I obliged, and wrote a review. One thing I wrote is that, "this bulb contains mercury, which is highly poisonous, so when it burns out, it will have to be disposed of separately as hazardous waste at the garbage dump."

I know these light bulbs contain mercury, because that is indicated on the side of the package, in very small writing. According to Wikipedia, mercury poisoning can cause the following symptoms in adults:

confusion,
memory loss,
insomnia,
tremors,
twitching,
muscle weakness,
muscle atrophy

and more. HealthLine.com adds that mercury poisoning can disrupt fetal and early childhood development. Infants and young children who have been exposed to high levels of mercury may have their development retarded in the following ways:

Cognition, which includes thinking, knowing, remembering, judging, and problem-solving.
Fine motor skills.
Speech and language development.
And visual-spatial awareness.

These light bulbs do contain mercury, so even though they are useful, they are also potentially harmful. And they are more likely to be harmful if customers are not aware of the mercury the bulbs contain.

If customers are not aware of the mercury, they will probably just throw the bulbs in the garbage when they are burnt out, instead of disposing of them as hazardous waste. Disposing of the bulbs improperly could result in groundwater contamination and harm to wildlife. Also, when the light bulbs break, uninformed customers might not take appropriate precautions when cleaning up. As a result, they could accidentally breathe in poisonous mercury vapor.

Unfortunately, Canadian Tire's webpage for these light bulbs does not even mention the hazardous mercury they contain. Upon noticing this glaring omission, I felt a moral obligation to alert other customers to the danger, and inform them of the necessary precautions.

However, after submitting my review, I received a rejection email from BazaarVoice.com. What's BazaarVoice.com? Apparently, it's a company that censors customer product reviews on behalf of Canadian Tire. BazaarVoice.com's rejection email informed me that my review had been "moderated". In plain English, that means it had been censored. Why was my review censored? The email did not say exactly. Instead, it listed some rules that I might have broken, without specifying which rule in particular. That was unreasonable. Imagine being arrested because you are accused of breaking one of a dozen different laws, but the police won't tell you which one. That's how unreasonable that email was.

So I contacted BazaarVoice.com, but neither of the two employees I reached was able to explain why my review had been censored. One promised that she would ask another employee to email me soon with an explanation, but all I ever got was another rejection email that was identical to the first. It did not clarify anything at all.

So as an experiment, I decided to resubmit my light bulb review without mentioning the mercury hazard at all. And guess what? Yes, my revised review was accepted, and published on the Canadian Tire website. This proves that the reason why BazaarVoice.com censored my original review, was because I mentioned the mercury contained in the light bulbs. And since BazaarVoice.com's censorship rules are surely dictated by Canadian Tire, it appears that Canadian Tire is concealing the mercury content of these light bulbs. They do not mention the mercury on their website, and they forbid customers from mentioning it in their reviews.

Unfortunately, this makes Canadian Tire seem dishonest and untrustworthy. It makes them seem too focused on their profits, while neglecting customer safety and public health. Concealing the presence of mercury in these light bulbs could lead to dire consequences. People's health could be seriously harmed.

That said, I assumed that Canadian Tire management must have the best of intentions. So I phoned their customer relations department and explained my concerns in detail. But that made no difference. They have not updated their website to mention the mercury hazard, and they have not promised to stop censoring their customers.

But surely Canadian Tire's corporate managers mean no harm, and they must be very good people. So why are they managing this situation so poorly?

The root of the problem is that they believe censorship is okay. After all, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube get away with it. So Canadian Tire's managers believe that they too can censor their own customers. Moreover, they censor in a way that is subtly and insidiously demoralizing for anyone who complains of safety issues in a product review. The rejection email customers receive is vague, lacking any clear explanation of why their review was rejected. This discourages customers from attempting to revise their reviews. After all, how can they fix their review if they are not told what must be fixed?

In all, customers are left feeling that their opinions are unwelcome. No doubt, upon receiving such discouraging rejection emails, most customers will just give up. Believing that no one will listen to them anyway, why bother phoning BazaarVoice.com or Canadian tire, to find out why their review was rejected? Why bother explaining their safety concerns if it won't make any difference? This is how the truth is silenced.

But what the corporate managers at Canadian Tire don't seem to realize is that silencing the truth prevents problems from being reported and fixed. Hence, small problems can become big problems. For example, someone's health could be ruined by the mercury in these lightbulbs. In addition, from a public relations perspective, if the public becomes aware that their health is being endangered by the censorship practiced by Canadian Tire, they will stop trusting the company.

Now let me ask you: Do you care about your health, and your children's health? Should Canadian Tire fully disclose the presence of mercury in the CFL light bulbs on their website? Should Canadian Tire stop censoring customers' safety concerns? Do you care about these issues?

If so, then we agree. Corporate censorship must stop. We all have a right to freedom of speech: to warn of danger, to expose corruption, and to discuss new ideas. But large corporations are now denying us our freedom of speech. Twitter is censoring us, Facebook is censoring us, and now even Canadian Tire is censoring us. So we must stop them. We all must speak out, speak to our politicians, and urge them to fight back with new laws to resist the corporate dictators who are taking away our rights.

February 28, 2021

Relevant links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Signs_and_symptoms
https://www.medicinenet.com/mercury_poisoning/article.htm
https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/7021/mercury-poisoning
https://www.healthline.com/health/mercury-poisoning
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/sylvania-100w-equivalent-23w-cfl-daylight-bulbs-3-pk-0522815p.html
https://www.bazaarvoice.com

Canadian Tire Censors a Customer Review for Mentioning the Poisonous Mercury in CFL Light Bulbs

CFL light bulbs contain mercury, which is poisonous for people and animals. It's an environmental hazard. Why is Canadian Tire not warning its customers about the mercury in CFL light bulbs? Why does Canadian Tire forbid customers to mention safety concerns in their product reviews?