Complain About Comcast, Get Fired From Your Job

ub3r n3u7r4l1st writes When you complain to your cable company, you certainly don't expect that the cable company will then contact your employer and discuss your complaint. But that's exactly what happened to one former Comcast customer who says he was fired after the cable company called a partner at his accounting firm. Be careful next time when you exercise your first amendment rights. From the article: At some point shortly after that call, someone from Comcast contacted a partner at the firm to discuss Conal. This led to an ethics investigation and Conal’s subsequent dismissal from his job; a job where he says he’d only received positive feedback and reviews for his work. Comcast maintained that Conal used the name of his employer in an attempt to get leverage. Conal insists that he never mentioned his employer by name, but believes that someone in the Comcast Controller’s office looked him up online and figured out where he worked. When he was fired, Conal’s employer explained that the reason for the dismissal was an e-mail from Comcast that summarized conversations between Conal and Comcast employees. But Conal has never seen this e-mail in order to say whether it’s accurate and Comcast has thus far refused to release any tapes of the phone calls related to this matter.

Comments

So, it has come to this.

[hawkinspeter]

Can't he just sue his ex-employer for wrongful dismissal or does that not exist in the U.S.?

Re:So, it has come to this.

[Kalium70]

Many states are "right to work" states, which actually means the opposite of what it sounds like. In those states, you can be fired for any reason or no reason, so long as if there is a reason, it is not an illegal one. That is, you cannot be fired based on your ethnicity, for example. (At least in theory.)

Re:So, it has come to this.

[Archtech]

So you can (in reality) be fired for race, age, gender, etc. All the firing boss has to do is to insist it was because you wore a bow tie (which, as we now know, denotes insubordination). Or because you were insufficiently productive, against an arbitrary standard chosen by him. Or because you were rude (according to another employee who must remain anonymous to avoid causing them stress, in that employee's opinion). Or...

Re:So, it has come to this.

[TheCarp]

Actually, both of you are kind of right.

Unions, for the most part, have been exterminated. However, the few that do still exist and are strong.... Prison Gaurds and Police. They have had some rather impressive blooming in the last few years; and they most certainly do NOT stop at advocating for better working conditions.

In fact, the Union supported the NYPD use of "Stop and Frisk". These unions regularly oppose drug law reform, and anything else that might reduce the need for their "services". They are some of the most powerful groups in the entire country now.

Re:So, it has come to this.

[bingoUV]

Yes, businesses can be less powerful than governments. But your arguments for it are faulty.

They have to follow laws

Laws which they helped write.

you can always leave an abusive employer

Unless they blacklist you. If Comcast can ask an employer to fire an employee, it can also ask them to not hire him. Or like Apple and Google "agreed" to not poach each other's employees. Or was it Microsoft? I keep losing track of which company did which illegal thing.

Now, essentially same arguments can be made for governments :
1. Governments have to follow constitutions.
2. You can always vote out an abusive government.

And what's the problem ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the guy really did name-drop his employer in an attempt to intimidate/coerce Comcast, what's the problem?

If the company name was used it would be entirely fair to contact the company to make sure the policy stated by the employee was in fact the policy of the company. If not, if the employee did misrepresent the company, than getting fired may be appropriate.

Cable companies may be evil but not everything they do is necessarily wrong. Pushing back against a bully would not be wrong.

It's simple

[Charliemopps]

It's simple... he's in collections, who, by default know where he works. It's freely available to all collections agencies via Experian. One of the first things a collections agency will do is call your employer. If his employer does a large amount of business with Comcast he'd be out the door faster than he can blink.

This is his employers fault for selling his employment data in exchange for free employment reference services.
http://www.learnvest.com/2013/...
Your employer is likely doing the same...

And then again their fault for firing him over some minor missed payments.

Bollocks

[rodrigoandrade]

I know it's cool to rip on cable companies, but this story smells fishy from where I'm sitting. I want to hear the other side of this story.

And what's the problem ?

[rolfwind]

If the man's account is to be believed, EVEN if he name dropped his employer, it was only in an effort to get fair service from comcast to begin with. And get all the crap charges removed.

And comcast should get bad press for contacting their customer's employer to begin with. Who the hell does that to a customer? Comcast, that's who. Time to go to congress, and get all this cable and telecom monopoly crap gotten rid of.

Re:We don't know the details

[rahvin112]

I fully believe they Google'd the guy. He basically threatened them with reporting them to the IRS and SEC for violating accounting standards, and he didn't just threaten a nobody, he threatened another accountant. Very very serious allegations. They likely ran those accusations right to their legal department who did a full investigation and realized he worked for someone that worked for them. A quick call to a partner threatening to pull the account and the guy is fired.

I completely believe this happened even without knowing their side of the story. Even if he did mention who he worked for it would have been irrelevant and treated just the same way it would have been if he was talking to low level support. Without Comcast releasing the actual call recordings we shouldn't trust any spin they put on it, nor should we outright believe everything the guy says. But the fact is they called his employer and got him fired. There is almost nothing he could have said on the phone to them to justify that.

Re: Time To Occupy Comcast HQ?

[roc97007]

Well, regardless, I would not say that in the case of comcast, capitalism broke down. Rather, it was circumvented. And the government, who are ostensibly supposed to protect us from the kind of abuses you're talking about, was a party to it.

Re:We don't know the details

[rahvin112]

During this call, he says that he mentioned that Comcast’s billing and accounting issues should probably be investigated by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), a private-sector oversight operation.

Such an investigation would trigger all sorts of follow on process from multiple jurisdictions as he just made the claim they are violating accounting standards (the only thing that gives our economy and investors confidence in the system). Such claims are not taken lightly by anyone, particularly the IRS who views claims of accounting irregularity as a indicator of possible tax law violations and would probably trigger at the least an audit or more probably even a full blow investigation (as in men with guns coming in a seizing all your files). This doesn't even include state investigations or an investigation by the Consumer protection bureau. Just the announcement of an investigation would cost them millions. He did not make a minor threat here, he went nuclear. It was incredibly stupid on his part (he should have known better) but did NOT justify them getting him fired by calling his employer.