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PacBell To Be Hit With $27M Fine
MImeKillEr writes: "The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that states PacBell is going to be hit with a $27 million fine for "incorrectly billing" between 30,000 and 70,000 users for DSL access they didn't request or recieve, or received but didn't work, or cancelled, tacking late fees onto disputed charges, etc."
(RI|MP)AA then the telecoms...
Viva la Revolucion!
Because companies are in it for the money.
This $27 million dollar figure isn't enough. In order to deter this sort of practice - to make sure companies don't do it - you need a ridiculous fine.
Remember when that woman was awarded a hundred million dollars for scalding herself with McDonald's coffee? It was reduced somewhat on appeal. Was that ridiculous? Yes.
However, every coffee cup in the country had a "don't burn yourself" warning attached to it for some time.
If you apply that same logic to something important - as opposed to scalding coffee which is utterly trite - you can get similar results. Fine 'em a billion dollars. They've got it; and if you do that they won't dare try this again for a while.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
I was about to mod that up as insightful, but decided not to based solely on who said it. Is that wrong?
Dammit, I hate it when the trolls get one right!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
I got billed for 6 months of DSL from pacbell before I got a refund. I ordered it, then moved before it was installed, because one of my cats peed on a pile of clothing sitting on top of the junction of two extention cords, and causing a nasty fire. It never got installed, but it did show up on the bill.
I tried to sign up for PacBell DSL about 2 years ago, but after a series of screwups on their end, called them up and cancelled everything and mailed back their DSL modem. About 6 months later, my phone bill starts tripling and I see I've been signed up. So I deal with ~3hrs of waiting on hold to talk to the right people... AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN. To make a long story short, I think the fine should be larger.
3-4 months ago, I switched from Verizon/MCI to a local company to provide both local & long distance service. Last week I recived a bill from MCI for $3.59 -- $3.00 "minimum usage fee" (when I was a customer, it was on a plan without a minimum usage fee) and $0.59 taxes. No wonder they can't tell if they're profitable or not. I forwarded a copy of the bill to the fcc and the state Attorney General. Maybe if I have a few hours to kill, I'll try to tell them I'm not a customer of theirs...
The industry average for overbilling is 10%. Most telcos use "accrual" accounting. Money is reported as recieved when a bill is sent out, not when payment is recieved. By overbilling, the bottom line looks 10% larger than it really is.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
As far as ridiculous, well, I've pulled this paragraph out of the page:
So tell me: deliberately selling a drink that was, by McDonald's own admission, "not fit for consumption" even though they knew that burns would occur--isn't that a little bit more ridiculous than the money the jury awarded her?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Color me unimpressed. Hey, California, how about standing up for your citizens instead of your own coffers?
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
What you do not understand is the pacific bell in nothing more than a Law firm with a switch. There is only one department that has to be good.
Albuquerque's average daily high in February is around 55, and the low is around 28. You're right, I didn't check my facts. Still, let's assume it's halfway between the high and low, say 42 degrees. Still hardly finger-numbing weather. And that also doesn't let McDonald's off the hook.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
But the really good part is that I didn't have DSL for over a year. Suddenly this popped up on my December bill, and they started charging me over $300 per month after that. It took quite some undoing. Everybody admitted that $1300 for DSL service from Dec 12 2001 through Dec 12 2001 was kinda strange, but nobody had any idea what to do about it.
"Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of
her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McDonalds' coffee in
February 1992. Liebeck, 79 at the time, ordered coffee that was served
in a styrofoam cup at the drivethrough window of a local McDonalds.
After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and
stopped momentarily so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her
coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often
charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in
motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed
the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from
the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled
into her lap.
The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next
to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full
thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body,
including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin
areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she
underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement
treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonalds
refused.
The jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages. This amount
was reduced to $160,000 because the jury found Liebeck 20 percent at
fault in the spill. The jury also awarded Liebeck $2.7 million in
punitive damages, which equals about two days of McDonalds' coffee
sales."
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
Here's a good one:
I was an early adopter of Verizon DSL in my area. I had it for a couple of years and then moved across town, cancelling the DSL in the process (moved to cable modem). My new bill looked fine for a month, then all of a sudden the DSL charges started up again! Because of the "deregulation" of the industry, Verizon had three different divisions I had to deal with and none of them could directly talk to each other. (They are the ISP, a company that provides the physical DSL link, and the phone company itself, I believe). So- these bills are showing up, and nobody can find where in the computer system they're coming from.
I finally got the problem resolved: I called the two offending companies at the same time- one on my cell phone and the other on my land line (cordless). I got in the waiting queues, and lo and behold I got customer "service" reps on the line from both companies at the same time (about 20 minutes on hold). So I had one rep in each ear, and I was passing info from one to the other: "ask her to check out this entry... search on this code..." etc. Finally they were able to locate my information and cancel the billing. I guess my early adopter status put me in some obscure system that they had shifted away from or something like that. What a nightmare. Of course my cell phone has lousy reception indoors, so I was standing out on my lawn yammering into a phone on each ear. I suspect my new neighbors got quite a kick out of seeing this.
I have to admit that the cable company has been much easier to deal with then the phone company, as scary as that sounds.