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Comcast Hounded By Collections Agency
Bob the Super Hamste writes "According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Comcast is being taken to court for non-payment by a bill collection agency it used to collect past-due payments from customers. The suit alleges that Comcast agreed to pay $5 for each account it closed and that for each account the collection agency handled Comcast would pay 33% of the collected funds. The suit is seeking $314,210 for account cancellations and estimates Comcast owes them $50,000 for delinquent funds collected."
Will they forget to pay the power bill next? OR maybe there employees?
Ha ha
As much as I generally hate the practices of various collections agencies (and I've worked collections), I'm rooting for a Comcast loss on this one. Serves them right with the way they treat customers, and their attempts to destroy the Internet.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
please give them the sci-fi channel so some one can save it from what NBC did to it!
the teams that are part owns of there RSN's
Why doesn't this debt collector just use normal debt collection tactics, and call Comcast several times a day every day with threats of legal action? It's a lot cheaper than actually filing a lawsuit.
I had Lindy's collection service calling my house with a robodial at all hours multiple time a day for over year...even after I explained to them that I have never had comcast and never will because they aren't even available where I live. Apparently that was some kind of confirmation to them that it was my debt. I ended up having to get an attorney friend of mine after them to get them to stop. It turned out to be someone with the same first and last name that lived in the same area code but not the same town.
Excellent catch. By pointing out the spelling error, you not only proved your intellectual superiority (which is the only kind of superiority that really matters), but you also made a valuable and insightful contribution to the discussion.
Bravo.
I had always assumed that they would collect whatever they could, take their cut, and then pass the rest along to the client. Seems odd to me that the agency doing the collecting didn't have their money upfront on each collection.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The 33% is out of any money that people paid Comcast directly after their accounts had been turned over to Lindy's.
Maybe you should check the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and listen to some calls. A fun game is seeing how many violations they can squeeze into those few minutes. If Section 813 did not make these cases so hard to prove, I guaranty there would be a ton of cases and class actions.
I'm like 2 months late on my Internet bill (In before "just pay your bill" - hey man, it's the economy..) and they sent my account to a collections agency already. This company ACS Collections has called me 7 times this week, with two times in one day. I looked up my state law regarding the Fair Debt Collection Act and have discovered ACS is violating the terms of how many times they can communicate with me. I called yesterday to ACS Collections about their process of calling me every day, including twice in one day on two days, and the woman "Vanessa" said she was well within her rights!
All of this over $100!
I notified her that I'm filing a claim with my state official about the incident. The civil remedy is $1000 in personal damages, plus my court costs and attorney fees covered. I'll pay that $100 with my judgement and probably prepay about a year's worth of Internet service with this judgement. Thanks Comcast! If there was another viable alternative in my area, I would leave the service but I'm locked in as having Comcast as my Internet provider since my apartment has TV service supplied through them, even though I do not own nor watch a TV, so I got the Internet at a cheaper price.
http://www.stopacop.so -- You have rights. How about standing up for them before they go away?
Ah. That makes sense then, thanks.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
I had always assumed that they would collect whatever they could, take their cut, and then pass the rest along to the client. Seems odd to me that the agency doing the collecting didn't have their money upfront on each collection.
Collection agencies generally work one of two ways.
1. They buy the debt outright (from Comcast) and whatever they can nag out of you is 100% theirs
2. They are contracted to nag the hell out of you for a cut of whatever you pay to the company you owe (Comcast).
In the first case, if you pay Comcast instead of the collection agency, the collection agency gets nothing.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I was recently contacted by a collections agency on behalf of Comcast for an unpaid internet bill from 2007. It was the first I'd heard of it. I'd switched apartments with my brother and he apparently didn't pay the bill. I was surprised that it had taken them so long to track me down when my phone number was still the same, and the clerk from the collections agency said that they'd been getting that response a lot lately, and apparently Comcast had employed a different collections agency before this one which had never bothered to actually contact any of the debtors. So that might explain why Comcast didn't want to pay up.
I hope they call every VP and above at home 3-4 times a day to try to collect.
I always thought that would be a sign of real trouble, when the debt collectors can't get paid. Once it's not worth it to go after people for debts, what do you do? If everyone's FICO is equally crap, who cares?
I can tell you they hold all the cards. They can call as often as they want and say damned near anything they want. There is even a state law that specifically allows the people making the calls to use false names to identify themselves, as long as the company name is legit. One effect of this is that after you are called by "Elvis" or "Kirby Puckett" or any other bogus name, you try to call them at the number they left and you'll never get ahold of that person because whomever answers the phone won't know who used that false name.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...we're Xfinity. Come on, let's sing the Xfinity theme song! It's fun for you! It's fun for me! Everybody do... so you're not buying it, eh? You say we're the same damned service with no quantifiable differences except a different logo and higher monthly bills? Well damn, does that mean you're going to rectally ream us out in court still?
This crys for it, it screams do it, it loves being, it oozes with interest
That means about 5% of people pay, when the collection agency comes a calling. And, about 62 thousand people told them to f off, and their accounts were closed. This means $2.5 million dollars was owed to Comcast by customers (at $40/mo, let's assume they were only collecting 1 month worth of dues), of which Comcast only received only about 150 thousand owed. These are all rough guesses, but probably not far from their target.
Comcast is the biggest source of junk mail (paper) that I receive. Guess that's what happens when you are in Comcast territory and not a customer.
Collection agencies are the biggest source of unwanted calls on my phone. It's a wrong number - they're after someone else. Do you think these guys would figure it out and correct their records? Of course not.
Go for it! Sue that pants off each other! Next stop - Chapter 7. Well, I can dream.
I will never patronize Comcast (ATT, Xfinity, or whatever) unless I have absolutely no choice. They try to get a monopoly and then they exploit it (by jacking up prices) for all they are worth.
Support your municipal cable company!
Comcast is notoriously slow to pay its vendors. If it weren't for return business I'm sure the majority would love to sue them. This vendor probably lost a contract, and doesn't want to wait the normal amount of time to get paid.
Actually, it was me, a fellow member of the evil human race.
Have a nice day.
Not necessarily trouble - it could be arrogance.
There's a trend going on lately that says "Aggression Wins", in that some entity that makes aggressive moves either wins or "cancels" with no penalty, thus rewarding aggression.
Fun Fact: One of the Anniversary Editions of Stratego changed the rules from either "two equal pieces destroy each other" or even "defensive piece wins" (I forget) to "in an equal matchup the attacking piece wins". I didn't understand it 10 years ago, but I do now.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If by lately you mean since the dawn of time, I agree.
> Why doesn't this debt collector just use normal debt collection tactics, and call Comcast several times a day every day with threats of legal action?
Because even calling them that often, they still haven't figured out how to get an actual human to answer the phone.
On the plus side, they're supposed to get a tech out there to look at their cable service sometime between June and November.
Whatever, Jewhaterbag.
I'm sure Comcast is spending more than $500,000 just on lawyers. If this 'small' fee, at least in Comcast's eyes, is enough to justify the lawyers costs and media publicity, there's a good chance Comcast is in fact innocent. This of course suppose a logical assessments by the managers.
I find it hard to sympathize with either the deadbeats or the thugs to try to get them to cough up
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It has become common for companies to easily pass on to collection agencies what ever they want, for the persons doing the passing on are just going through the motions of the machinery of their job, totally careless of any facts of or real people. This also extends to credit ratings.
Ask for a number to return their call. If they cannot provide it, hang up.
Ask for a number to return their call. If they cannot provide it, hang up.
What do you expect to accomplish with that? If you hang up, they'll just call you again later. If you get a number, you still won't be able to talk to Elvis, because it isn't his number; it belongs to his company and whoever is answering the phone doesn't know who is calling by that name this evening.
For that matter, they will call you at 2AM, which of course is not a time when they answer their own phones. So getting a call back number would not have done you any good because you would have zero chance of getting ahold of the person who called you at 2AM when you do call them back at a time when someone there is answering the phone.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Comcast's CEO got payed something like 36 Million $ last year, do you really think they care about some pissant debt collector going after them for 350k? Companies that big (Fortune 50) get sued for that kinda of money 10-15 times a year.
You don't have call blocking? You can also turn off the ringer and let the machine pick up.. I don't let the telephone interrupt meal time or my sleep.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I think you missed the historical aspect here; I haven't been pursued by a collections agency in MN for about a decade or more now. I eventually got them off my ass by contacting the insurance company directly, and getting them to re-pay what they un-paid. At that point the bills were no longer overdue, and the collections agency got nothing from me directly.
The worst part though was that I had to deal with two of the three industries that make the MN axis of evil - in this case insurance companies and collections agencies (the third is private impound lots) - but at least I didn't end up having to declare bankruptcy, which would have been the only way I could have settled those several thousand dollars worth of medical bills.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.